Koblingen McCain og Georgia

Fra Wall Street Journal 13 august. om koblingen McCain og Georgia.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121842762192729075.html (abonnement)
McCain har mye å vinne på at Russland framstår som en aggressiv global stormakt. Dette setter fokus på hans politiske styrke som en som er troverdig og fast i sikkerhetspolitikken uten at det dreier seg om Irak og terrorisme - der Obama balanserer ham med en økende Irak-tretthet.
Finnes der en linke mellom presidentkampanjen og Georgia? Ja og den er ganske oppe i dagen - se under. Det er ikke umulig at Bush og McCain har sett seg tjent med denne konflikten nå og at de derfor har velsignet den Georgiske provokasjonen mot Sør-Ossetia 7 august.
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McCain Adviser Was Lobbyist for Georgia
By MARY JACOBYAugust 11, 2008; Page A5
John McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is a leading expert on U.S.-allied Georgia -- and was a paid lobbyist for the former Soviet republic until March, in the run-up to what has become a major battle between Georgia and Russia.1
Democratic rival Barack Obama's presidential campaign was quick to try to paint Mr. Scheunemann's dual roles as a conflict of interest after Sen. McCain swiftly took Georgia's side in the dispute, and cited it as evidence that Sen. McCain is "ensconced in a lobbyist culture," as Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan told reporters over the weekend.
But given the rapid escalation of the fighting, and the fact that Georgia is being viewed as a victim of its neighbor's aggression, Mr. Scheunemann's ties to the small nation and its pro-Western Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili may look less like a weakness and more like a strength in the first foreign-policy crisis of the general election campaign.
"In a major international crisis, what is their response?" Mr. Scheunemann said of the Obama campaign in an interview Sunday. "To take a cheap shot at me, as if helping a struggling democracy is somehow wrong." Mr. Scheunemann took a formal leave of absence from his two-person lobbying firm earlier this year amid controversy over Sen. McCain's ties to lobbyists.
Mr. Scheunemann's firm, Orion Strategies, continues to represent Georgia in Washington, and signed a new $200,000 contract with the country in April. Mr. Scheunemann remains an owner of the firm, though he is no longer registered to lobby for it. Mr. Scheunemann said he has made more than a dozen trips to Georgia since he began lobbying for the country in 2004.
The crisis puts a spotlight on Mr. Scheunemann, 48 years old, who has long been a leading neoconservative voice in the American foreign-policy debate. He played a prominent role advocating for toppling Saddam Hussein, serving in 2002 as executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. At a key moment before the war, he helped to line up allies in "New Europe" -- notably former Soviet bloc states like Latvia -- to write a letter in support of the invasion. That came as "Old Europe" American allies like France and Germany resisted.
Mr. Schueneman has made a career in lobbying for countries, including Georgia, that aspire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russia's objections to expansion of the Western military alliance are a factor in the current assault in the Caucasus.
As a foreign-policy aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in 1997, Mr. Scheunemann accompanied Sen. McCain on a trip to the newly independent former Soviet republic. At a dinner, Sen. McCain first met Mr. Saakashvili, who had been a law student in Washington, and was then a young reform-minded Georgian parliamentarian, Mr. Scheunemann said.
In 2003, Sen. McCain returned to Georgia and gave a speech calling on then-President Eduard Shevardnadze to conduct fair presidential and parliamentary elections. The elections weren't perceived as fair, however, and democratic activists launched the protests known as the Rose Revolution that led to Mr. Saakashvili's gaining power.
In August 2006, Sen. McCain returned to Georgia on another congressional delegation, visiting Mr. Saakashvili at a presidential villa on the Black Sea. While Mr. Scheunemann watched from a dock, Sen. McCain and the Georgian leader rode jet skis together, Mr. Scheunemann said.
"He knows all the top players" in Georgia, Zeyno Baran, an analyst on energy and the Caucasus region at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said of Mr. Scheunemann.
Mr. Scheunemann is an architect of the U.S.-led expansion of NATO to include former Soviet satellite states, a bipartisan policy begun under the Clinton administration intended to contain Russia.
But in the 1990s and early 2000s Russia had little economic and diplomatic power to stop its former satellites and republics -- including Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania -- from joining the Western alliance.
Sen. McCain has said that NATO leaders' failure to advance Georgia's application for membership at a summit of the alliance in Romania earlier this year emboldened Russia to invade.
Mr. Scheunemann said he had foreseen the possibility of a Russian attack on Georgia. He had long counseled President Saakashvili to avoid overreacting to provocations from the Russian-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia that are at the center of the current conflict, these people say.
"At all sort of critical moments, when there have been repeated Russian provocations, Randy was a calming influence" advising Georgians against responding to Russia with military action, Ms. Baran said.
Mr. Scheunemann's firm has earned more than $2 million since 2004 lobbying U.S. officials, including Sen. McCain and his staff, on behalf of various clients including Georgia, records show.