In his acceptance speech Mitt Romney told the Republican convention that he would pursue a more assertive foreign policy than Barack Obama. We need to remind ourselves, especially American readers, just where things had got to before Obama was elected. The situation in international relations was this. The United States was the most despised country in the West since WWII and George W. Bush was viewed with polite contempt by every western leader other than Tony Blair.
Obama and Clinton have worked wonders to restore the reputation of the US overseas and whatever Romney feels he has to say to his divided and fractious party to gain its loyalty, he will need to watch his step if he makes to the White House. In particular his childish declaration that he will stand up to Putin and his hint that he will re-activate the futile plan to put air defence missiles in Poland shows a degree of ineptitude that we, in the UK, should find alarming.
Russia would immediately, and with good reason, put missiles into the Kaliningrad region, an area in which I have an historic family interest. Nothing would have been gained other than to give vent to the fundamentalist lust of the American far right since Confederate times, to pick a fight. Indeed it was the Confederacy absolute misreading of the attitude of Europe towards the split of one America into two, that more than anything cost it both the civil war and its independence.
With Bush II, the supine British Foreign Office became little more than a fellow traveller. Should America embark once more on such a barmy path, the FCO will have to look to British interests first and American friendship second. America is family and we must be willing to go the whole hog to a family quarrel. Let us hope not, but be ready and willing.