That Rep. Devin Nunes is critical of President Obama’s strategy for confronting Russia and the Islamic State is hardly surprising.
The California Republican is more hawkish than Obama, and more inclined to advocate for the U.S. playing a central leadership role in confronting international crises. But Nunes also happens to be vying for the chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and as a member of the panel, has access to classified material unavailable to his rank-and-file colleagues.
As a part of those responsibilities, Nunes spent some of his August recess traveling in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
In part one of Nunes’ Friday interview with the Washington Examiner, he discussed what he learned on his trip to the region and rendered his assessment of Obama’s response to an increasingly belligerent Russian President Vladimir Putin. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Examiner: What did you learn during your travels?
Nunes: My purpose was to really focus on Putin’s advancement into Ukraine and what’s happening in the rest of Eastern Europe. It’s a situation that I don’t believe is getting enough attention, because it’s convenient for the administration and others just to look away — because no one wants to be backed into a new Cold War. But we’ve been ignoring Putin for far too long, and one of the things that I’ve been saying is that we need to reset the “reset” that was set forth by the Obama administration at the beginning of his first term.
Examiner: Are we in a new Cold War with Russia?
Nunes: Putin’s become the dictator of Russia, for all practical purposes. Not only him, but his military leaders are trying to relive the glory days of the Soviet empire. If you look at how they’ve advanced — in [the Republic of] Georgia, nothing happened; they took Crimea, nothing happened; they’ve now invaded eastern Ukraine, nothing’s happening, and this leads to the larger question of, “What if he decides to do this to the Baltics, are we just going to look the other way?” So this is a serious problem that needs real solutions, not just rhetoric by the administration and our NATO allies.
Examiner: How scared is Eastern Europe that it might be threatened by Russia?
Nunes: Everywhere I went, and all of the Eastern Europeans that I visited with gave the same story, that they believe that Putin is extremely dangerous. They quickly point out that they’ve been telling this to the United States since Putin was first put into office over a decade ago and they think it’s fallen on deaf ears, and now you have a situation where they’ve been proven right even though they didn’t want to be right. When you look at the propaganda that’s being [directed at] Russian-speaking communities, you can tell just by the massive size of Russian television, it’s amazing the size and scope of that operation. It is old-fashioned propaganda. Putin’s learned a lot from the fall of the Soviet Union, he’s very smart, he should not be underestimated and he’s very dangerous.
Examiner: What about President Obama’s announcement that NATO member states were going to step up their response to Russia?
Nunes: I hope that the president’s going to stick to his words and follow up with actions. We have some limited operations going on in the Baltics today, with exercises and training that we’re doing in conjunction with many of the Eastern European countries. I actually visited many of those locations there. People need to keep in mind: These are small numbers of troops. It’s nothing more than a tripwire. If Putin decides to send armored tanks and airstrikes across the border, are troops that are there are not going to be much more than a tripwire to say, “hey, they’ve invaded”?
Examiner: What should the U.S. do in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
Nunes: It probably could be too late at this point. But one, we should immediately give intelligence help and advisement and lethal aid where necessary to the Ukrainian government. Second, we should meet and work with the oligarchs in Ukraine, even though they’re all probably bad guys to some degree. At the end of the day, there are some dozen to two dozen oligarchs that control the entire economy. Putin, he’s very smart, he’ll go in and buy them off. This is long past due. We should be meeting with these oligarchs, putting together a plan, because they employ a couple hundred of thousand of people. Also we should have a real Russian-speaking news service, so that Russian speakers around the globe can get real information in real time. The problem is, the only one putting out the information is RT, which is Putin’s station. And, propaganda, in the long run, turns the lies into the truth.
