McCain, Georgia, NATO, and Defense Lobbyists

This is kind of unreal.

An interesting fact about NATO is that all member nations are required to deploy equipment that can be used by other NATO countries -- meaning manufactured in NATO member nations -- which means that NATO expansion since the Soviet breakup has focused on Eastern Bloc countries using (mostly legacy) Soviet military technology. The point is that NATO suppliers have a guaranteed captive market, but also that new NATO members are a boon for defense contractors.

Consequently the NATO expansion lobby is a tool of the arms export industry. NATO expansion targets former Soviet states are the best possible new markets. Lots of old technology that can be "updated" to the NATO standard, using fresh new Western-manufactured parts and support and tossing out all the old Soviet/Russia units (the competition). Of course, this means that current NATO members are not a favorable market for Russia, now or ever, which is one of many reasons why Russia dislikes NATO expansion. If you ever wonder why certain countries are not NATO invitees, or why certain countries like Georgia might be invited to join, it is worth looking first at where those countries procure from in the first place. For example, Libya. See also here and here.

So, what does this have to do with John McCain? Well. You may have read (NYT) about that Randy Scheunemann fellow who was apparently a lobbyist for Georgia and now works for McCain? (He got McCain to nominate Georgia's President Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize!) Oh, you don't even know the half of it. He's connected to PNAC and Chalabi, but for present purposes this is the amazing bit:

Much of Scheunemann’s work, in both the public and private spheres, has been oriented toward Europe, promoting democratic programs and expanding NATO to former Soviet-bloc countries. A board member (along with McCain) of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a key institutional vehicle through which the National Endowment for Democracy carries out its work, Scheunemann has worked closely with Bruce Jackson [remember this name], a fellow former PNAC director, on NATO expansion issues, serving as a board member of Jackson's U.S. Committee on NATO and as a registered lobbyist and/or consultant for Georgia [tried to join NATO], Latvia [joined NATO], Macedonia [almost joined], and Romania [joined].

Wait! It gets better!

Scheunemann has served as senior foreign policy and national security advisor to McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign since 2007. In May 2008 the New York Times reported that Scheunemann had been working as a lobbyist for foreign governments as a “registered foreign agent” at the same time he was advising McCain. “Over the past several years, Mr. Scheunemann met several times with Mr. McCain to discuss his clients’ interests. He introduced the senator to the foreign ministers of Albania [joining NATO now], Croatia [joining NATO now], and Macedonia as they tried to win admission to NATO [...] Mr. Scheunemann also accompanied Mr. McCain to Latvia in 2001 [before Latvia's NATO membership] and Georgia in 2006,”

So we've established that Scheunemann's role wasn't just about Georgia -- NATO expansion was his pet project, so Eastern Europe was his special sphere. Wonder what other work he did in that area?

According to the Lobbying Registration office of the U.S. House of Representatives and the watchdog group OpenSecrets.org, Scheunemann's lobbying firm, Scheunemann & Associates, has for several years represented the National Rifle Association. In 2005, the firm also represented the Caspian Alliance, a consortium of oil- and gas-producing nations from the Caspian region.

"Caspian Alliance" sounds relevant -- wonder who that is? Oh, one of three of Stephen Payne's firms that paid Scheunemann -- you may remember Payne as that guy who was caught on tape offering Cheney/Rice access to a Kazakh offical in exchange for a couple hundred thousand dollars. He has some interesting connections. The Caspian Alliance, of course is a subsidiary of Payne's company that calls itself the "'Sole U.S. Representative' for Kazakhstan’s State-Owned Oil & Gas Company, KMG" -- oil is clearly an interesting lead here, but I'm more concerned about NATO and arms markets.

Thankfully, that topic does not stop there. As mentioned above, NATO defense contracts are money blessings for Western arms manufacturers, and McCain's connections to said manufacturers are not insignificant. Some (like EADS) are major NATO suppliers and McCain has gone to bat for them, lost a lobbyist as a result, but gained clients some handsome profit. OK.

