Yesterday, presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Governor Mitt Romney, laid out what his campaign billed as his major foreign policy address. With the Democratic Party suddenly embracing national security recently, becoming noticeably more “hawkish” on the matter, i.e. Joe Biden’s 2012 DNC speech for evidence, I was curious to hear how Romney would be further to the right. Yesterday, that answer was made clear: Gov. Romney would show his greater commitment by spending more on national defense than this country has ever seen.

I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy.

This is the line that stuck from Gov. Romney’s address yesterday. I could not agree more with the sentiments, but the proposed strategy does not ease my concerns. An in-depth critique of President Obama’s foreign policy record in regards to the wars and the Middle East will be up tomorrow, but if there were a lesson to be learned from the Obama surge in Afghanistan, it’s that throwing new resources at the problem, our tax money and men and women, does not make a peaceful state. Yet, this is the core of Romney’s foreign policy strategy.

This graph shows defense spending in historical context. You see spikes in defense spending in war times, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War, chronologically. What may pique your curiosities about the graph is the lack of a dramatic jump after 2001, given that we waged two wars, but this spending was considered “emergency spending” not defense.

The graph speaks for itself. Governor Romney plans to make defense spending 4% of GDP, a percentage that has yet to be explained. By doing so, you can see the astronomical spending that would occur. The Pentagon does not request a budget near the proposed spending. This from the candidate that argues he’s best on the deficit.

Substantively, the spending was the most dramatic difference between the two candidate’s positions, per the speech given yesterday, though Romney expressed his continued disappointment in the troop withdrawal from Iraq and commented on the political expedience of the 2014 timeline for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan but committed to adhere to it. Rhetorically, Romney aimed to be much more heavy handed. What concerns me is the sharp tone Gov. Romney seems prepared to take with every international political foe. Though not expressly stated, his speech showed him ready to commit our men and women abroad in places where there is “a longing for American leadership,” on missions looking to spread democratic principles. If there is one thing the American people have made clear in the ongoing War on Terrorism, it’s that we have little interest in policing the world or embarking on missions focused on building other countries’ infrastructures, physical or political.

Fact Check:

The President has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years.

President Obama signed a trade agreement with Colombia, Panama and South Korea in 2011. The nuance of Romney’s statement is the use of the word “new.” While these agreement discussions were begun under the Bush administration, the President led re-negotiations and got the agreement passed in a Congress not known for its ability to get things passed. The credit here is due to President Obama.

Defense spending is another issue to consider at the ballot box on November 6th. Given the following graph, you decide, is it time to stabilize or ramp up our military expenditure?