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Monday, August 18, 2008
Nunn on the Russian-Georgian conflict — and, yes, some vice presidential talk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In an interview Monday, former Georgia senator Sam Nunn said Russia should immediately exit Georgia as promised.
But Nunn, who is advising Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the crisis, also warned that the granting of NATO membership to either Georgia or Ukraine would commit the West to military action that neither the United States nor Europe is prepared to take.
Nunn also said he’d like to see President Bush offer both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates a briefing on the confrontation and its implications.
The former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has often been mentioned as a possible running mate for Obama. But with one week before the start of the Democratic National Convention, an Obama-Nunn ticket seems less and less likely.
Nunn said the Obama campaign hasn’t asked for any the financial documents that are usually used to assess the backgrounds of potential nominees for vice president.
Below is a near-complete transcript of the 20-minute interview. By necessity, a shorter version is headed for tomorrow’s print version of the AJC. But the details are important:
What’s the largest interpretation we should give the Russian invasion of Georgia?
Number one, I think the stakes are very large, both for the United States and for Russia, and of course for Georgia and South Ossetia. Russia has brought back historical memories of the horrors of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Those memories as well as the actions taken by Russia cause fear in all of Russia’s neighbors.
Only Russia can reduce those fears by moving out of Georgia, quickly, keeping their word of a cease fire and withdrawal, and allowing some type of international peacekeeping force to go into what I call the enclaves, the regions that were autonomous after 1991 but part of Georgia, legally - South Ossetia and Abkhazia
So Russia’s got to step up to the plate if they want to preserve their place in the international community. This is a lose-lose-lose situation for everybody. Obviously Georgia has suffered. The South Ossetians - depending on who you believe - the Russians say, and this really needs checking out, that there are some 1,500 or 1,600 South Ossetians who were killed before the Russians came in, by the Georgians. The Georgians would deny that. I don’t know where the truth is on that.
Wherever it is, Russia used disproportionate force and overreacted. As I see it right now, there’s going to be serious - and it could be permanent - damage done to U.S., NATO and Russia relations, as well as their neighbors, unless wise leadership prevails in Russia, Europe and the United States.
The Russians, for instance - there are several parts of Russia that would like to be independent still. Obviously Chechnya. And if they take the view that these countries are going to be basically independent - these enclaves, not countries - they’re setting a precedent. They’re relying on the Kosovo precedent, and the way the West handled that.
But they better think through what they’re doing because they’ve got some other regions within Russia at stake here. So the only way out of this is for Russia to move out of Georgia proper and have international peacekeepers come into South Ossetia and Abkhazia
I think it’s important for Russia to understand that the historical context cannot be dismissed here. It’s not simply what happened and who started it and so forth. This has to be overlaid into the historical context and the aggressions of the past. So they’ve got some rethinking to do.
I think NATO, as I view it, and clearly the United States, needs to pause, look and listen before we rush into making Georgia and Ukraine part of NATO. If we’re going to do that, we have to understand that this is a military commitment. And we have to back it up militarily.
Right now, we’re not doing well in Afghanistan. Our NATO allies seem to be reluctant to put in more forces. NATO’s got a lot of credibility at stake in Afghanistan. And the defense spending by most of our European allies is way down. And if you look at the map, you can see pretty quickly that defending Georgia will require enormous expenditures unless we’re going to go back to a Berlin sort of situation, where we threaten to use nuclear weapons in response to conventional progression by the Soviet Union. That’s what we did then. We were very lucky to avoid Armageddon all those years.
So we need to understand that when you make military commitments, you’ve got to back it up with military capability. And right now, NATO is in danger of turning itself into a political organization rather than an effective military organization, and making political commitments which cannot be backed up with current forces.
That’s extremely dangerous, particularly when you project the possibility of a resurgent Russia with $100 [a barrel] oil. And you add into that a Europe that is dependent on Russia for oil and natural gas…..
NATO has to think through, how do we expect Russia to react when they see themselves surrounded by a military alliance which they’re not part of? And from the Russian point of view, how do they expect their neighbors to react - how do they expect them to do anything other than to want to be in NATO - if they take this kind of aggressive military action?
Large countries have acute obligations. Small countries can afford to be somewhat more irresponsible. But large countries have a real obligation. And Russia has a real obligation if it wants to be part of the international community.
What do you expect to come out of Tuesday’s meeting of NATO?
I don’t know. I just hope they consider the military implications of what they’re doing. If NATO proceeds as if Russia is always going to be weak, and we can make political commitments without backing it up, without greatly increased military capabilities, vis a vis Georgia and Ukraine, we’re basically assuming that Russia’s going to continue to be weak militarily.
