International tour gives Romney chance to provide details on foreign policy

Mitt Romney arrived in London Wednesday at the start of a week-long international tour that could provide American voters with a closer look at his foreign policy agenda. 

Romney, the likely Republican presidential candidate, has so far provided few details of his views on key international issues.

New York Times reporter David Sanger said Romney’s most comprehensive speech on foreign policy occurred in early March. But the speech was short on specifics, Sanger said, and was loaded instead with criticisms of President Barack Obama’s handling of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“It still left open a lot of questions about what exactly he’d do differently than what the Obama administration did,” Sanger said.

In the speech, Romney also criticized the president of misjudging Russia, being too friendly with China and offending Israel, Sanger said. But he did provide details when discussing the Arab Spring, arguing that the U.S. government needed to place more conditions on its aid to Egypt. 

After attending the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in London, Romney will travel to Israel and Poland.

He has a lot to live up to after Obama’s European tour during the 2008 presidential campaign. More than 250,000 people saw his landmark speech in Berlin.

Since then, the president has maintained widespread popularity across the continent. The Washington Post reports that Obama still receives approval ratings of 80 percent or greater in Britain, France and Germany.

“If the election was being held in Europe, Obama would win quite handily,” Sanger said. “The biggest problem I think that Mitt Romney is going to run into is getting the kind of huge, enthusiastic crowds that President Obama had.”