John McCain's tough stance toward Russia

John McCain and his national security advisor both want to get tough with Russia -- but one of them got paid to say so. Does McCain have another lobbyist problem?

By Mark Benjamin

Read more: NATO, China, Russia, John McCain, Politics, News, Georgia, Taiwan, Vladimir Putin, Mark Benjamin, Randy Scheunemann

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Sen. John McCain, right, speaks with Randy Scheunemann on board McCain's chartered plane on May 16, 2008.

June 9, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- John McCain is a saber-rattler when it comes to Russia. On the campaign trail, the Republican presidential candidate warns of the "dangers posed by a revanchist Russia." A quick Google search produces video of McCain plodding through his oft-repeated joke that when he looks in Vladimir Putin's eyes, he sees three letters: KGB (and not, like George Bush, Putin's "soul").

As president, McCain says he would back up his tough talk with equally aggressive policies. He wants to kick Russia out of the Group of 8, the organization of the world's leading industrial powers. McCain has also long been a proponent of quickly expanding NATO to include former Soviet allies like Georgia. Russia bristles at the notion of the Western military alliance encroaching on her border. "Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks," McCain said in a March speech, "Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible."

This kind of talk -- in particular the call to oust Russia from the G-8 -- has given pause to seasoned experts on that part of the world, who tend to emphasize engagement with Russia. McCain's harsh rhetoric and tough proposals led Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria to write an April column titled "McCain's Radical Foreign Policy." If McCain were to pursue his Russia agenda as president, Zakaria wrote, it would be interpreted by much of the world as an "attempt by Washington to begin a new Cold War."

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But the sound of sabers rattling is music to the ears of Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign's senior foreign policy and national security advisor. A long-term confidant of the candidate, Scheunemann also supports a very tough stance toward Russia. Unlike McCain, until very recently he was paid to support that stance. McCain, already under fire for the role of lobbyists in his campaign, is taking his foreign policy advice from someone who was a paid lobbyist for former Soviet Bloc countries that are wary of Russia, and seems to advocate those policies the countries and their former lobbyist want. Notably, McCain supports a quick expansion of NATO, and Scheunemann has already helped two former Soviet satellites gain admission to NATO and has worked on behalf of two others.

Until early this year, Scheunemann was simultaneously working for the McCain campaign and as a lobbyist for a shifting menu of Eastern European and former Soviet Bloc countries with NATO aspirations. Some, including Georgia, have chilly relations with Russia. At various times from 2001 through early this year, Georgia, Latvia, Romania and Macedonia paid Scheunemann and his partner, Mike Mitchell, more than $2 million. Much of Scheunemann's work focused on paving the way into the NATO fold. Two of Scheunemann's clients, Latvia and Romania, were admitted to full NATO member status in 2004, after which they ceased paying him.

McCain, who has portrayed himself as a crusader against the corrupting influence of money in politics, has already been compelled to cut ties with lobbyists who have worked for his campaign. On March 12, a New York Times story noted that a co-chairman of McCain's campaign and other campaign advisors had lobbied for European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., which beat Boeing for a contract worth $35 billion to build aerial tankers for the Air Force. The headline in the Times was "McCain Advisers Lobbied Europeans to Win Air Force Tanker Deal."

The bad press sparked efforts inside the McCain campaign to purge any real or perceived conflicts of interest. On May 15, the campaign instituted a new policy that bars staff from also working as "registered" lobbyists, requires unpaid advisors to disclose such activity, and prohibits those volunteers from trying to influence McCain.

The new policy was drafted by McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, himself a lobbyist until 2006. The new rules quickly resulted in the departure of at least two advisors, including a key fundraiser, Thomas Loeffler. The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., which beat Boeing for the Air Force tanker contract, was one of his clients.

But the policy does not state that a campaign staffer can't be a former lobbyist. According to Justice Department records, Scheunemann halted his lobbying activities on March 12, the day the Times story on the Air Force tankers appeared. Scheunemann's partner continues to lobby on behalf of Georgia and Macedonia.

The neoconservative Scheunemann was a national security advisor to Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott. He worked on Bob Dole's campaign in 1996 and McCain's failed 2000 White House bid. Like McCain, Scheunemann was an early and ardent advocate of regime change in Iraq. He helped draft a 1998 bill giving $98 million to the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group led by the controversial Ahmed Chalabi. In the early days of the Bush administration, he served as an advisor on Iraq to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, Scheunemann helped lead the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a nongovernmental, pro-invasion group that counted McCain as a member.

Lobbying disclosure records for Scheunemann's two-person company, Orion Strategies, show dozens of phone calls and meetings with McCain and his staff between 2001 and 2008, as well as regular contributions to McCain's campaign and political action committee. In 2006 McCain cosponsored legislation that passed the Senate endorsing an expansion of NATO to include Georgia and Macedonia as well as Albania and Croatia. Late last year, while Scheunemann was still on Georgia's payroll, Georgia got a shout out, by name, from McCain in a national security treatise published in Foreign Affairs. McCain warned of Russian efforts to "bully democratic neighbors, such as Georgia, and attempts to manipulate European dependence on Russian oil and gas." He also hammered on the "diminishing political freedoms" in the former Soviet Union, and wrote that the country was "dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers."

Next page: "Where I get a little bit concerned, Randy, is when you sound like you're issuing ultimatums"