If you want to know why Barack Obama considers Sam Nunn one of the wise people he turns to for advice, read here his insightful answer to a question posed yesterday by the Atlanta Journal/Constitution about Russia’s invasion of the Republic of Georgia:
What’s the largest interpretation we should give the Russian invasion of Georgia?
Nunn: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.
The rest of the interview can be found on the AJC blog: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/shared-blogs/ajc/politicalinsider/entries/2008/08/18/nunn_on_the_russiangeorgian_co.html
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