Mitt Romney swipes at Trump and Obama in statement condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine: 'The '80s called' and we didn't answer'

• Romney blamed both Obama and Trump for enabling the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• He called out the "shortsightedness" of America First, Trump's foreign policy doctrine.

Following news that Russia had launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sen. Mitt Romney issued a statement that blamed the policies of both former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama for enabling the crisis.

"Putin's Ukraine invasion is the first time in 80 years that a great power has moved to conquer a sovereign nation. It is without justification, without provocation and without honor," the Utah Republican said in a statement.

Romney went on to say that the US had only put forth a "tepid response" to previous Russian invasions, such as the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the 2014 invasion of Crimea, while criticizing both Obama and Trump's foreign policies.

"Putin's impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided 'reset,' and the shortsightedness of 'America First,'" he said, before adding: "The '80s called' and we didn't answer."

Romney's invocation of the 1980s is a reference to a now-infamous moment at an October 2012 presidential debate when Obama assailed Romney over his belief that Russia posed the most significant geopolitical threat to the United States.

"I'm glad that you recognize that al-Qaeda's a threat, because a few months ago, when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al-Qaeda, you said Russia," Obama said at the time. "And the 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War has been over for 20 years."

Obama was referring to Romney's comments during a March 2012 interview with CNN during which he said Russia was "without question, our number one geopolitical foe."

That exchange took place before the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, and has come to be seen as prescient by some.

"The peril of again looking away from Putin's tyranny falls not just on the people of the nations he has violated, it falls on America as well. History shows that a tyrant's appetite for conquest is never satiated," Romney continued in his statement on Wednesday night. "America and our allies must answer the call to protect freedom by subjecting Putin and Russia to the harshest economic penalties, by expelling them from global institutions, and by committing ourselves to the expansion and modernization of our national defense."

Romney's criticism of Trump's "America First" foreign policy — characterized generally by a lessened commitment to multilateralism and international institutions — is not new.

"The world needs American leadership, and it is in America's interest to provide it," Romney wrote in a 2019 Washington Post op-ed criticizing Trump. "A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace."