This week Mitt Romney’s son Matt traveled to Moscow for business and, reports say, allayed any concerns the Russian government had about his father’s harsh stance on Russia. When it comes to Russia, Mitt Romney has been brash, at one point labeling Russia “without question our number one geopolitical foe” and “a geopolitical adversary.” He’s also repeatedly lashed out at President Obama for allegedly being weak on Russia. But according to a New York Times report, Matt Romney is trying to convince Russia that the tough talk is just talk:

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

Romney’s statements have drawn negative feedback from Republicans like Sen. Richard Luger, who called Romney’s statements on Russia “discredited objections.” Others, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell have gone even further, urging Romney to develop more nuance on the issue. In May, Powell said:

“I think he really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements. I think he really needs to think carefully about these statements because they’re now on the wall for people to see. … Let’s not go creating enemies where none yet exist. Does this mean that we should trust Putin or Medvedev? No. Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.”

Russia experts were dismayed at Romney’s harsh stance. Steve Pifer, the Brookings Institution’s Arms Control Initiative director, told the New York Times in May that Romney’s arguments “left people scratching their heads.” Romney’s stance even “set off disagreements among some of his foreign policy advisers” according to the New York Times and signaled to some of his inner circle his view of “foreign policy conflicts as zero-sum negotiations.” One foreign policy adviser told the Daily Beast that “the campaign should have walked it back and moved on.”

Some Russian officials weren’t amused by Romney’s words. In July, a top international affairs official said of Romney’s words: “If he is serious about this, I’m afraid he may choose the neocon-type people…In the first year of his presidency, we may have a full-scale crisis.” Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current prime minister, commented too: “My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time. It is 2012, not the mid-1970s.” But Vladimir Putin, Russia’s current president, dismissed Romney’s statements as “pre-election rhetoric.”

Mitt Romney has been attacking President Obama for a comment he made to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev that he’d be more “flexible” on issues like missile defense after this year’s presidential election. Romney called the comments “very, very troubling,” because Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” While some of Obama’s political opponents are piling on, House Speaker John Boehner tried to rein in the attacks. “While the president is overseas I think it’s appropriate that people not be critical of him or our country,” he said.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who attacked then-senator Obama for political gain while he was abroad during the 2008 presidential campaign — is choosing to ignore the Republican House Speaker on national security grounds. “I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner,” McCain said on Fox News this morning, because, he said, “this is a very serious issue.” And when asked if he thinks, as Romney does, that Russia is America’s “number one foe,” the Arizona senator wouldn’t go that far: “I think in many respects”:

MCCAIN: I understand John Boehner’s point and I respect that but this is a very serious issue. No matter where the president is, if he makes a statement that I think could endanger the United States national security interests, I have to respond no matter where the president of the United States is. [...] All I can say is I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner. [...]

KILMEADE: Do you think they [Russia] are our geopolitical foe?

MCCAIN: I think in many respects, look at what they’re doing in Syria right now, they’re supplying arms and equipment to Bashar Assad while he slaughters and massacres his own people. Look at — they continue to prop up North Korea…and obviously now there is a president for life.

Watch the clip:

This isn’t the first time McCain has differed with Romney on a foreign policy issue. The former Massachusetts governor said that under no condition should the United States negotiate with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan. However, McCain recently disagreed. “I think it’s important to have talks wherever you can,” he said.

Medvedev also criticized Romney yesterday. “I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” the Russian president said, adding, “My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time. It is 2012, not the mid-1970s.”

McCain saw Medvedev’s comment as meaning that Russia is in the tank for Obama. “They obviously want president Obama reelected, that’s pretty clear,” McCain told the Hill newspaper.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is trying to make hay about a comment President Obama made to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week that he needs some “space” on the missile defense issue until after the election this year. Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe,” Romney said, calling Obama’s comment “very, very troubling.”

Politico reports that Medvedev shot back at Romney today at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea:

“I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” Medvedev said, through a translator, at the nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea. [...]

“My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time,” Medvedev said Tuesday. “It is 2012, not the mid-1970s. No matter what party a candidate represents, he has to take the current state of affairs into account.”

