Mitt Romney and Vladimir Putin share a hankering for the past. The Republican candidate for the White House says Russia remains America’s principal geopolitical foe. This flatters a Russian president who wants to sustain the hollow pretence that the international order is still shaped by superpower rivalry between Moscow and Washington.
If Mr Romney wins the presidency he will discover soon enough that the world is not quite as he described it on his recent visit to Europe and Israel. The unipolar moment, if it ever existed, has passed. George W. Bush discovered that during his second term when he swapped wars for diplomacy.
Mr Putin’s regime is unpleasant and destructive – mostly towards its own people. It has a wholly negative approach to global order. But for the US the relationship with China is the consequential one. The facts of geopolitical life, as Barack Obama has understood, demand a Pacific president.