A foreign classroom for junior senator
Friday, September 23, 2005
Printable FormatBarack Obama tours the former Soviet Union, monitors the destruction of Cold War munitions--and takes notes from a senior statesman
By Jeff Zeleny
Tribune correspondent
DONETSK, Ukraine -- Sen. Barack Obama ducked his head, stepped over a puddle of oil and slowly walked down the dark corridor of a giant weapons factory. A blast of heat made the room feel like a scorching furnace.
"Don't touch the orange stuff," warned a worker.
"Don't worry," Obama replied.
The orange stuff was TNT. A crew of three men, their faces covered by white masks, were melting piles of ammunition. Their job was to extract explosives and render the Soviet-era weapons--some relics from World War II--weapons no more.
After watching for a minute or so, Obama walked to a workbench in a nearby building where three women were taking apart artillery shells with their gloved hands. The large munitions, crafted here by generations before them, soon would be reduced to scrap metal.
"All of the workers have masks on. Why don't we?" Obama said, looking over thousands of dirty gray weapons that had been discarded into a heap. "This doesn't breed a lot of confidence."
The junior senator from Illinois had come to this cavernous industrial plant, tucked away in the forests of eastern Ukraine, to see and to learn. He had come to this dilapidated, rusty factory, not far from the Russian border, for a lesson about how weapons of the past can present a danger for the future. He had come here, in his first foreign trip since taking office, as one of the requisite stops in the making of a senator.
But for all of his acclaim in the Senate's freshman class, on this trip Obama assumed a different role: The political understudy.
The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), was taken by Obama's interest in the subject of arms control. Shortly after Obama's election, the two traded phone calls. And Lugar invited his Democratic colleague, 29 years his junior, to join his annual trip inspecting weapons sites across the former Soviet Union.
In his campaign last year, Obama talked at length about the urgency of securing and eliminating vast stockpiles of weapons--nuclear, biological and conventional--to prevent terrorism. But it wasn't until he saw the weapons for himself, until he touched an old shell casing, looked warily at a deadly vial of anthrax and watched the dismantling of a nuclear missile, that he could speak with authority.
"It's one thing when you're reading about a nuclear site in a book. It's another thing to be able to describe what I've seen," Obama said. "You realize as a senator there are so many issues out there tugging on people, you've got to make things vivid for them in order to capture people's attention."
So now, after a recent weeklong trip to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, he can tell the story of taking a seat on a bus, with curtains covering the windows, and being whisked to a secret nuclear storage site where only a handful of Americans have been. Or the story of seeing the potential threat from deadly vials of plagues that are secured by little more than a padlock a child would use on a school locker. Or the story of being under heavy surveillance by Russian authorities as he peeked into a building where an SS-25 missile, once aimed at the United States, waits to be dismantled.
This is one chapter in the education of a senator.
A year ago, Obama's world was composed of a far narrower set of issues in the Illinois legislature. Now, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his portfolio is global. And on this trip, he was able to study at the elbow of Lugar, one of the mandarins of U.S. foreign policy.
They shared vodka toasts with foreign leaders and local dignitaries. (Obama discreetly asked for water in his shot glass.) They were detained for more than three hours by Russian border guards. (Obama paced a bit, but ultimately joined Lugar in taking a nap until the ordeal ended.) They met British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street in London. ("They let me sit in Winston Churchill's reading chair!" Obama declared.)
When you're a freshman senator, particularly in the minority party, a mentor or tour guide is critical. Lugar, a frequent visitor to Russia and other former Soviet republics since becoming an advocate for nuclear disarmament 14 years ago, not only served that role but did something that might be unthinkable in America: He overshadowed Obama.
Seldom can Obama go anywhere in the United States, at least in political circles, without being stopped for a photograph or autograph. But on this foreign trip, he was barely recognized. While Lugar breezed through security at a top-secret Russian nuclear site, Obama was stopped for identification.
