Ukraine: Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney were right about Russia
By Tim Stanley
Last updated: March 4th, 2014
The Republicans have been warning us about Russia for years, and we've ignored them every time. They're the little boy who cried wolf. Except that it was a bear and, wouldn't ya know it, the damn thing was real.
First, Sarah Palin. In 2008, the Alaskan conservative warned that Putin was on the prowl. Quote: "After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of moral indecision and equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next."
Wow. Mrs Palin not only got the country that Putin would threaten right, she also predicted the reason behind it. Obama's "indecision and equivalence" over Iran, Egypt and, most importantly, Syria, has probably encouraged Putin to believe that there would be next-to-no Western response to an attack on Ukraine. If Vlad expands his power anymore, Russia won't just be visible from Sarah Palin's house. It'll be visible from the White House, too. Okay, so that's a gross exaggeration – but you get the point. Mrs Palin certainly does, after all she was parodied for her Russophobia in 2008 and is now wallowing in the schadenfreude. "I'm usually not one to Told-Ya-So," she wrote on Facebook, "but I did!" Let her wallow. She's earned this one.
Second, Mitt Romney. Romney's foreign policy approach was broadly mocked in 2012. The country was keen to withdraw from overseas conflict in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan and Mitt's vague neo-conservatism seemed out of step with the public mood. Sometimes, said the critics, it came off as something that his advisers were coaching him to say; a nod and a hint to AIPAC rather than a strongly held belief. Rachel Maddow concluded, "It’s not just that Romney is uninformed; it’s that he hasn’t figured out how to fake it."
Romney confirmed the sceptics' worst fears when he described Russia as America's "number one geopolitical foe." Barack Obama lashed out with some adolescent sass: "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because … the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Oh no he didn't! Obama might have added that the 1950s wanted their hairstyle back, too, girlfriend.
But, again, Romney turned out to be right. He never denied that the biggest threat to American lives still came from al-Qaeda, he was simply stating – accurately – that the world power with the ambitions that most directly threatened American political and military predominance was Russia. It has taken the Ukrainian crisis to show he was correct.
Of course, no one actually wants a new cold war with Russia. The point is that Obama's best hope of avoiding one was to be intelligently aware of Putin's ambitions and act appropriately. That response might either be to a) directly confront and check Russian hegemony or b) accept that a Russian sphere of influence exists, leave Putin to govern it and push him back whenever he tried to extend it. The worst thing to do is what Obama did when he blended those contradictory approaches: accept Russian dominance in some conflicts, resist it in others – without any clear rationale behind either action and all the while confusing everyone involved. Threatening to do something but never delivering, and so only encouraging risk taking by America's competitors.
Obama has become the anti-Theodore Roosevelt. He speaks loudly and carries a small stick.
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