For those who knew him, it is no surprise that the late Senator John McCain approached the national and global security threats posed by Russia with a confident clarity in what he felt needed to be done. As with all things, when it came to Russia, he did not hold back. The Cipher Brief’s Brad Christian spoke with former CIA Chief of Station Dan Hoffman about the Senator’s stance on Russia. He started by asking Hoffman to describe McCain’s overall position.
Hoffman: John McCain’s foreign policy toward the Kremlin was a straight line from President Reagan’s “peace through strength policy”. McCain always delivered the strongest defense for what always scared the Soviets and Vladimir Putin the most- liberty, freedom and democracy. Because of his outspoken nature on those issues, McCain became an inspiration to people around the world, especially those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
McCain strongly defended three of the Kremlin’s recent targets; Estonia which was the victim of a massive cyber-attack, Georgia, which Russia invaded in 2008 and the Ukraine which Russia invaded in 2014. The late Senator backed strong sanctions against Russia and communicated a clear policy of defending, deterring and countering Russian aggression.
In December 2016, McCain called Russia’s interference in our election an ‘act of war’, which is exactly what our National Security Advisor ,Ambassador John Bolton has called Russia’s interference. I thought it was noteworthy that following Senator McCain’s passing, it was the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, and the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, all eloquently passed along their condolences. And former Estonian President Ilves said that McCain was the symbol of all that we thought was good about the United States, particularly a belief in liberty, human rights and a liberal world order.
You can imagine then, why to the Kremlin, McCain was the enemy. And Moscow worked to make it appear as if the Senator was the chief protagonist for what they liked to call “Russophobia”. It’s true that McCain accused Putin of trying to rebuild the Soviet Empire back in 2008, when Russia attacked and invaded Georgia. He famously called Russia a ‘gas station masquerading as a country’ after he visited Ukraine in the spring of 2014. I remember when he said Russia was a ‘kleptocracy and massively corrupt’. For the last decade, McCain was ringing alarm bells about Russia’s efforts to target Ukraine and well as Moldova and the Baltics. All the while, McCain advocated for our own cyber capabilities, particularly for the idea of countering Russia at the point of attack, which is something that U.S. Cyber Command is now thinking about seriously, but not something we considered in the past.
If you want to know if McCain was right about Russia, just consider their behavior on the world stage, their invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea, the shoot down of the Malaysian airline, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in the UK, Russia’s alliance with Iran and their complicity with Iran and Syria’s crimes against humanity. So when Russia says McCain is just guilty of Russophobia they are trying to absolve themselves of all of those crimes they’ve committed. It’s convenient but it’s not true obviously.
Certainly those who know the truth, all of us here in this country, as well as Putin’s own critics inside Russia, understand what Senator McCain stood for as a Senior U.S. Foreign Policy leader who never hesitated to call out Putin’s autocratic regime for the aggressive and dangerous country that it is. I think for McCain, Russia was a part of his overall world view. He never hesitated to challenge those who forbade their own citizens the freedoms we enjoy in our own country. And it’s certainly fitting that McCain chose this Russian dissident, Vladimir Kara-Murza, to be a pallbearer at his funeral. By including Murza in his funeral, McCain is once again emphasizing that he is a friend to the Russian people, and an enemy to their despotic leader.
The Cipher Brief: You said that McCain was an advocate of the U.S. deterring Russia, and meeting them at the point of the attack when it comes to cyber. How do you think Senator McCain will be remembered for his stance against Russian aggression?
Hoffman: When I think of McCain’s legacy, I think back on President Reagan. He had this extraordinary impact in terms of how we deal with Russia today. It’s 30 years later, and we still refer back to Ronald Reagan’s policies and his approach to getting the most out of Moscow, while simultaneously confronting them for their nefarious behavior. Who can forget his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate where he said to Gorbachev “Tear down this wall”. Or when he called the Soviet Union the “evil empire”. I think we’ll also be quoting Senator McCain in the future, and remembering him for decades. I do believe that he was absolutely right to call out Russia strongly during the past decade, particularly after Russia interfered in our elections. And I think we are heeding his advice right now with the idea that Cyber Command is considering taking additional action against Russia in Cyberspace. But, in order to really do that, you have to publicly warn them beforehand. And that’s what Ambassador Bolton did when he was meeting with his counterpart Patrushev in Switzerland. I can only imagine that Senator McCain was pleased if he watched Ambassador Bolton’s press conference which was right in line with what McCain would have said, had he been there, serving as our National Security Advisor.
The Cipher Brief: Do you feel that there are parts of what we are doing right now relative to U.S. foreign policy with Russia that Senator McCain, despite his political and personal differences with President Trump, would be pleased with?
Hoffman: I think McCain was in favor of directly confronting Putin, and doing it publicly. I know that based on what Senator McCain wrote in his tweets after the Helsinki summit that he was really disappointed that we’d missed that opportunity. I think if McCain would have been elected President in 2008, that we would not have had a ‘reset policy’ with Russia, but also that that would likely never have let a day pass without reminding the Russian people that their leader, who had not really been elected with any sort of transparent process that we would expect from a real democratic country, was doing them more harm than good. And I think McCain would have wanted our elected leaders in Congress to get up on their bully pulpit and speak out.
The Cipher Brief: Senator McCain is widely known for his support of the military, his support for the veteran community and his work with the DOD. Do you have any personal stories of his involvement and support for the Intelligence Community?
Hoffman: What I always respected about Senator McCain was that he would collect all the information, assess it and then make his decisions. He was very inductive. He didn’t start with the answer, he just listened. One of the best examples for me was over a decade ago, when President Bush was swiveling in a new direction in Iraq, with the idea that we should surge troops, and pursue this counter-insurgency strategy. Senator McCain, very early on, was one of the staunchest defenders of that policy, and in particular of General Petraeus’s leadership during that period in Iraq. I had a front row seat serving there at the time. Senator McCain was such an avid reader of our intelligence, and you could see that his assessment, and the decision he ultimately favored, was absolutely in line with what the intelligence was saying. That is something that made me and others feel as if our intelligence was getting to the right people, and that policy was being made as a result. The process was working.
There have been multiple accounts written of the many trips Senator McCain made to Iraq. He never stayed in the ‘safe’ places, he wanted to go to where the action was, places like Mosul, during the middle of massive combat operations. No one could ever doubt McCain’s courage and he was showing everyone in the legislative branch, and really all of us what it meant to work together on U.S. foreign policy. That was truly impressive, especially considering that he had lost the Primary to President Bush, and here he was collaborating with the President on the most important foreign policy issue of the day, that was extraordinary.