"I very much feel like the novice and pupil," conceded Obama, 44, looking out the window as he flew over the Russian countryside from Moscow to Perm.
Words measured with precision
It had been more than five years since Obama had been outside the United States.
His blue tourist passport, which he had taken across Asia, Australia and Africa as well as most of Europe, was replaced by a burgundy one that designates him an official of the U.S. government. Motorcades have replaced motorbikes and bodyguards have replaced tour guides. (In Moscow, embassy officials were sufficiently concerned about Obama's safety to place an extra bodyguard by his side.)
And never before has he been an envoy of the United States, where his words are measured with consequential precision. It is not appropriate, for example, to turn up your nose when being served fish gelatin by a Russian host. It is not advisable to speak critically.
As Obama stood in front of more than a dozen Ukrainian reporters at the weapons destruction site, he declared: "I'm extremely impressed with the facility." A few moments later, when pressed in a Tribune interview, he said: "I'm being polite. The place speaks for itself. This is a somewhat run-down and not a spick-and-span factory."
He said he was attempting to be diplomatic.
"Some of that means that in your public statements," Obama said, "you end up trafficking in public platitudes more than you'd want to do at home."
Indeed, the education of a senator calls for considerable sensitivity and tact, along with a keen awareness of local culture and a solid grasp of their issues.
Yet repeatedly, Obama referred to the country as "The" Ukraine. The U.S. State Department advises Americans to simply call the country "Ukraine," which Lugar and others did. While the difference might seem slight, adding "the" suggests a failure to recognize its status as a sovereign country that no longer is part of the Soviet empire.
But in the next breath, the senator spoke in a way that appealed to everyone who was listening, painting a broad picture of the global need to disassemble weapons. It sounded not only senatorial, an official traveling with the group said, but decidedly human and free of wonkish details.
"These shells behind us, these casings, are a testimony to the decades that have been spent creating weapons of destruction," Obama said, speaking at a news conference here. "The hopes in the programs that have been discussed today are that we can start using our resources to dismantle these arms and create a more peaceful and safe future for the people of Ukraine and for people all around the world."
The biography of Obama, with a black father from Africa, a white mother from America and years of childhood spent abroad, brings a unique worldview to the Senate. Intrigued by his background, Lugar encouraged Obama to seek a Foreign Relations Committee seat.
When Obama sketched out his first year in office, he selected nuclear proliferation as a priority.
Then he took care not to make his agenda sound too international, reminding people in nearly three dozen town meetings across Illinois that it was a local issue too.
"We could have a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of the Chicago Loop," Obama declared in January, speaking to a few hundred residents of Lockport, Ill., many of whom wore startled looks on their faces. "Without fear-mongering, if we don't keep nuclear devices out of the hands of terrorists, it could just kill hundreds of thousands of people."
Dismantling missiles
The tour bus chugged across a winding, rutted highway toward a nuclear weapons destruction site outside the Russian city of Perm. Obama was engrossed in the new book by Graham Allison, "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe." He barely looked up as a barren soccer field, toppled statues of Soviet icons and closed factories passed by the tinted window.
When a Russian security official boarded the bus and began reading a roll call of the American visitors, Obama put the book aside. He listened intently during the safety briefing. "Don't forget to grab the metal handle and ground yourself when you walk in," the official said, reminding that electromagnetism and nuclear reactors don't mix.
Obama, a step or two behind Lugar, walked into a metal building that looked like a Midwestern manufacturing plant. Inside, a dark-green missile, about one-third the size of a football field, waited to be disassembled.
"There are 10 warheads in that one container?" Obama asked.
American tax dollars are paying for missiles to be transported from elsewhere in Russia--across new roads, over new railroad tracks and into new buildings--and consultants from U.S.-based Washington Group International are eager to show the senators around. And part of the official mission is to judge whether the money is being well-spent.