But of particular interest to me is McCain's connection to Lockheed, which seems to dominate the rest. There's a lot here. It would be interesting to see how much Albania, Croatia, Georgia, et al., would have to pay to upgrade to NATO equipment if they were to gain entry. And it certainly adds a dimension to the issue I hadn't previously considered.

Scheunemann and Black are connected to Lockheed as lobbyists, but the key figure here is Bruce Jackson, who was actually a VP at Lockheed while Black and Scheunemann were just lobbyists for the company. Jackson was a bizdev guy, so: what bizness did he develop?

• U.S. Committee on NATO: Founder, Former President
• Project for the New American Century: Board of Directors
• Center for Security Policy: Former Adviser
• American Enterprise Institute: Former Member of International Advisory Board of the New Atlantic Initiative
• Council on Foreign Relations: Member
• International Institute for Strategic Studies, London: Member
• Center for Strategic and International Studies: Board of Advisers
• Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: Founder, Chairman of the Board, 2002-2003
• Republican National Convention: Chair of Platform Subcommittee on Foreign Policy, 2000 Presidential Campaign
• Dole for President: National Co-Chairman of Finance Committee, 1995-1996
• American Committee for Peace in Chechnya: Former Member


• Office of the Secretary of Defense: Various Positions, 1986-1990
• U.S. Army: Military Intelligence Officer, 1979-1990


• Lockheed Martin: Vice President for Strategy and Planning, 1999-2002; Director of Global Development, 1997-1999; Director of Defense Planning and Analysis, 1995-1997
• Martin Marietta Corp.: Former Director of Strategic Planning; Former Director for Corporate Development Projects, 1993-1995
• Lehman Brothers (Investment Bank): 1990-1993


• Worked with Scheunemann. Also worked under Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle.

So -- now it should all be coming together. Bruce Jackson and Randy Scheunemann both worked for the Project for Transitional Democracies, the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, and other pro-NATO-expansion organizations. (That's also another connection to Payne and Rice -- through Stephen Hadley, who also worked on NATO with them.) Jackson was a former VP for Lockheed Martin, and Scheunemann and McCain's top advisor Charlie Black both lobbied for Lockheed (and other defense firms). Since Lockheed stands to benefit so heavily from NATO expansion, this connection is worth scrutinizing, and the back-and-forth is astounding once you look into it.

Some of this may just be GOP incest, but Lockheed and EADS have more McCain lobbyists than any of the other major defense contractors, they both make money hand-over-fist from NATO, and it was a convenient sidechannel to Georgia after the Bucharest conference this year that started the whole firestorm with Russia in the first place. That's yet another interesting connection.


To see how this same little cabal is connected to the Iraq war, read 'Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels':

This was months before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go to the United Nations to make the administration's case for the invasion of Iraq, touting the subsequently discredited evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But according to Jackson, Hadley told him that "they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale" to justify it. Jackson, recalling the meeting, reports that Hadley said they were "still working out" a cause, too, but asked that he, Jackson, "set up something like the Committee on NATO" to come up with a rationale. [...]

When it came to organizing the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Jackson, by his own admission, "knew nothing about Iraq." So while he agreed to serve as its chairman, he turned day-to-day operations over to Republican operative Randy Scheunemann, who took the position of executive director. Scheunemann was a member of the board of directors of PNAC. Scheunemann also served as treasurer of Jackson's Project on Transitional Democracies, and had been a consultant on Iraq to Donald Rumsfeld. He had also been a staffer for Mississippi Senator Trent Lott when Lott was the senate majority leader -- Scheunemann had in fact authored the Iraq Liberation Act. The act authorized the $97 million in Pentagon aid that would fund the Iraq National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, who subsequently got close to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, explaining to her where Saddam Hussein's WMDs were supposedly located.

[Heavily edited into one long post.]