Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today called for the creation of a United States commission to examine the conflict between Russia and Georgia. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Eric S. Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs; Lieutenant General John M. Paxton, Jr., USMC, Director for Operations for the Joint Staff; and Brigadier General Michael T. Flynn, USA, Director for Intelligence for the Joint Staff, Senator Clinton questioned the witnesses on their views of the origins of the crisis and urged a thorough review of the lessons learned from the conflict and a careful evaluation of the nation’s posture toward Russia. Senator Clinton said she would introduce legislation to create a US commission if the administration did not take the initiative.
“The conflict between Russia and Georgia has raised many questions about the Bush Administration’s handling of the crisis and the future of our relationships with Russia and its neighbors. The best way to begin answering these questions is to create a commission that can establish the facts. If the administration won’t take the necessary steps, I will introduce legislation that will,” Senator Clinton said.
A transcript of Senator Clinton’s comments at the hearing follows.
Senator Clinton: Thank you very much. I think this is a tremendous opportunity for us. The questions that have been raised about our relationship with Russia going forward deserve the closest of attention and certainly an attempt to forge a bipartisan consensus similar to what we forged during the Cold War. I think that whatever illusions might have existed with the fall of the wall in Berlin, have certainly been tarnished, if not eliminated, but there doesn’t seem to be much that has taken their place, and so I would urge that we take this opportunity, especially because we are moving to a new administration, to create a commission here in our own country. I know that President Saakashvili has called for an international commission, which I hope will be established, and I hope the United States and our NATO allies will promote that vigorously, to create such a commission to in the first place determine the actual facts, because there is a dispute about the facts which may or may not be real but has certainly infected the dialogue and will therefore impact whatever thinking we have going forward. I believe that the administration would be well served to create this US commission which then could cooperate with the international commission. In the absence of the administration moving on this, I will be introducing legislation to establish such a commission. Obviously I hope the administration does it without legislation, although I think there are members of Congress who would be worthy members of such a commission were it to be established.
I also think that as we promote the idea of the international commission, it would be important to keep up a dialogue with Russia. To that end, I am somewhat troubled by the withdrawal from the nonproliferation efforts that we were engaged in. I think we ought to be able to hold competing thoughts in our mind at the same time. Is Russia more aggressive? Are they more intent upon pursuing their own interests as they define them, territorially, economically, politically? Of course they are. I don’t know why anybody is surprised about that. But therefore rather than seeking to isolate them, which I think is not a smart proposal, we should be much more strategic. And I don’t know that it’s in our interest for the administration to withdraw the nonproliferation agreement that you had negotiated. So I hope that we can take this opportunity to really think deeply about what deterrence in the 21st century means, what our geopolitical interests are. I think Senator Webb and Senator Warner raise good questions about NATO. I probably disagree with where their questions are leading, but I think it’s fair game for us to debate and discuss that.
I want to turn to General Paxton and General Flynn and ask either or both of you, were you surprised by the outbreak of these hostilities in Georgia. General Paxton, General Flynn?
General Paxton: Senator Clinton as we said earlier we tracked the -- in quote if you will -- peace keeping force that was there and the buildup of forces. You can always, I guess, reasonably expect something could happen, but in terms of the speed with which it happened and the extent that it came, as Ambassador Edelman said, it was disproportionate to us. We knew there was a buildup of forces north of the Roki Tunnel in Russia. We knew that there had been some summer exercises which is not out of the norm, and we knew that they had the potential to do things. But we had neither the expectation that it was going to happen to that degree and certainly to that size and speed.
Senator Clinton: Did you also track the railroad construction and the reinforcement of infrastructure like the depots to facilitate the movement of heavy equipment?
General Flynn: Yes ma'am. To answer your first question, personally yes, I was surprised that the disproportionality, the duration, and what I would say is the sort of their tactical commitment to what they eventually achieved, the hindsight from my perspective, because just coming into this, when we look at what preparations and the exercise that was conducted -- started on about the 15th of July didn’t end until about the 3rd of August -- and some of the military and tactical preparation kinds of things that they did, I think when we look at it and reexamine sort of what did we know and when did we know it, there's probably a lot more to the element of tactical surprise that we should probably be taking some lessons from.
Senator Clinton: Well I appreciate you saying that, General, because obviously that’s within the bailiwick of this committee and I think it would be worth some time to look at a lessons learned from this. I want to submit for the record an article that appeared in the Washington Post on July 15th by Ronald Asmus, who is with the German Marshall Fund, and it’s called “A War the West Must Stop,” and just the first sentence says, “There is war in the air between Georgia and Russia. Such a war could destabilize a region critical for Western energy supplies and ruin relations between Russia and the West.” So clearly there were observers, experts, there were people who follow this area and what’s happening inside Russia, and on Russia's borders, who were prescient, who basically said, this is a war we must stop. And one of the purposes of this commission that I'm advocating for our own country is, we've got to answer for ourselves, did we embolden the Georgians in any way? Did we send mixed signals to the Russians? I think it’s important that we understand that there is a lot of debate and ferment around what the United States government really did say, how clear we were with Moscow, how clear we were with Georgia, and I think we need to sort all that out. And the military aspect of this with respect to the signals, the intelligence, the information, how it was assessed, I think is an important part of it. So clearly that should be, in my view, part of what that commission looks at.
I thank the witnesses.
Gosh DNC, now I finally understand why you kicked Senator Clinton to the curb. Who would want decisive, competent, leadership when you could have a guy who calls for a UN Security Council Resolution to be passed to condemn the violence in Georgia, forgetting that the aggressor in the conflict is in fact a permanent member of the UNSC with the power to veto any resolution? Silly me.
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