NYT: Mitt Romney wants ‘good relations’ with Putin, son told Kremlin ally

NYT: Mitt Romney wants ‘good relations’ with Putin, son told Kremlin ally

by Max Fisher (NYT) at WP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/02/nyt-mitt-romney-wants-good-relations-with-putin-son-told-kremlin-ally/

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Matt Romney, whose father Mitt has called Russia the “number one geopolitical foe” of the United States during his presidential campaign, reportedly offered the Kremlin reassuring messages during a business trip to Moscow, the New York Times’ Peter Baker reports.

But while in Moscow, [Matt] Romney told a Russian known to be able to deliver messages to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that despite the campaign rhetoric, his father wants good relations if he becomes president, according to a person informed about the conversation.

Mitt Romney has framed Putin’s Russia in confrontational terms, emphasizing the country as a “foe” in part to criticize the Obama administration’s “reset” with Moscow. Assuming that Baker’s source is correct that Romney’s son is downplaying that rhetoric, and assuming that Matt Romney is correct about how his father would govern, it would seem to portray the presidential candidate’s anti-Russian stance as more about campaign politics than about the foreign policy of a hypothetical Romney administration. In other words, it suggests that Romney would follow a Russia policy a bit more like Obama’s.

Regardless of whatever political embarrassment this might or might not cause Romney’s campaign, it seems less significant in pure foreign policy terms. After all, as many observers pointed out after the third presidential debate, Romney articulated a foreign policy — both in specifics and in worldview — not so different from President Obama’s. And it’s not unusual for candidates to stress their “tough” diplomacy during a campaign but show more flexibility and cooperation once in office.

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