McCain's and Obama's Positions on the Fighting in Georgia

WASHINGTON — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia are at sharp odds over the conflict this month in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Nearly a week after a French-brokered cease-fire, Russian troops and tanks remain entrenched in parts of Georgia. And Moscow has rebuffed calls from President Bush to withdraw after fighting that the United Nations estimates has driven 160,000 from their homes.

In Russia's use of force in Georgia, some analysts see a wounded empire, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, trying to reassert itself by bullying its neighbors.

"We're dealing with a kind of post-imperial hangover," said Frederick Starr, a Central Asia expert at Johns Hopkins University.

"Russia is using this moment to project a message to the world: it is back as an imperial power," said Vasil Sikharulidze, Georgia's ambassador to the United States. "Russia today under Putin is a dangerous country, bent on territorial expansions through brutal military might, terror and intimidation."

Russia's military incursion into Georgia has brought to a skid nearly two decades of cooperation between Washington and Moscow over a raft of global issues ranging from efforts to contain nuclear proliferation to debt relief for the world's poor.

The stakes in the relationship remain high.

Russia has 60 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, about 5 percent of the world's total. It also retains as many as 20,000 nuclear weapons - roughly the size of the U.S. arsenal - according to the Center for Defense Information, a Washington research group that maintains an authoritative nuclear data base.

Successfully managing badly strained U.S.-Russian relations, in other words, will be a top priority for the next president. Here is how Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama have said they would approach the issue.

OBAMA

Key Positions

- Condemned Russia's invasion of Georgia, saying it will "imperil" Russia's partnership with NATO, its aspirations to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its relationship with the United States and Europe

- Calls for $1 billion in U.S. reconstruction aid for Georgia; direct U.S. and European diplomacy and international peacekeepers

- Seeks "more democracy and accountability in Russia"

- Favors more efforts to secure Russian nuclear weapons and materials and to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals

- Opposes the deployment of a ballistic missile system, pending improvements in reliability and consultations with Russia

- Seeks to expand U.S.-Russia ban on intermediate-range missiles, making the ban global

Cost

Not possible to ascertain.

Record

Visited nuclear and biological weapons destruction sites in Russia in 2005, with fellow Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who has been active, along with former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., in helping reduce the post-Soviet nuclear arsenal. Later that year, Obama and Lugar co-sponsored legislation that added conventional weapons, such as land mines and shoulder-fired missiles, to the list of former Soviet arms to be dismantled using U.S. assistance. The law was enacted in 2007.

In His Own Words

"We failed to head off this conflict and lost leverage in our ability to contain it because our leaders have been distracted, our resources overstretched and our alliance frayed.

McCAIN

Key Positions

- Condemned Russia and called for Moscow to "immediately begin withdrawing its forces from sovereign Georgian territory"

- Called for an international peacekeeping force and an emergency U.N. Security Council session to address the conflict

- Advocates kicking out Russia - a "possible strategic competitor" - from the prestigious Group of Eight industrial democracies (the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) and installing India and Brazil in its place

- Criticizes Russia for thwarting political freedoms, leaning toward leadership by former intelligence agents and trying to "bully" neighbors such as Georgia

- Has suggested he would oppose Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization

- Supports plans to build a global missile defense system, with sites in eastern Europe rimming parts of Russia, and assails Moscow's "nuclear blackmail" and threats against Poland in response to the plan

Cost

Not possible to ascertain.

Record

McCain has consistently warned against the prospect that Russia would use its military to bully neighbors, specifically Georgia. After meeting then-president Putin in 2001, Bush said, "I looked the man in the eye" and "was able to get a sense of his soul." McCain rendered his own very different interpretation later, saying, "I looked into Putin's eyes. I saw three letters: K-G-B."

In His Own Words

"We will make it clear to Russia's rulers that acts of violence and intimidation come at a heavy cost. There will be no place among G-8 nations, or in the WTO, for a modern Russia that acts at times like the old Soviet Union. The Cold War is over, the Soviet empire is gone and neither one is missed."