Obama Should Have Listened to Romney on Russia
Katrina Trinko /
During the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney called Russia the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe”—and was widely derided by those supposedly in the know.
In a debate last fall, President Obama mocked Romney, saying, “Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia … the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Now, with Russian president Vladimir Putin annexing Crimea, Romney’s validated. But in an op-ed today in The Wall Street Journal, the former GOP candidate made the case that it’s not just Russia on which the Obama Administration has been short-sighted. Rather, the administration has also failed to act at the right time in nations such as Syria and Egypt, among others. From Romney’s commentary:
Why, across the world, are America’s hands so tied?
A large part of the answer is our leader’s terrible timing. In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices and good options. There was a juncture when America had the potential to influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options.
Later in the piece, Romney added:
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe. Their failure has been painfully evident: It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed.