• cogman@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Man, I remember laughing at Romney in his presidential run when he said Russia was over the greatest global threats. Boy was he on point.

    • Zipitydew
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      9 months ago

      He was by accident. What Romney and Obama were talking about during the debate was an interview Mitt had given prior.

      In that interview he was talking about going all Reagan like with being antagonistic to Russia and Iran. His view on foreign policy was Obama should be gearing up for war. Building more boats, tanks, bombs to out spend enemies like Ronnie did. Negotiating with Iran was a waste of time. Let’s just bomb people kinda stuff.

      Which was stupid. It was usual tough guy GOP foreign policy junk. When at the time soft power was working just fine. And even the EU felt Medvedev was being a reasonable partner. Romney was even specifically trying to twist Obama’s hot mic comments to Medvedev about negotiating after the election as selling out America.

      In 2012 soft power and talking out differences was getting somewhere. Which is why Romney was roundly lambasted for acting like the US should preemptively go back to Cold War style of dealing with adversaries. That approach would have guaranteed the kind of response that has happened for different reasons.

      Additional tl;dr summary thought. Obama was already in the war time President role. Romney attempting to look tougher, staked out a ludicrous position. Including claiming the US should be spending 4% of GDP on the military.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Even the people we don’t like are sometimes right about something.

      Trump got ridiculed for critizising Germany for being too reliant on Russian energy.

      • whereisk@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Trump’s mouth is both like the broken clock analogy and like the proverbial 10,000 monkeys with the typewriter.

        He also continuously parrots the last thing he heard.

        At that point he was getting presidential briefings and folders of intelligence from the 3 letter agencies when he was visiting other countries, and his top advisers about concerns he should raise with his counterpart.

        He just parroted something that put his host down publicly both because it made him look smug, because he’s a brute and a sexist and because he didn’t like her.

        The content may have been true but that’s no way to conduct international relations with a close ally.

        These concerns are raised in private, unless your intent is to torpedo the alliance - but at the same meeting he told them the us will not come to their aid if Russia attacked, so that’s what it was.