Later today, Vice President Biden is expected in a speech to open up an attack on Mitt Romney’s foreign policy saying that a President Romney will take America back to the George W. Bush era. “Gov. Romney is counting on our collective amnesia,” Biden said according to excerpts already released.
The Romney campaign organized a conference call today with three of Romney’s foreign policy advisers to push back. During the call, Romney adviser Ambassador Pierre Prosper attacked President Obama for dealing with Russia, albeit using geographical terms from the Cold War era:
PROSPER: The United States has become a spectator on issues of national security. We’ve also been embarrassed by North Korea where again it continues to be a conciliatory leaning forward approach and yet the North Koreans will launch a missile surprising the United States by violating their agreement.
You know Russia is another example where we give and Russia gets and we get nothing in return. The United States abandoned its missile defense sites in Poland and Czechoslovakia, yet Russia does nothing but obstruct us, or efforts in Iran and Syria.
Listen to the clip from the conference call:
Aside from the fact that “Czechoslovakia” broke up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia nearly 20 years ago, the Obama administration never “abandoned” missile defense sites because they were never there to begin with. Back in 2009, Obama decided to replace plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and, as one expert noted at the time, “replac[e] it with a more technologically-promising” one.
And as for getting nothing from Russia, the Obama administration spearheaded an effort to apply tougher sanctions on Iran in 2010 and in June of that year, Russia voted for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, which imposed a fourth round of tough sanctions on Iran. Last year, a U.N. panel said those sanctions “are constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.”