President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted during a Thursday interview with The Atlantic that former President Barack Obama was wrong about Russia in his 2012 debate with then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
This admission was prompted by editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg pressing him about the policy exchange.
“So you remember, of course, that Mitt Romney, when he was running against Barack Obama, talked about Russia as the main adversary of the United States, and Barack Obama said, ‘Mitt, the Cold War called. It wants its foreign policy back.’ It turns out Mitt Romney was right, though. Is that fair to say?” Goldberg asked.
“Well, I had occasion to tell Sen. Romney that I thought he had been rather prescient in some of the things that he said,” Blinken responded. This comment was met with laughter by the crowd. (RELATED: Mitt Romney Announces He Will Not Seek Reelection)
The interaction referenced a moment in the third presidential debate in 2012 between Obama and Romney where the former president lambasted Romney’s labelling of Russia as the main geopolitical threat to the United States as outdated.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War has been over for 20 years,” Obama said.
The topic of Russia as a geopolitical nemesis of the United States has garnered public traction in political circles since Russia invaded Ukraine back in February 2022. CNN ran an article around the time titled, “It’s time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia.” The article quoted Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu also referencing that debate moment and arguing that Romney was proven right.
Not all politicians, however, have been convinced about Romney’s attitude towards Russia. Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance has questioned blindly supporting Ukraine and not focusing on China.
“Russia’s getting closer to China, closer to North Korea. And, oh, by the way Laura, you have to remember we don’t make enough of our own artillery shells, our own munitions to actually fund, God forbid, a future military conflict, if it ever came with China. So we’re actually firing bullets in Russia and in Ukraine that we need for ourselves. This is a massive depletion of our own military resources,” Vance told Fox Host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 12.
“Why does China want the war between Russia and Ukraine to continue indefinitely? Why do they want America to continue to feed billions of dollars into Ukraine? Because it distracts us from the real threat, which is the Chinese. This is a massive, massive strategic victory for China because, every minute that we focus on Russia is a minute that we’re not focused on China,” Vance said.