In a World Very Much Like Ours, Part II

A companion to this piece appears at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Did President Romney push Russia into invading Ukraine?

As disorder continues in Ukraine’s eastern provinces, and as Russian forces remain (despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments) deployed in threatening fashion along Ukraine’s border, finger-pointing has begun in Washington. 

More than a few analysts have laid responsibility squarely on the Romney administration. During the 2012 Presidential campaign, President Obama and Democratic proxies ridiculed then-candidate Romney referred to Russia as the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe.”   Romney persisted, turning an off-mike moment with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev into a line of attack against President Obama’s foreign policy.

While the Romney administration claims that Russian aggression has vindicated the President’s view of Moscow, many analysts and former policy officials disagree.  Senior Democratic foreign policy officials lay the blame for Russian aggression squarely on the Romney administration’s decision to undo the “reset” and adopt a harsher attitude towards Russia. “We struggled to develop a rapport with the Putin-Medvedev government that could have avoided this mess.  And then the Romney people came in and threw all of that away,” said one senior Obama administration official.

Relations between the United States and Russia were hardly smooth during the Obama administration, but most observers agree that they represented a high point between the Bush and Romney presidencies.   “Romney turned campaign rhetoric into reality.  He clearly understood nothing about Russia, and nothing about how Putin would respond to such overheated statements,” said one senior analyst associated with a Democratic leaning think-tank.   “Romney’s comments were amateurish, and he’s matched words with actions. Romney has displayed no understanding of how geopolitics work, beyond juvenile posturing.”

A former Democratic Congressman placed blame more broadly. “We’ve seen exactly what happens when the United States doesn’t make an effort to include Russia in the future of its own region.  In 2008 Bush sat and did nothing when Russia invaded Georgia.  Now, we sit and do nothing while Putin takes half of Ukraine.   Tough words and no action makes us look weak on the world stage, and Iran and China are watching.”

Several foreign policy analysts also voiced concern over the future of Russia’s relationship with China, suggesting that the Romney administration’s hostility may irrevocably have pushed Moscow into Beijing’s arms. “The geopolitical implications of this are gruesome. While losing Ukraine, we’ve cemented the Russia-China axis we’ve always feared.”

Indeed, some analysts suggested that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could prove fatal to Romney’s “Asian Pivot.” This policy, one of the major carry-overs from the Obama administration, sought to redistribute American military and diplomatic efforts towards Asia. “The lesson that Beijing learns from this is that the US can be easily distracted by the Middle East, and doesn’t have its heart in maintaining an anti-Beijing alliance system in East Asia.  It doesn’t help that China now has Moscow in its corner,” said one scholar of Sino-American relations.

What could Romney have done to stop Russia from invading Ukraine? Critics affiliated with Democratic leaning-organizations argue that a better effort at communication could have alleviated Russian concerns over the deposition of the Yanukovych regime.

There is little doubt that the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped end President Romney’s foreign policy “honeymoon.” However, few of the analysts interviewed for this article suggested any easy answers for the crisis in Ukraine. At this point, military and political reality seems to leave the United States deeply constrained with respect to recovering Crimea, or to preventing further incursions into other border provinces.