Election Disadvantage

Ext – Obama is Weak

Obama projects weakness in foreign policy.

It would be understandable, given Romney’s desire to keep focused on jobs and the economy, if he were reluctant to get too far into the weeds on foreign policy. But come November, the American people will not be electing a financial adviser. They’ll be electing the leader of a world power. Romney should not actually have much trouble outflanking Obama on foreign policy. The White House prides itself, rightly, on killing Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and other jihadists who threatened U.S. citizens, interests and allies. But the national security strategy of a superpower with interests across the world cannot be reduced to counterterrorism. Nor can our global responsibilities be fulfilled, in the immortal phrase, by “leading from behind.” The lie was given to this bizarre conceit as early as the Libya intervention. Where Obama’s advisers boasted that leading from behind represented a new kind of leadership, scaled to the modest expectations of a post-financial-crisis world, the reality was that while France and the United Kingdom were out front, it was American firepower that brought down Qaddafi. When Obama disdains to lead elsewhere, someone else fills the vacuum – often at the expense of American interests and values. Consider Syria, where the Obama administration has handed its policy off to the Russians, by way of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It took Obama five months into the uprising and thousands of casualties before he called for Assad to step down. But because the administration does not believe that the Free Syrian Army is capable of toppling Assad – a prophecy that without American arms and training might be self-fulfilling – it has opted to work with the “international community” for what it calls a political solution, in the hope that Moscow will force Assad from power, leading to a democratic transition. The White House is not able to describe the mechanism by which such an outcome might be engineered, and that is because Moscow doesn’t particularly want to topple Assad. Some of the reasons Russian diplomats have put forth for preserving Assad are nearly comical – for instance, a Sunni Islamist regime in Damascus would embolden Chechen rebels. But what matters to Russia is that it has become the de facto power on the ground because the White House has let it. Any regional actor that wants some movement on Syria, whether it’s the Saudis, Qataris or Turks, has to go to the Russians. Moscow has no intention of abandoning the role that Obama handed it. Not since the Cold War have the Russians enjoyed such diplomatic prestige – and all thanks to Obama’s foreign policy weakness.

Palestinian Peace Process 2NC

Obama’s election is key to progress on the Peace Process.

CNN, 7/18/2012 (Second term Obama more likely to jump into peace process, Jordan’s king says, p. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/18/second-term-obama-more-likely-to-jump-into-peace-process-jordans-king-says/)

The delicate process of negotiating peace between Israelis and Palestinians is more likely to be taken on by President Barack Obama in his second term than Mitt Romney in his first term, Jordan's King Abdullah II said Wednesday. Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, King Abdullah said the political reality was that a president without the worry of re-election was better poised to tackle the peace process. "Well obviously there's always going to be a difference between a first term president and a second term president in dealing with this core issue," King Abdullah said on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "A second term president is going to be in a much more comfortable position in dealing with the Middle East peace process. Obviously a first term president will tend to be less willing to take on such a difficulty political issue, especially in the first term of his presidency."

Peace process results in a Palestinian state --- results in Israeli pre-emption and nuclear war.

Bere, 3/28/2003 (Louis Rene – professor of political science t Purdue, A Palestinian State and Regional Nuclear War, p. http://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/Articles/Beres-2003-03-28.asp)

Until now, fears of a nuclear war in the Middle East have generally focussed on Iraq. Yet, when the current war against Saddam Hussein is concluded, it is highly unlikely that Iraq will be in any position to acquire nuclear weapons. A new Arab state of "Palestine," on the other hand, would have decidedly serious implications for certain regional resorts to nuclear conflict. Newly endowed with a so-called "Prime Minister," this state, although itself non-nuclear, would greatly heighten the prospect of catastrophic nuclear war in the area. If all goes well for the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush will feel compelled to reward Arab state allies and supporters with a dedicated American effort to create a Palestinian state. This state, tied closely to a broad spectrum of terrorist groups and flanking 70 percent of Israel's population, would utterly eliminate Israel's remaining strategic depth. With limited capacity to defend an already fragile land and facing a new enemy country resolutely committed to Israel's annihilation, Jerusalem would have to undertake even more stringent methods of counter terrorism and self-defense against aggression. Various new forms of preemption, known under international law as anticipatory self-defense, would be unavoidable. Significantly, a strong emphasis on preemption has now become the recognizable core of President Bush's national security policy for the United States. Several ironies must also be noted. Above all, offering Palestine as a reward for collaborative opposition to Iraq would merely exchange one terror state for another. Additionally, the nuclear risks associated with a new state of Palestine would derive not from this state directly - which would assuredly be non-nuclear - but from (1) other Arab/Islamic states (including Iran) that could exploit Israel's new strategic vulnerabilities; and/or (2) Israel's own attempts to preempt such enemy exploitations. Because the creation of a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel would raise the area risk of nuclear war considerably, this very politicized measure should now be viewed with real apprehension. Indeed, its creation could even bring an Islamic "Final Solution" to the region. After all, every Arab map of the Middle East already excludes Israel. Cartographically, Israel has already been destroyed. Architects of the Oslo Agreements had suggested all along that a "Two-State Solution" to the Palestinian problem would surely reduce the risk of another major war in the Middle East. After all, they had always maintained, the problem of stateless Palestinians is THE source of all problems between Israel and the Arabs. Once we have "justice" for Palestinians, the argument proceeded, Arab governments and Iran could begin to create area-wide stability and comprehensive peace settlements. Harmony would then reign, more or less triumphantly, from the Mediterranean and Red Seas to the Persian Gulf. But as we should have learned by now, especially from recurring Arab violations of the "peace process," the conventional Oslo wisdom was always unwise. For the most part, Iranian and Arab state inclinations to war against Israel have had absolutely nothing to do with the Palestinians. Even if Israel had continued to make all unilateral Oslo concessions, and had continued to adhere to unreciprocated agreements, these irremediably belligerent inclinations would have endured, especially from Syria, Iraq and Libya as well as from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If Israel should soon face a new state of Palestine, the Jewish state's vulnerability to armed attack by hostile neighbors will increase markedly. If this diminished safety is accompanied by the spread of unconventional weapons to certain hostile states, which now seems certain, Israel could find itself confronting not only war, but genocide. It is also clear that Israel's own nuclear infrastructures will become increasingly vulnerable to surprise attack from Palestinian territories.

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