In a Foreign Policy Address to the Republican Jewish Coalition in LA on Sunday, newt Gingrich outlined nine specific policy proposals as an alternative to Obama's Foreign policy (below is a edited version of excerpts as prepared for delivery on Newt.org) :
1. As a demonstration of this new resolve, the United States should move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Israel has every right as a sovereign free nation to choose its own capitol and we should respect that choice. As President, on my first day in office, I would issue an executive order directing the U.S. embassy in Israel to be moved to Jerusalem as provided for in the legislation I introduced in Congress in 1995.
2. The United States must also refuse to participate in any talks involving terrorist organizations and cut off all direct and indirect aid to terrorists and their front groups. This must include the Palestinian Authority, so long as it includes Hamas and continues to produce propaganda lionizing suicide bombers and promoting the destruction of Israel. We should also call on other nations who are ostensibly committed to true peace between Israel and the Palestinians to do the same.
3. The United States should also explicitly reject the concept of a "right of return” for Palestinian refugees. The so-called right of return is a historically impossible demand that would be a demographic disaster and mean the end of a Jewish State of Israel. We are for a right to prosperity, a right to freedom, a right to the rule of law, and a right to private property. We must be totally opposed to a right of return.
This means that the Palestinian refugee problem must be resolved outside the borders of Israel by the Palestinian government after Palestinian statehood has been achieved.
4. The United Nations camp system must be replaced with a system of earned income and property rights to restore dignity and hope to every Palestinian. The current, failed camp system of socialism and unearned charity has been a disaster. It has led to poverty, vast unemployment, deep bitterness and a society which produces entrepreneurs of terrorism rather than entrepreneurs of wealth creation.
5. We must also re-establish the United States Information Agency as a robustly funded worldwide anti-terrorism and pro-freedom communications and advocacy system. The USIA fought for our side in the war of ideas during the Cold War and helped us win.
In 1999, this agency was dismantled because we thought the war of ideas was over. We discovered on 9/11 that it was not.
The USIA helped America win the Cold War and it can help us win the war against evil terrorist organizations and dictatorships. But to do this we must ensure that the USIA once again has independent board of governors reporting to the President and coordinating with the State Department but not controlled by the diplomats.
Never again should a three-month-old baby be killed without the entire world being repulsed and joining together in condemning such terrorists and their supporters.
6. We must aggressively confront the growing threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. The existence of the Iranian regime pursuing nuclear weapons and financing terrorism across the globe is a primary threat to the security of the United States, Israel and our allies in the world. The United States must lead the world in an all-out effort to replace the Iranian dictatorship using the diplomatic, economic, information, political, and covert tools President Reagan used to defeat and dismantle the Soviet Empire.
7. The United States must also establish an aggressive new strategy of taking back the United Nations from the forces of terrorism and dictatorship. Totally discrediting and, if possible, stopping the Durban 3 conference on racism later this year – the previous two sessions of which have been used as a vehicle for anti-Semitism - should be an early goal of this new worldwide campaign.
Furthermore, the United States must be prepared to suspend all funding to the United Nations if the General Assembly moves to recognize a Palestinian state under the control of Hamas.
8. All of this will require a restructured State Department, a new level of training and management for Ambassadors, a new promotion system, and a profound shift in the culture of the Foreign Service. The quickest way to change the culture at the State Department is to inject new blood into the system. We must engage in fundamental reform of the overly slow and bureaucratic security clearance system to raise the level of applicants to the Foreign Service.
It will require a strong, experienced, and knowledgeable Secretary of State and a deeply committed team around him and transform the State Department's historic aversion to moral clarity about the difference between terrorism and civilization, which have weakened both the United States and Israel.
9. Finally, the United States must establish an American energy policy designed to strengthen our national economy and weaken our opponents in the Middle East by keeping in the United States the hundreds of billions of dollars we now spend on foreign oil supplies.
In closing, if it were possible to say a word directly to the Israeli people, it would be this:
We believe together with you that peace is possible, and that peace ultimately will come to Israel.
The never-ending tendency to Blame Israel First is just another variation of Blame America First, and it springs from the same weakness.
It is far easier to ignore an unpleasant reality and try instead to impose your will on somebody you think you can control, rather than deal with the unpleasant reality that you are too timid to confront.
If Israel disarmed today, there would be no Israel tomorrow. But if Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups disarmed today, then tomorrow we would have peace in the Middle East.
While our challenge today will likely not meet with such a simple solution, our commitment to Israel's protection remains as staunch as it has been from the moment of Israel's birth.
And I would also say this to the brave people of Israel: Never, ever underestimate the hold that Israel has on the American heart.
The American people have always believed in Israel, and we believe in Israel still.
Together, we will renew our mutual commitment to freedom and justice, and we will work to achieve a peace in which war and bloodshed and violence are no longer a common feature of life for you and your children.
We know that if the forces of terrorism could eliminate Israel today, they would turn toward America tomorrow.
That is why we must reverse the Obama Administration's dangerous policies of incoherence and accommodation and implement instead a foreign policy that is clear about the evil that we face and committed to the actions necessary to overcome it.
America is still the last best hope of mankind on earth.
I believe like Ronald Reagan did that the goal of U.S. foreign policy must be the promotion of peace. But that it must be a real peace where freedom can flourish and justice can prevail, not a false peace that emboldens terrorists, tyrants and murderous ideologies to extend their evil throughout the world.
It is toward this possibility of real peace that America must commit itself.......
