Biden in 2012: Romney ‘Stuck in Cold War Mentality’ on Russia

President Joe Biden is blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for everything going wrong with his presidency, from the Ukraine war to high gas prices, but he sang a different tune in 2012, when he mocked Mitt Romney’s “Cold War mentality.”

Romney criticized then-President Obama and Vice President Biden for a soft approach to Russia, such as pushing a “reset” button, giving up on missile defense agreements with allies, and offering nuclear concessions in the New START treaty.

In March 2012, Obama was infamously caught on a hot mic telling then-President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” to compromise on missile defense after he was re-elected, implying he should convey the message to Putin.

In a subsequent interview with CNN, Romney said: “Russia … is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They — they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors. The… idea that [Obama] has some more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling, indeed.”
The Obama campaign pounced on Romney’s statement and used it to claim he did not understand foreign policy. Biden drove the attack in an interview on April Fool’s Day on CBS News’ Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:

So — and the second thing is, Governor Romney’s answer I thought was incredibly revealing. He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on. Russia is still our major adversary. I don’t know where he has been. I mean, we have disagreements with Russia, but they’re united with us on Iran. The only way we’re getting one of only two ways we’re getting material into Afghanistan to our troops is through Russia. They’re working closely with us. They have just said to Europe, if there is an oil shutdown in any way in the Gulf, they’ll consider increasing oil supplies to Europe. That’s not– this is not 1956.

…

I mean, he just seems to be uninformed, or stuck in a Cold War mentality. So, I think what the– the exchange did, it exposes how little the Governor knows about foreign policy.

Obama would later mock Romney in the third presidential debate (coincidentally, moderated by Schieffer):

Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaida’s a threat because a few months ago when you were asked, what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia — not al-Qaida, you said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

Obama continued offering Russia concessions, allowing Russia to move into Syria (ostensibly to supervise the regime’s destruction of chemical weapons), and proposing new arms reductions, even as he overlooked years of Russian cheating on past nuclear deals.

But b 2014, Russia had invaded Crimea, shocking the Obama White House and sending the Democratic Party into a frenzy over the threat posed by Putin — a hysteria that exploded after Hillary Clinton created the conspiracy theory that blamed Russia for stealing the 2016 presidential election and supposedly colluding with Donald Trump.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.