Washington: Hardening stance on Pakistan, leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said the country is in danger of becoming a failed State.
"You`re dealing with a nation like Pakistan, with a hundred-plus missiles, which is a fragile state, and could be become a failed state," Romney said.
In his speech at Nashua, New Hampshire, Romney said the world has become more dangerous.
"It`s become more dangerous, and you recognise that. North Korea, over the last several years, has tested a nuclear device, has tested long-range missiles. Iran is, of course, arming Hezbollah, Hamas," he said.
"To a degree, Taliban, as well, has pursued their nuclear ambitions. Russia is acting in a more belligerent way with their neighbours and former satellites. China makes friends with some of the most unsavoury characters in the world.
Whether in Burma/Myanmar, whether in Sudan, North Korea, China seems to be gathering a union of totalitarian states of some kind. The world is dangerous," Romney said.
"Our friends are in fragile settings, Israel in particular. With the development of the Arab Spring, that could be either some of the best news we`ve had in half a
century or some of the worst, depending on how it turns out," he said.
"In a setting like this, this is no time for the United States of America to withdraw its commitment to a powerful and strong military. And a doomsday scenario for our military is not the right course, given where the world is headed," he said.
Romney said he actually thinks that there is a battle going on among the various players on the world stage to reshape the planet in their own way and their own liking.
"We, of course, want to see the expansion of freedom, free enterprise, across the globe. Yet, there are other models. There are a number of players who want to see an expansion of totalitarianism and are building a network of totalitarian states," he said.
"Having thrown aside, to a degree, communism or socialism as economic principles, they`ve grabbed onto a form of free enterprise, and by virtue of the power, economic power, of free enterprise, they have greater funding than they`ve had before and greater prosperity, and they`re using that to build extraordinary military might," Romney said.
"Now, there`s of course a third competitor, and the third competitor is the jihadist competitor... In a setting like this, the idea that we`re going to devastate our military is simply unacceptable. I would call on the President to immediately introduce legislation which says we will not have a USD 600 billion cut to America`s military," he said.
"When he was here four years ago, he spoke about bringing in a new era to the nation and getting our economy going," he said.
PTI