Obama also adressed the issue today, saying that what he told Medvedev wasn’t anything new. “I think everybody understands — if they don’t, they haven’t been listening to my speeches — that I want to reduce nuclear stockpiles,” Obama said, adding, “And one of the barriers to doing that is building trust and cooperation around missile defense issues. And so this is not a matter of hiding the ball.”

Nevertheless, it seems Romney — who could use a distraction from his own issues — isn’t going to let the matter die. “I don’t think he can recover from it, to tell you the truth,” he said on a radio show yesterday.

President Obama has fallen under attack from the Republican National Committee and the GOP presidential candidates after a live microphone picked up a private conversation in which he asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” and “patience” on the missile defense issue until after November’s election.

Today, Obama hit back at his critics. “I think everybody understands — if they don’t, they haven’t been listening to my speeches — that I want to reduce nuclear stockpiles,” Obama said today. “And one of the barriers to doing that is building trust and cooperation around missile defense issues. And so this is not a matter of hiding the ball,” said Obama, in remarks delivered on the final day of the nuclear security summit in South Korea.

Obama took on his critics’ charges that his comments to Medvedev showed weakness on nuclear security and pointed to the political realities of the campaign season as severely limiting his ability to move forward on major policy initiatives, telling reporters:

[T]he only way I get this stuff done is if I’m consulting with the Pentagon, with Congress, if I’ve got bipartisan support, and frankly, the current environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations.

I think the stories you guys have been writing over the last 24 hours [about the open mic incident] is pretty good evidence of that.

Yet the GOP will try to make something out of Obama’s rather innocuous comments. Hours after Obama’s exchange with Medvedev, the Republican National Committee produced a new video asking “what else is on Obama’s agenda after the election that he isn’t telling you?” and Mitt Romney said of Obama and his open mic comments, “I don’t think he can recover from it, to tell you the truth.”

A year ago, there was a rising fear that the US and Russia were on the verge of a new Cold War. Today the relationship seems to have gone 180. The US and Russia are now on the verge of signing a new nuclear disarmament agreement and look increasingly in sync on Iran. Yesterday, Obama met directly with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore where both leaders said negotiations on a new START agreement were close to completion. Medvedev also expressed his displeasure with Iran, giving another indication that Russia may back Obama should the Iranians reject the nuclear deal on the table. Following the meeting and Medvedev pronouncements, Obama concluded that “the reset button has worked.”

The turnaround in US-Russian relations is a huge foreign policy accomplishment for President. In the final years of the Bush administration US-Russian relations deteriorated to the point where many in the Bush administration were advocating an outwardly confrontational approach. This only escalated further following the Russia-Georgia war in August of 2008, as John McCain actively pushed for escalating the hostility. However, sensible foreign policy experts from both parties rejected this dangerous approach, arguing that the US needed to prevent relations from deteriorating further and should seek to establish a more grounded business-like relationship with the Russian. In September of last year, five former Secretaries of State all emphasized this point. Henry Kissinger, hardly a liberal softy, insisted:

We have a number of common issues that we have to settle, if possible, with Russia. We need Russia for a solution of the Iranian problem. We may need Russia if Pakistan evolves in some of the directions that it might. And it is helpful to cooperate with Russia not just on the [nuclear] question, but on the issues of energy.

James Baker added:

Look at it [Russia] in a strategic context and not tactically…we have some big-picture issues that we need to be conscious of when we think about our future with Russia, and we ought to cooperate with them where we can, where they fit, but we ought to also be willing to confront them where our vital interests are involved.

This past year has seen the Obama administration successfully implement this approach. Unlike President Bush, Obama has kept the relationship in the right context, avoiding naïve pronouncements of a new beautiful friendship (as Bush did in 2001 when he looked in Putin’s soul). Instead, the relationship is now about getting stuff done on issues of key strategic importance like nuclear proliferation, Iran, and Afghanistan. This level-headed policy has resulted in major progress in reducing the dangers of nuclear proliferation, as well as potentially removed one of the biggest obstacles to a cohesive international response on Iran. There is still a long way to go on all these issues, but the turn around in relations is clear.

Yet neoconservatives today seem to see improved relations with Russia and the fact that a new Cold War has not materialized as not a cause for rejoicing, but one for panic. What does it say about a political movement that sees improved relations as a form of bad news?