Former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman launched his 2012 White House bid Tuesday, calling for the United States to withdraw from conflicts to rebuild "our core here at home."

"We are a nation at war and we must manage the end of these conflicts without repeating past mistakes that made our engagement longer and our sacrifices greater than they should have been," Huntsman said.

"It's not that we wish to disengage from the world... but rather that we believe the best national security strategy is rebuilding our core here at home," the former Utah governor declared to scores of supporters.

Emulating conservative icon Ronald Reagan, Huntsman launched his campaign in a New Jersey state park in sight of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline scarred by the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He also vowed to reverse the US decline and sharply assailed the handling of the economy by his former boss, who he is now looking to unseat, Democratic President Barack Obama.

"For the first time in history, we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident than the one we got," Huntsman said.

His speech came a day before Obama was due to announce the scope and pace of a withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in the face of steep US public opposition to the decade-old war.

The 51-year-old expressed "respect" for Obama as well as for his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls, insisting the voters will decide "who will be the better president, not who's the better American."

But he savaged Obama's handling of the economy during the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, saying "we need more than hope" in a mocking reference to the "hope and change" mantra of Obama's historic 2008 campaign.

Huntsman, whose Mormon faith could prove an obstacle for some evangelical Christian voters, painted himself as the right candidate to "make hard decisions that are necessary to avert disaster."

And he warned that the swelling US debt risked smothering the economy and weighing down Washington's global leadership.

"Our influence in the world will wane. Our security will grow ever-more precarious. And the 21st century will then be known as the end of the American century. We can't accept this, and we won't," said Huntsman.

He called for overhauling the US tax code and rolling back regulations that Republicans blame for stalling job growth.

But a spokesman for the 2012 Obama campaign, Ben Bolt, hit back with a swipe at Huntsman's economic policies.

"Instead of proposing a plan that will allow middle class families to reclaim their economic security, governor Huntsman is proposing a return to the failed economic policies that led us into the recession," Bolt said in a statement.

The former diplomat, who has just completed 20 months in Beijing and served in Reagan's White House, possesses what are widely considered to be the best foreign policy credentials of a crowded Republican field.

But Huntsman trails far behind Republican front-runner and fellow Mormon Mitt Romney, and after a later rally in Exeter, New Hampshire, resident Bob Hantman, 70, said he was still "very undecided."

"He's got impressive credentials, he's obviously a very bright, hard-working man -- all the adjectives I would put in front of Obama," Hantman said.

With his fluent Mandarin, Huntsman is well regarded in China, also because one of his seven children, Gracie Mei, was adopted from China. He was known for preferring his bicycle to chauffeur-driven armored limousines.

He helped Washington navigate a particularly thorny time in relations between the world's top two economies as they battled over everything from the yuan and trade to Taiwan and Internet freedom.

Among Republicans, however, he is not well known -- and sizable numbers who know his name consider his work for the Obama administration to be an unpardonable betrayal.

Huntsman, the son of a chemical billionaire, has countered that he was serving his country when he worked under the Obama administration.

But he has also praised Obama's economic stimulus package, backed civil unions for gay couples, and supported a "cap-and-trade" plan to curb greenhouse gases blamed for global warming -- all targets of Republican scorn.

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