In a report released today as part of the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s “Romney U,” CAP’s Lawrence Korb looked at the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s defense and military spending numbers and found that they “don’t add up.” Romney’s plan would mean at least $2 trillion in increased spending over the next decade and as of yet, his campaign can’t explain how he plans to pay for it. Korb’s report charts the numbers:

Romney “promotes this approach while simultaneously promising to cut taxes and balance the budget, which is pure intellectual dishonesty,” Korb writes. “By exploding the deficit or gutting domestic programs, Gov. Romney’s plan would compromise our national security.”

Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Palestinians’ economic troubles can be attributed to an inferior culture and his decision to cancel a pre-scheduled meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas offended many in the region and opened the Republican presidential hopeful to international ridicule and charges of diplomatic incompetence.

Interestingly, Romney’s father George received a far different reception when he ran for president forty-five years earlier and traveled to Israel in December of 1967. Like his son Mitt, George embarked on an international trip to bolster his foreign policy credentials, visiting France, Great Britain, West Germany, Poland, The Soviet Union, Israel, Jordan, Thailand, South Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore.

George Romney spent two days visiting Jerusalem and held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and other government officials, describing his conversations to reporters as “significant.” Then, he crossed over to Jordan and visited a refugee camp, demonstrating that he was far more willing to consider the challenges facing the Palestinian people on his trip abroad. “I have come here to listen, to look and to learn,” he was quoted as saying in the New York Times on December 22, 1967:

As Hannah Gross at the Daily Beast said of Mitt Romney, “If Romney hopes to be viewed as a fair broker of peace between Israelis and Palestinians—a role he must play if he wants to establish a two-state solution—virtually ignoring Palestinians isn’t a strong first step.”

In the wake of yet another controversial stop on his campaign trip abroad, a host of international media criticized Mitt Romney’s positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as damaging to prospects for reviving the stalled peace process.

While in Jerusalem, Romney’s remarks must have been music to the ears of his hand-picked right-wing audience of donors and political figures. But he caused a stir with the Palestinians by putting their economic woes down to their “culture” and declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel (most of the world won’t do so because Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state).

Here’s a round-up of what some of the international media is saying about Romney’s trip to Jerusalem:

GERMANY: In an opinion piece for the centrist Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s biggest daily, Christian Wernicke wrote:

The trip to Israel may help Romney in the short term. In the long term, however, the Republican has done damage: The Middle East needs the United States as mediator. As such, the would-be president has already disqualified himself.

FRANCE: The French newspaper Le Monde noted that Romney broke with a policy upheld by successive U.S. governments for more than 60 years by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:

(H)e delivered a speech declaring himself “very moved” to find himself Jerusalem, “the capital of Israel.”

This while the U.S. does not officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Their embassy, ​​like those of virtually all the countries represented in Israel, is in Tel Aviv.

AUSTRIA: The Vienna-based Kurier newspaper set the stage by mentioning the harsh British reaction to Romney’s visit to London and, in harsh terms, placed his Jerusalem comments in that context:

Now the next occasion of putting his foot in his mouth: on Sunday, the Republican called Jerusalem the “capital of Israel.”

UNITED KINGDOM: In a in opinion column for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, Hugo Rifkind wrote:

Mr. Romney’s behavior in Israel is… a throwback to a time when U.S. foreign policy considered the bulk of the Middle East to be irredeemably horrible; a great morass of messy “other” with which grown-up engagement was close to impossible. As a response to the patchwork of petty tyranny that the region used to be, this made some sense. Today, it makes none at all.

Perhaps the harshest opinion came here at home, where a New York Times editorial ripped Romney for his counter-productive pandering that does “no favors” for American interests:

Despite what Mr. Romney says, all American presidents have been pro-Israel, including Mr. Obama. But that doesn’t mean subcontracting American policy to Israeli leaders or donors. [... Romney's] policies would complicate America’s ability to act as a broker in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

How’s Romney handling the coverage given to him by the world’s media? Not well. Before leaving Poland to travel back Stateside, Romney told Fox News he blamed the media for all his stumbling blocks abroad.

Since Mitt Romney emerged from the GOP presidential primary fight as the last candidate standing, the former Massachusetts governor has struggled to differentiate his Iran policy (or any foreign policy) from President Obama’s. That changed this weekend when a top adviser said Romney would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapons “capability” and that a President Romney would support an Israeli attack on Iran.

But yesterday, another top Romney adviser Richard Williamson went a bit further. Pressed by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien to offer a substantive difference between Romney’s and Obama’s Iran policies, Williamson at first struggled but ultimately said that the military option should be “seriously considered” if Iran “gets to nuclear breakout”:

O’BRIEN: So, are you telling me that Governor Romney would be willing to bomb Iran if it looks like they’re getting nuclear weapons? That they would whether it’s with or without Israel, bomb Iran to end that — they cross the red line, bomb Iran?

WILLIAMSON: I’m saying two things. First, on the sanctions, it’s not just talking abstractly about sanctions. This administration has allowed Moscow and Beijing to determine what sanctions we can put in force. Governor Romney has made clear he’s going to put tough sanctions in force for the coalition and not play “Mother, may I” with the U.N. Security Council.

Second, that Tehran should know that Governor Romney is committed to work everything possible diplomatically to avoid having to use force. But if it gets to nuclear breakout, military options are on the table and have to be seriously considered.

Watch the interview (conversation quoted above begins at 3:02):

While it’s unclear what Williamson means by “breakout,” that threshold by some definitions is lower than nuclear weapons capability. “Breakout” could mean the decision to acquire and action on acquiring all the necessary components for a bomb (such as enriching low-enriched uranium to a higher purity), while “capability,” what Romney’s adviser previously referred to last weekend, could be described as actually obtaning all the necessary components after the decision to breakout.

As this blog has previous noted, While Obama has said an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable,” declaring a nuclear “capability” an American “red line” that would trigger war sets a lower threshold for U.S. military involvement. The CIA has laid out a specific definition, but again, the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Senate’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.” Iran hawks in Congress pushed a bill this year to shift the official U.S. “red line” to a nuclear “capability.”

For his part, President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Obama has also reaffirmed Israel’s “sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”

Between annoying the British and alienating the Palestinians, Mitt Romney seems to have found trouble everywhere he went on his overseas campaign trip. Now, the Polish trade union Solidarity, once led by Romney’s host in Poland Lech Wałęsa, disavowed the GOP presidential hopeful because of his anti-union politics.

Romney went to Gdańsk, Poland to meet with Wałęsa, who in 1980, led a workers’ strike in the Gdańsk Shipyard and helped create the Solidarity trade union. Solidarity became a thorn in the side of the Soviet-backed government, and Wałęsa eventually became a Nobel laureate and the first president of a free Poland. Wałęsa was reportedly miffed when Obama wouldn’t grant him a private greeting, and invited Romney for a visit.

But Solidarity isn’t extending the same welcome. The group distanced itself in a statement:

Regretfully, we were informed by our friends from the American headquarters of (trade union federation) AFL-CIO, which represents more than 12 million employees … that Mitt Romney supported attacks on trade unions and employees’ rights.

Solidarity was not involved in organizing Romney’s meeting with Wałęsa and did not invite him to visit Poland.

Romney has staked out anti-union positions. He supported right-to-work legislation and railed against unions in Michigan earlier this year: “I’ve taken on union bosses before. I’m happy to take them on again.” (HT: Muhammed Idrees Ahmad)