A wounded bear is going to defend itself. I think Russia’s made a profound mistake, and they’ve got to correct it. [But] we have a real reason to avoid compounding the problem.
Short of nuclear weapons, is there any chance of military action?
Secretary Gates has made it clear that that’s not on the table….The secretary of defense was also right in promoting to President Bush the humanitarian relief. I think Gates has got it about right. I’m glad he’s there, because I think he understands the stakes involved on both sides.
How does this affect the U.S. aim to deploy missile defense systems in Eastern Europe?
For us to deploy a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland - the system itself is not yet mature, and the Iranian threat is not yet mature. So we’ve got some time. Russia offered their territory, and it seems to me we ought to be working with Russia on missile defense. This incursion into Georgia makes that extremely difficult - it certainly would postpone it. I think that there are substantive questions that should be raised about what we’re doing about missile defense. This was a [Donald] Rumsfeld move, and has all sorts of implications of playing Old Europe versus New Europe.
Just in the last few days, there was an article in the paper that said we had given Poland military assurances beyond the NATO commitments. That raises real questions for other NATO members. If one member has NATO plus further military assurances by the U.S., what does that say to the other NATO commitments? I don’t understand that one, and Congress needs to ask some real questions on this, because - if it’s accurate - we are basically committing to military action in instances that are rather unclear at this point.
My point is that Russia and the U.S. are missing a fundamental opportunity and creating the possibility of real future conflict. Not immediate, but future conflict. I think the dangers we are creating for our children and grandchildren may not be apparent now, but they’re being laid. Russia has to take the brunt of the blame on the Georgia situation, but on missile defense, we’ve got time to slow it down and see if we can convert what is a real possibility of confrontation into cooperation and changes in the strategic nuclear relationship.
Last weekend, President, Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia seemed to imply that the United States has not come through with commitments it had made to Georgia. Have we been writing checks that we can’t cash?
I can’t answer that question. The administration denies that. There’s been a big misreading here. Whether that means the leader of Georgia made some profound mistakes - or whether we unintentionally misled him, or whether some people off-line we’re giving him assurances that were not official, I don’t know.
But whatever it was, there were some profound misjudgments and miscommunications or misunderstandings that had huge implications for Georgia. And I think that we need to learn a lesson from that. Countries that rely on the West for military intervention when Russia takes aggressive military action - if we don’t have the capability to back that up, we have to make sure they don’t have that understanding. I’m not saying whether the administration misread him, because I don’t know. He may have just made great mistakes in judgment….
Also we have to take into account that we’re in two wars. We have one in Afghanistan, where we’re not doing well. We have one in Iraq, where we’re doing better. The Joint Chiefs [of Staff] have been telling us now for the last two years that we were stretched too thin. And they’ve been saying they’ve been worried about other contingencies coming up in the world, and we haven’t listened very much - our government hasn’t.
When militarily you’re stretched out in two wars, people who want to take aggressive action - [and] are not necessarily your friends around the globe - see opportunities. And it’s not going to be limited to the recent Russia-Georgia move….
How should the Russia-Georgia conflict be treated in the presidential campaign?
I think we can have only one president in a period like this. This is a period of great crisis. I would like to see President Bush brief both candidates with his top security people. I’d like to see the candidates ask for a briefing, from the White House, from the president, the secretary of state and secretary of defense. I’d like to see a united front at home. We’ve got time to sort out later how many mistakes were made and what they were, but right now, we’ve got to pull together.
There’s a lot at stake here. I think we’ve also got to have our allies. We’ve also got to closely coordinate with our allies on this. And we’ve got to avoid actions that are hard to correct later. The temptation here - we’ve done this repeatedly in the last several years - is to say, well, we don’t like what you’ve done, we condemn it, therefore we’re not going to talk. We’re going to break off communication. This is a time we need to be talking more. We need to have a relationship with Russia where the secretary of state can pick up the phone and get an honest answer, and vice versa. I think there’s been too much political sparring. I’m not interested in who the best candidate is to lead us in a new Cold War. I think the American people’s stake here is to try to avoid a new Cold War - or certainly a new hot one.
Anything new on the vice presidential front?
The answer to that is no. All I know is what I read in the newspapers.
Has the Obama campaign asked you to submit documents for a background check?
The only person who’s asking about my assets, my liabilities, the way I’m spending my money, where that money is coming from, primarily, is my wife. And there’s nothing I can do about that.
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Ralph Reed on a close race, on vice presidential choices, and on McCain’s adopted daughter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republican presidential candidate John McCain is only a few hours away from his fund-raiser in downtown Atlanta.
