America made a big mistake when it failed to elect Mitt Romney President in 2012.
That thought occurred to me in light of the Senator’s courageous vote to convict President Trump on one count of impeachment (abuse of power), and in light of Russian’s ongoing and successful efforts to undermine U.S. national security interests worldwide, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.
Romney, of course, was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump, and his logic for doing so is convincing and unassailable.
The President asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
The President withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so.
The President delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders.
The President’s purpose was personal and political.
Accordingly, the President is guilty of an appalling abuse of the public trust.
What he did was not “perfect.” No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values.
Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.
Romney also had the foresight and wisdom to realize eight years ago, before most elected officials and foreign policy analysts did, that Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe.
“Who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst actors?” he explained. “It is always Russia, typically with China alongside.”
Of course, during their debate, Obama ridiculed Romney to great political effect:
When you were asked, what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said “Russia.” Not Al-Qaeda; you said Russia. And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
“Every debate,” writes David Drucker, “has a defining moment—for instance, Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again” in his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter. In 2012’s debate on foreign policy, Obama’s barb, and Romney’s failure to recover, was it. Romney’s momentum evaporated in an instant.”
Many prominent Democrats, Drucker notes, have since acknowledged that Romney was right. Most notable among them: Madeleine Albright—a top Democrat on foreign policy, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, and an Obama supporter.
“I personally owe an apology to now-Senator Romney, because I think that we underestimated what was going on in Russia,” Albright said during a [Feb. 26, 2019], House Intelligence Committee hearing” as reported by ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett.
Russian Aggression. Of course, ever since Trump was elected, Democrats have talked incessantly about Russia’s attempt to interfere in our presidential election by sowing disinformation, animosity and confusion.
This, obviously, is a legitimate concern; but much more significant, I think, is Russia’s increasingly bold and brazen attempts to displace the United States as an arbiter of international affairs, while expanding its influence at our expense and the expense of our friends and allies.
The New York Times‘ Eric Schmitt reports:
Russia is intensifying a pressure campaign on U.S. military forces in northeastern Syria following the American withdrawal from much of that area ahead of a Turkish cross-border offensive last fall, American military and diplomatic officials say.
Russian military personnel have increasingly had run-ins with U.S. troops on highways in the region, breaking agreements between the two countries to steer clear of each other. Russian helicopters are flying closer to American troops.
And on Wednesday, a U.S.-led convoy returned fire after it came under attack near a checkpoint manned by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who are backed by Russia.
American officials say these actions by Russian personnel and their Syrian allies are devised to present a constant set of challenges, probes and encroachments to slowly create new facts on the ground and make the U.S. military presence there more tenuous.
About 500 American troops remain deployed in Syria with a mission to protect oil fields and help fight remnants of the Islamic State.
To be sure, Russia is a second-rate power with a weak economy and a weak military. However, it does have nuclear weapons and sophisticated niche capabilities in select areas such as electronic warfare and air defense.
And Russia has played its weak hand extraordinarily well. It also has embarked upon an ambitious military modernization to achieve its geo-strategic objectives, which include expelling the United States from the Middle East and separating America from its European allies.
Russia does not want a direct military confrontation with the United States, since that would be suicidal for them.
Instead, Russia aims to conduct an ongoing but low-level campaign of harassment of U.S. military forces: to make our presence in Syria untenable and force our withdrawal.
Unfortunately, the Russians are pushing on an open door. Trump, after all, has made clear many times throughout his presidency that he wants out of Syria, Iraq, and the Middle East more generally.
Trump’s weakness quite literally invites Russian aggression.
Obama-Trump Weakness. In fairness, Russia’s reemergence as a military and diplomatic power in the Middle East began under Obama, when he failed to uphold his red line on the use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and then welcomed the Russians into the country to help settle the Syrian civil war.
But Trump has continued Obama’s policy of appeasement by abandoning U.S.-controlled-territory there, thus giving the Russians greater leverage and control over Syria.
And it’s not just Syria, but Libya as well, where American weakness and indecision have emboldened the Russians, enhanced their influence, and undermined U.S. national security interests.
“Russia first rose to prominence in Libya in September 2019,” notes Foreign Policy magazine’s Anas El Gomati,
after it deployed mercenaries to the front lines of Tripoli to back [Libyan warlord Khalifa] Haftar, sparking concern in the United States and Europe that the Kremlin had finally thrown its hat into Libya’s civil war.
Its presence in Libya was strikingly reminiscent of the decisive role it played in Syria, where it backed the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to brutal effect and essentially saved the regime from collapse.
“Putin is clearly angling for access to oil and military bases on the Mediterranean in a resource-rich country at the gateway to Africa and on NATO’s southern flank,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as reported by Guy Taylor in the Washington Times.
This is something that a President Romney, with far greater strategic vision and public rectitude than either Trump or Obama, never would have allowed.
Indeed, Romney in 2019 would have realized, just as he did in 2012, that Russia’s gain can only come at our expense; and that abandoning key allies in the Middle East and North Africa is both morally wrong and a recipe for strategic disaster.
He also would have realized, as he does now, that the public trust is sacred and must never be shredded for personal political gain. That, after all, is not putting America First; it is putting America to shame.
Feature photo credit: CNN.