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DEL.ICIO.USNunn 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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Comments
By Dave
August 18, 2008 8:44 PM | Link to this
Sam Nunn is not only a foreign affairs expert, he is THE expert when it comes to Russia and Russian policy. At this point in time, there is no better choice to complement Obama and counter McCain than Sam Nunn.
And Nunn was against BOTH wars in Iraq, to boot.
Sam Nunn would give Obama the election, whether the far left likes it or not.
By Mike
August 18, 2008 8:50 PM | Link to this
Dave, you hit the nail on the head!
By Brad
August 18, 2008 10:00 PM | Link to this
Nunn is a great American but he is not even on the long list of veep candidates. Are you guys this desperate for a story?
While we are at it….Dave, Can you name an election that has been won by a VP candidate? How about a state? You folks should learn to think on your own.
By Mike
August 18, 2008 10:23 PM | Link to this
I’m Canadian citizen living in New York. I’m not sure if you folks noticed, but while Georgia was burning, Presidents and senior government officials from arround the world doing everything possible to ensure that the war woud not escalate. What did Senator Obama do ? he took a vacation to Hawaii. Three days out he had a press conference in which he agreed with the rest of the world that “Russia was wrong to invade Georgia”. Frankly, even his home nework CNN gave him an F minus for his reaction to that famous 3:00 a.m. call. Do you folks really think he is presidential material ? OH PLEAAASE !
By Dave
August 18, 2008 10:23 PM | Link to this
Brad, at least we agree that Nunn is a great American. However, my thoughts on him are my own. I met him in 1980 as a Cub Scout, and granted, I didn’t know much about him at that age, but as I grew older I followed his career and have been keeping up with his doings since he’s been out of office as well. I do think having him on Obama’s ticket would put many swing voters at ease. America could really use his wise, moderate leadership.
By Mike
August 18, 2008 10:24 PM | Link to this
I’m Canadian citizen living in New York. I’m not sure if you folks noticed, but while Georgia was burning, Presidents and senior government officials from arround the world doing everything possible to ensure that the war woud not escalate. What did Senator Obama do ? he took a vacation to Hawaii. Three days out he had a press conference in which he agreed with the rest of the world that “Russia was wrong to invade Georgia”. Frankly, even his home nework CNN gave him an F minus for his reaction to that famous 3:00 a.m. call. Do you folks really think he is presidential material ? OH PLEAAASE !
By The Snark
August 19, 2008 10:30 AM | Link to this
Mike:
Last time I checked, people running for the Presidency lack the power to take action to affect international diplomacy. What is it exactly that you think Sen. Obama should have done? Give a big speech? If he had, you would have critized him for interfering with foreign policy and playing politics with international affairs of state.
When foreign controversies flare, the legislative branch is supposed to yield to the executive, at least in public. Give Sen. Obama some credit for respecting our institutions, and not critizing the President while the guns are still firing over there.
By Jim R.
August 19, 2008 4:48 PM | Link to this
Joe Biden will do nothing to bolster Obama outside of Delaware.
By Jim R.
August 19, 2008 5:04 PM | Link to this
Joe Biden will do nothing to bolster Obama outside of Delaware.
By Burp Orange
August 19, 2008 5:28 PM | Link to this
GW was clearing brush when a hurricane was heading for Norleans
By rebekah Stewart
August 20, 2008 12:26 PM | Link to this
I cannot think of any other human being on the planet more qualified than Sam Nunn to help President Obama develop foreign and military policy. Is there any member of Congress more highly regarded on both sides of the aisle? Is there anyone who is better equipped to deal with Russia? Is there anyone held in any higher esteem internationally than SAM NUNN? Who?
By rebekah Stewart
August 20, 2008 1:57 PM | Link to this
There is no other human on the planet more qualified to assist President Obama on military and foreign policy issues than SAM NUNN. Who is more respected internationally ? Who is better equipped to deal with Russia and nuclear issues? Who is more highly regarded on both sides of the aisle? Who? Biden isn’t qualified to carry his portfolio.