Democrats have made much fuss over Ralph Reed’s participation in raising money for the event, and will continue to do so with a press conference this afternoon.
But Reed is playing it relatively low-key. At noon, he was speaking at a gathering of the Atlanta Rotary Club, paired with AJC editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker.
Tucker has her own space elsewhere on this web site, and it would be presumptuous for the Insider to interpret her to the rest of the world.
As for Reed, except for one area, the GOP strategist kept himself well in the mainstream of punditry, listing — of course — to the Republican side:
“Everything points to a close election. At least as close as ’04, maybe — I’m sorry to say — as close as 2000,” Reed said.
“What you’re looking at is a jump-ball election. Barack Obama in the last 30 days has aired 10,000 television ads in the state of Florida, at a cost of $6.5 million. It’s 18 percent of his entire national media buy in the last 30 days. There’s two polls out in the last week which show four and five points, respectively. That is a candidate that is not closing the sale.”
On McCain’s vice presidential possibilities:
“I like Romney because of the economic and business background. [Gov. Tim] Pawlenty is a very attractive guy out of Minnesota. I like [Louisiana Gov.] Bobby Jindal. I think he’s got more places to go than Obama. But I’ll warn you. You’re probably going to be surprised. A lot of the time, the lists are deliberately out there to throw people off the real scent.”
But here’s what will have Ralph Reed watchers talking:
”Just speaking as a strategist, not as a partisan, if I were part of McCain’s campaign team, the thing that I would be most excited about what happened Saturday night at Saddleback Church was McCain filling in the personal details.
“The story about having to decide not to violate the code of honor at the Hanoi Hilton and leave out of turn….
“His story about Cindy coming home with the child they adopted from Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh.
“How many people have had their spouse visiting Bangladesh, and they’re presented with a child — they’re told that it’s going to die unless somebody takes it home. And she literally meets her husband at the airport and says, ‘Meet your new daughter.’ And they have raised that daughter as their own.”
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Turn the lights out on John Edwards, says Roy Barnes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My AJC colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin caught up with former Gov. Roy Barnes today. Barnes was Edwards’ preeminent supporter in Georgia during the primary season. He led the fund-raising push among Georgia attorneys, and turned out at several rallies for the man.
But Barnes now had this to say about Edwards’ behavior:
“I’m very disappointed. I don’t think there’s any other way that I can express it. I feel sorrow for him, and for all the supporters. I particularly feel sorry for Elizabeth.
“I’m very surprised. I never saw any such conduct when I was with him. I hope it’s an aberration that he can seek forgiveness for. I think he’s pretty much destroyed any political career he might have had.”
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A last pitch for Nunn as Obama’s running mate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With a week to go before the Democratic National Convention, speculation over Barack Obama’s choice for a running mate is about to reach a fever pitch.
On ABC’s “This Week,” the conventional wisdom on the Sunday program pointed to Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. But conservative columnist George Will remains Sam Nunn’s biggest fan, despite the former Georgia senator’s problems among gay Democrats:
George Will: Surely Obama can get him well on those issues. And I don’t know — I haven’t seen the polling — but I have a feeling that this would almost certainly put Georgia in play. It would certainly make McCain fight for Georgia.
Nunn is still my choice. There’s no bigger issue in the world than loose nuclear material. And no one knows more about it than Sam Nunn.
E.J. Dionne: But if you look at the ratings, Nunn is Lieberman in reverse. While he is a Democrat, he had a very conservative voting record. I think there would be resistance in certain parts of the party to Nunn.
Don’t look for Nunn to say much this week — and not necessarily because vice-presidential possibilities are expected to keep their mouths shut.
The Russian invasion of Georgia has placed U.S. relations with Russia in jeopardy. Among the threatened programs is the on-going effort by Nunn and U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) to defuse the nuclear arsenal of the old Soviet Union.
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Bob Barr on a world full of idiots, and a wounding by Sean Hannity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Washington Post has a Style section piece this morning on Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman and Libertarian candidate for president.
The article leads on a few Barr aphorisms. Among them:
— “No matter how much power government has, it never has enough.”
— “The world is full of idiots.”
—“The most difficult thing about politics is dealing with people with really bad breath.”
— “Never run a 100-yard dash in a 90-yard room.”
The piece also reveals that the unsmiling Barr was wounded by an April interview in which he was raked over the coals by Fox News’ Sean Hannity:
“He was being downright unpleasant, as I recall,” he says, his voice rising a little. “There’s never an excuse to not be pleasant and civil.”
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