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| From President Medvedev's vlog, via The Guardian, 25 October 2011. |
Fred Kaplan of Slate, Rectification Central's go-to source of expertise on military matters, had
a better-informed version of something I've been wanting to say, about old
Willard Mitt Romney complaining in every quarter about how he deserves an
apology, because when he said in 2012 that the Russian Federation was "our no.
1 geopolitical foe" and everybody made fun of him he was actually right. As a
matter of fact he wasn't right, in the first place because he was ignorant or
lying, as was the case with so much of what Romney was saying* during that
campaign:
In his 2012 CNN interview [toward the end of Dmitry Medvedev's presidency, a couple of months before Putin returned to the office in May], Romney explained his characterization of Russia as “our No. 1 geopolitical foe” by saying, “They fight every cause for the world’s worst actors”—and referred specifically to Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria. In his recent Atlantic interview, he said, “They were opposing us at the U.N. whenever a critical measure came forward.” Both statements were simply untrue.
The fact is, quite apart from partisan bickering or revisionist history about the wisdom of Romney, the U.S. and Russia shared vital interests on a number of issues—and acted together to advance those interests, at least for a while. Medvedev and other Kremlin officials were also genuinely keen to bring Russia into the global economy—to diversify its economy beyond commodities like oil and gas, build up its tech sector, and expand its trade—which motivated them to build better relations with America and Europe.
More specifically, and more importantly in terms of the campaign, he was wrong to suggest that there was some deep defect in the Obama administration's treatment of the US-Russia relationship during the Medvedev presidency, the proof being in what he was able to achieve:
