Larison on Romney's Foreign Policy Delusions

Among too many fantasies to catalog here, the bizarrely-resurgent Mitt Romney and his supporters believe his foreign policy "vision" has been "vindicated" by world events. Who better to swing at this low-hanging fruit than Daniel Larison over at the American Conservative? I urge you to read Larison regularly, especially since the neocon war hawks will be dominating the media conversation as the Republican primary heats up. (It will be nauseating, but at least we'll have the fun of watching Rand Paul jab and snark away at the pretensions of the confrontation-is-always-right crowd.)

At any rate, here's Larison. (Read the full post here.)

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the delusions behind a new Romney campaign is that he and his supporters think foreign policy is one of his strengths, and that’s just silly. However, I didn’t understand just how delusional they were until I read this:

If Romney were president, one longtime adviser said, “There wouldn’t be an ISIS at all, and Putin would know his place in life [bold Larison's]. Domestically, things would be in better shape.”

It would be one thing for Romney backers to think that U.S. policies would be better than they are if he were president, but it is absurd to believe that other regimes and groups around the world would behave in a dramatically different fashion or would not exist under a different administration. By what magical powers of resolve would Romney have eliminated ISIS? How exactly would he have made Putin to “know his place”? Presumably this adviser thinks this would happen because Romney’s policies would convey “strength” rather than “weakness,” but that just underscores that this adviser – like Romney – doesn’t have a clue how this would happen. These are nonsensical claims, but then that is typical for Romney and his advisers.