The Bush-Obama Doctrine Holds

Until the last few weeks, foreign policy remained in the background as President Obama and Mitt Romney duked it out over the economy. Then came the storming of U.S. embassies in Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen, and the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other diplomatic staffers in Benghazi, Libya. Suddenly foreign policy became a flash point, with Romney accusing Obama of sympathizing with the rioters and failing to protect American interests, and the president countering that Romney has “a tendency to shoot first and aim later.”

Despite the rhetoric, when it comes to the question of how the U.S. should handle the ongoing transformation of the Arab world, the differences between the candidates have more to do with style than substance. Romney backed Obama’s decision to call for Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to step down in February 2011 and endorsed NATO’s intervention in Libya. As the recent riots unfolded in Cairo, Romney’s advisers said he would condition $1 billion in aid to Egypt on whether the country’s new government took steps to protect the U.S. Embassy; Obama sent a similar warning by calling Egypt “neither an ally nor an enemy.” More broadly, both Obama and Romney adhere to the idea that American interests are best served through the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, a strategy that became known as the “Freedom Agenda” under George W. Bush and gained momentum after the Arab Spring of 2011.