One key figure in politics spotted the threat from Russia a decade ago.
And he was mocked for it.
Now, the media are finally coming around and eating some well-deserved crow as they admit that Mitt Romney was right about Vladimir Putin.
“It’s time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia,” reads a headline on CNN.
“Romney Was Right About Putin,” says another on The Atlantic, while the National Review headline summed it up as: “Mitt Romney Is Entitled to His ‘I Told You So’.”
Romney made getting tough on Russia a key part of his 2012 foreign policy platform as he ran against — and ultimately lost to — incumbent President Barack Obama, who had pursued a policy of engagement with Putin.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even grandly presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a big “reset button,” part of an effort to normalize relations with Russia spearheaded by none other than Joe Biden, who was then vice president.
Romney, however, took the opposite approach, calling Russia the nation’s “number one geopolitical foe” and calling out Obama for a hot-mic moment in which he told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would have “more flexibility” after the election.
“Russia is not a friendly character on the world stage,” Romney said at the time on CNN. “And for this president to be looking for greater flexibility, where he doesn’t have to answer to the American people in his relations with Russia, is very, very troubling, very alarming.”
Obama scoffed – and turned Romney’s caution on Russia into a line of attack during a presidential debate.
“When you were asked, ‘What’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America,’ you said ‘Russia.’ Not al Qaeda; you said Russia,” Obama said, then threw in some mockery: “And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Romney, at the time, refused to back down.
“I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Putin,” he said.
Now, in hindsight, even the left has recognized that Romney was right, as the failure to recognize that the Cold War never truly ended has led to a very hot one in Ukraine.
“This action by Putin further confirms that Mitt Romney was right when he called Russia the number one geopolitical foe,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said on CNN this week.
Russia continues its relentless assault on Ukraine, and Putin is now facing investigation for war crimes due to reported attacks on civilian targets.
Romney hasn’t taken much satisfaction in being right, but he certainly seems to remember the burn – because this week, he released a statement about Russia and Putin that also calls out years of weak foreign policy under Obama, Trump and now Biden.
“Putin’s impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided ‘reset,’ and the shortsightedness of ‘America First,’” he said in a statement. “The ’80s called’ and we didn’t answer.”
Indeed, as Russia was quietly rebuilding its military, Biden was working to help Moscow win global acceptance. In 2009, he pushed for Russia to gain admission to the World Trade Organization and said it would receive the “active support” of the United States in its bid.
Romney, meanwhile, is warning that Russia is not done yet.
“The peril of again looking away from Putin’s tyranny falls not just on the people of the nations he has violated, it falls on America as well,” he wrote. “History shows that a tyrant’s appetite for conquest is never satiated.”
[Watch] Shocking videos emerge from Russia’s bloody Ukraine invasion
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.