Mitt Romney, still demagoguing

Mitt Romney, who, I suspect, is still running, also still has that demagogic knack, insisting in the WSJ that Obama, Clinton and Kerry's "failure" around the globe "is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed." Most of Romney's survey of these foreign policy failures is intriguingly obtuse, as is Romney's wont, but some is downright breathtaking in its arrogance, such as his flat assertion that any nuclear deal with Iran will undoubtedly be worthless. That's a trope the neocon right can wave for years, well after any deal is cut; they'll simply profess that Iran is violating the treaty--though, as usual, they'll offer no evidence.

But naturally Romney is most upset (not really) by the Crimean crisis, the exploitation of which opens his op-ed:  

Why are there no good choices? From Crimea to North Korea, from Syria to Egypt, and from Iraq to Afghanistan, America apparently has no good options. If possession is nine-tenths of the law, Russia owns Crimea and all we can do is sanction and disinvite—and wring our hands.

What makes that passage so fascinating is that Romney's op-ed would have been right, if only he had stopped after those first three sentences. They capture the essence of America's standing in this EuroAsian affair: we don't have "good choices," which generally is what renders complex situations so complex; "nine-tenths" is possession; and sanctions are just about all we do have, aside from hand-wringing. It's a bitch, idn't Mitt? 

Sorry to quote Henry Kissinger again so soon, but his recent observation that effective diplomacy is not about "absolute satisfaction," but rather "balanced dissatisfaction," is an apt and durable assessment. It's also the kind of realism that neocons can't stomach.

Romney believes that absolute satisfaction and nothing but good choices can always be had in the here and now, assuming the U.S. president's name is "Romney." President Putin may similarly believe that he's the one whose satisfaction is absolute, although years of international blowback may sour such hubris.

Regrettably, nothing ever seems to sour neocon arrogance.

  

Comments

[dr.e]

Mitt, who?

[Janicket]

Let him pump more millions of his fortune into another run; some of it may actually trickle down to the peasantry, and even the GOP wouldn't be braindead enough to nominate him again.

Would they?