Mitt Romney
In a few hours, the primary is kicking off in New Hampshire to reveal the Presidential candidate from the Republican Party. The primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa will greatly determine the nature of the struggle within the party and reveal the favorites. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and a successful businessman, is the current favorite. Rick Santorum, a former senator, journalist of extremely conservative views, is a little behind. Among other candidates are Congressman Ron Paul, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. whose Foundation provided considerable support for Armenia after the 1988 earthquake. It is interesting that as reported by Reuters during the discussion Huntsman reproached Romney for capitalistic manners: “The difference between us is that Governor Romney enjoys firing people; I enjoy creating jobs.”
Irrespective of the fact which of the Republicans wins the race, it is obvious that in the foreign policy each of Republican candidates will adhere to a stricter line than the incumbent Democrat President Barak Obama who the Democrats decided will nominate for the second term. For instance, Mitt Romney intends to use a strategy aimed at restraining aggressive and expansionist behavior of Russiaas stated in the report of his election campaign headquarters on foreign policy issues. This may mean that the modest achievements claimed in the last 3 years by the “reloading” declared by President Obama will be reconsidered. This concerns the so-called Northern Distribution Network used to provide transportation of American military cargo to Afghanistan. In exchange for this rather substantial favor,Russia received a more or less restrained position of the US on NMD and Georgia. With a Republican President, this very fragile balance of interests will most probably be broken, and it will by all means affect the policy of the two superpowers in the Caucasus.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
