Mitt Romney's foreign policy advisers include Bush veterans and academics

Robert Zoellick

Head of the World Bank until June this year. He had been backed for the job by George W Bush after the unexpected resignation of Paul Wolfowitz. He is a generally regarded as a relative moderate on foreign affairs, a pragmatism, at the other end of the spectrum in the Republican party from the neocons. Romney has put him in charge of the transitional team on foreign affairs, which, if Romney wins, would liaise with the Obama administration in the three-month period between the election and taking office. That appointment suggests he will be given a senior foreign affairs role in a Romney administration.

Richard Williamson

One of the Romney's closest foreign affairs advisers, a former ambassador who was sent out this week to do press and television interviews to deal with the fall-out from the candidate's tweet in response to the Middle East crisis. He is a state department veteran who served in the Reagan administration and during the George W Bush administration opted to concentrate on the Darfur crisis in Sudan rather than become bogged down in the Iraq war. One of his jobs is to co-ordinate the divergent views coming from Romney's 40-plus pool of foreign policy advisers.

John Bolton

Critics of Romney's foreign policy, concerned that America is on the way to a re-run of the George W Bush era foreign policy, have focused on the presence of Bolton among his team of advisers. Bolton has long been one of the most outspoken of the Republican hawks, and long advocated bombing Iran to prevent in securing nuclear weapons. He was Bush's ambassador to the UN, an organisation he constantly lambasted.

Robert Kagan

One of the best-known thinkers in US foreign policy and a heavyweight adviser to Romney. He was a foreign policy adviser to John McCain in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He is co-founder of the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century. In spite of that, he is not generally regarded as a neo-con but a realist. His latest book, The World America Made, was praised by Barack Obama.

Aaron Friedberg

Professor of politics and international relations at Princeton. Another realist has focused recently mainly on the rise of China and argues that the Obama administration should be preparing for a potential conflict. In spite of that, he does not believe such a conflict is inevitable.

Dan Senor

One of Romney's senior foreign policy advisers who, along with Williamson, was sent out to do a round of media interviews to bolster the candidate this week. He is one of the driving forces behind Romney's strong support for Israel. One of his most controversial periods came when he was appointed chief spokesman for the coalition provisional authority, the interim government set up to run Iraq in the aftermath of the US invasion and that presided over a chaotic period in which some fateful decisions were made.

Alex Wong

One of the most inexperienced of Romney's team. In his early 30s, the Harvard law school graduate worked as an intern at the US mission in the UN during the summer of 2005. In spite of his relative inexperience, he deals with the day-to-day campaigning and he helps Williamson in co-ordinating the pool of foreign policy advisers.