Per Dan’s post below, I don’t understand why Russia is our number-one enemy, either today or ten years from now. Neither, it seems, do Americans, who have only noticed Russia’s phantom menace at one period in the past several years–immediately after the invasion of Georgia in 2008. Below, polling data from the Pew Research Center on the question of which country represents the greatest danger to the United States; these are not all the answers, but they are the biggest ones. Russia is the orange line. Note that these are free-response questions, which explains Iraq’s presence on the list and also (in the full version) why “South Korea” occasionally makes the list.
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| For Mitt, the Red coats are still coming. |
South Korea makes the list? Ah, the well informed American public. As for Russia, I suspect the calculus is this. Romney needs a security boogieman to put himself in the mold of Republican-strong-on-security. Iraq is passe, as is Afghanistan soon. He for whatever reason doesn’t want to ‘other’ China. Russia is the last (only?) easy target…relatively unimportant economic ties with the US, a way to keep a hand in Europe, not much happening, and far away. So he wouldn’t actually have to do anything about Russia if he was elected unlike a list of other possible securitization targets…