He saw Vladimir Putin as a threat to peace. He insisted that radical Islam was spreading. He warned that Iraq was at risk without American troops to stabilize it.

And he was right.


As Mitt Romney’s supporters push the idea that the 2012 Republican nominee might run for president again, one of their core talking points is that Romney was a foreign policy prophet in the last campaign. His vindication on several scores, they argue, gives him a rationale to run again — and a leg up on his potential Republican rivals.

“The results of the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama foreign policy have been devastating,” Romney declared at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in San Diego on Friday. “The world is not safer.”

But, as Democrats point out, any losing candidate can cherry-pick a few issues that later broke his way. And Romney’s batting average was hardly perfect. Nor do bragging rights on a few specific issues necessarily translate to a popular foreign policy vision overall.

“Romney was right about the world getting more complicated,” said Mieke Eoyang, director of the National Security Project at the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way. “But a complicated world doesn’t mean a more simplistic response, which is what Romney was offering.”

Back in 2012, President Barack Obama was less charitable. “You haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy,” Obama told Romney in an October debate. “But every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.”

More than two years later, however, hindsight suggests that’s not true. Romney offered warnings on several major issues that now appear prescient.

On Iraq, for instance, Romney told an audience in November 2011 that America’s withdrawal from the country the prior year was “an enormous mistake,” one that “puts at risk many of the victories that were hard-won by the men and women who have served there.” Obama later scoffed at his rival’s claim that the U.S. should have maintained a long-term troop presence in Iraq. Two years later, Obama has ordered thousands of troops back there to prevent the country’s collapse.

Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his intervention in eastern Ukraine dominated much of last year for Obama. But as early as December 2011 Romney called Putin ”a real threat to the stability and peace of the world,” noting that the Russian president’s rhetoric had been growing sharper.

After Romney later called Russia America’s top “geopolitical foe,” blocking U.S. interests at the United Nations and elsewhere, Obama openly ridiculed him: “The 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” the president told Romney in an October 2012 debate. “You know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Romney also cast repeated doubt on Obama’s claim that, after Osama bin Laden’s killing, Al Qaeda was “on the run.” He warned about the spread of radical Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. “This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous threat … and we must have a comprehensive strategy to help reject this kind of extremism,” Romney said. That characterization of the Islamist threat seems more apt as extremist violence surges around the world.

Beyond the emotional satisfaction of saying “I told you so,” people close to Romney argue that the 2012 record positions the former Massachusetts governor well for his third straight White House bid.

“Romney was right about a lot of this stuff. But I don’t see it as vindication,” said a former senior Romney adviser. “I think it’s a demonstration that he has a view of the world that’s rooted in reality.”

Credibility on foreign policy could matter more in 2016 than in the last presidential contest. Amid terror threats and the beheadings of Americans in the Middle East, voter concern about national security has spiked sharply.

Romney may also find it harder to repeat his warnings that the U.S. economy is headed for a crisis. Romney set a target of unemployment under 6 percent by the end of his first term. The jobless rate currently stands at 5.6 percent.

Meanwhile, Democrats say Romney is more vulnerable than he appears. “I think he should run again. It would be great for the Democratic Party,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama White House national security spokesman.

Vietor insisted that claims of Romney’s vindication overlook Obama’s repeated caveats that Islamic terrorism was still a threat even after the death of bin Laden. And he argued that Obama’s response to Putin had helped to cripple Russia’s economy. “Putin turned out to be his own greatest enemy,” Vietor said.

Romney’s hard-line approach to Iran, said Eoyang, would have precluded the nuclear talks Obama began in late 2013, which have paused the progress of Iran’s nuclear program. “He was totally wrong on Iran,” Eoyang said, saying that putting greater pressure on Iran would “potentially force us into another military confrontation.”

And Democrats scoffed at the contention of an unnamed Romney adviser quoted in the Boston Globe last week, who said that “there wouldn’t be an ISIS at all” if Romney were president.

One former adviser declined to repeat that assertion, saying “you can’t run the counterfactual in history,” while adding that Romney would have taken stronger action to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels — perhaps blunting the rise of radical Islamists in that country.

Romney can’t perfectly recreate his campaign against Obama, of course. But one Romney adviser, foreshadowing a likely Republican line of attack for 2016, said that’s not a problem. “Will you be running against Obama? Nope. You’ll be running against the architect of his foreign policy” — namely, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Democrats claim to be unfazed by such cocky talk. “Things aren’t perfect,” said Vietor, who has worked on behalf of Clinton since leaving the White House. “But by no means do I think Mitt was borne out to be the next Henry Kissinger.”