Mark Adomanis finds Romney’s Russia policy to be incoherent:

However Romney’s mix-and-match approach, a dollop of realism here, a large dose of neoconservatism there, a dash of accommodation here and a big helping of confrontation there, will not be a sober-minded attempt to appeal to everyone, but will instead be a disjointed mess that will simultaneously alienate and antagonize almost everyone in the region. While the foreign policy of any American president will never be perfectly within the bounds of a single school of thought, Romney’s entire Russia policy is a case study in avoiding hard choices.

Adomanis is right that this is part of an “anything but Obama” foreign policy that is rejecting whatever Obama has done just because Obama was the one doing it, but another common thread throughout Romney’s proposed policies toward Russia and the former Soviet republics is the apparent desire to antagonize and provoke Russia whenever possible. Strengthening ties with states in Central Asia may be Realpolitik 101, but it’s clear that Romney values closer ties with Central Asian states not for anything these relationships might provide to the U.S., but instead wants to do this mainly to advance his goals of seeking “to discourage aggressive or expansionist behavior on the part of Russia and encourage democratic political and economic reform.” The bit about Russian “aggressive or expansionist behavior” is rich, coming as it does in a policy statement that emphasizes the need for the U.S. to assert its influence even more in the countries that border Russia, but it’s all of a piece with an outdated view that makes it the business of the United States to limit Russian influence at every turn.

As Adomanis has observed before, Romney’s Russia policy is also quite thin. Despite his early, error-ridden objections to New START, including the nonsensical complaint that a strategic arms reduction treaty didn’t include reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, there is no hint of any interest in pursuing arms control negotiations on this or any other subject. There is not even a formulaic nod to the importance of securing nuclear materials. Romney takes no position for or against repealing Jackson-Vanik, he doesn’t indicate whether he is for or against the Magnitsky Act, and we don’t know if he favors linking passage of the latter to repeal of the former. We can guess what his positions will be, but only because we can be reasonably sure that he will take the opposite position from the one the administration holds.