Obama climbed 28 steps--wooden two-by-fours attached to round tree branches--to a platform that overlooked a clearing in the forest with several huts containing nuclear weapons. Among Russian guards and uniformed plant workers, he stood with Ray-Ban sunglasses, a blue golf shirt and Gap khakis, taking in the surroundings where missiles are dismantled, broken down and sliced apart.
"Do they have forest fires around here?" Obama asked.
The senator doesn't write down the answers, but he seems to listen attentively. He asks questions that are more practical than technical: It wouldn't take more than a tire iron to break the windows of this anthrax storage lab, would it? Aren't these weapons vulnerable to sabotage? Are these shell casings being recycled?
Obama does not pretend to be an expert. Often aides hand him scraps of paper with additional facts, just in case the senator needs more details. It does, however, create the occasional moment of awkwardness.
At a news conference in Moscow, Andrey Lebedev, a correspondent for the Russian newspaper Izvestia, asked Obama: "Some months ago, you stated that some Russian nuclear facilities are poorly guarded with doors ajar, sentries walking around with no ammunition. Where did you take that information from? It has been consistently denied by Russian military."
The senator paused for a few moments, before saying: "I have to confess I don't know the quote you're referring to. I'd have to actually see it. I don't recall that particular statement."
In fact, the quote was repeated nearly word for word from a speech Obama had delivered May 25 on the Senate floor to highlight his interest in nuclear proliferation. After the news conference, the senator's director of foreign policy, Mark Lippert, quickly approached the reporter and explained that the information was taken from a report in the National Journal and had not been refuted.
As Obama neared the end of the trip, he seemed to grow bolder in his questioning. The delegation had reached Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea, where the discovery of oil has injected a new stream of wealth into the country. (Not for everyone, Obama learned the night before at dinner, considering doctors here average only about $700 a year.)
For about 90 minutes one morning, Lugar, Obama and a dozen aides listened to a presentation by executives from BP, the international oil giant. In the middle of the discussion, after they showed a slide of oil prices and consumption, Obama raised his hand and interrupted.
"You need to do a little update," he said, pointing to their chart that showed prices for a barrel of oil long before they skyrocketed. "Somebody is getting rich. I don't want anyone to think you were going to lose your shirt."
Some parochial questions
From Russia to Ukraine and Azerbaijan to Britain, the senators met dozens of dignitaries. Many officials welcomed Lugar as a member of the family, trading hugs and kisses. When it was time for his introduction, Obama bowed respectfully and extended a hand, seemingly taking a few leaders off guard because of his age.
The meetings, over either a lingering lunch or a private dinner, were consumed by discussions of the regional economy or global arms control. But when Obama met Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliev, he presented two questions that were slightly more parochial: Why is McDonald's having difficulty opening restaurants in Baku? And why is Boeing shut out of selling planes to the state-owned airline?
"They are two Illinois companies who want to do business and expand," Obama explained, "but they are having roadblocks."
He didn't walk away with a concrete answer. He could, however, report back to constituents that he voiced concern at the highest levels of government.
While the education of a senator entails learning protocol, being a diplomat and even conducting a bit of business, it comes with the added benefit of seeing a slice of history. And all observations are not quite so serious.
It was nearing sundown one evening as Obama walked through Red Square in central Moscow. He passed by the imposing Kremlin, the colorful domes of St. Basil's Cathedral and the immense GUM department store, which he noted looked like the Russian equivalent to Chicago's Merchandise Mart.
When Obama reached Lenin's tomb, a guide told a story about the bodies buried near the Kremlin wall. Several of the women, according to legend, were his lovers.
"I didn't know Lenin was a player," Obama said, cracking a wide smile.
As the tour moved forward, the senator pondered how much the world had changed since he studied international relations in college. It's hard to fathom, he said, that the Soviet Union and the United States invested so much into trying to destroy the other.
"It's a good reminder of the fact that highly rational people can be engaged in a highly irrational purpose," Obama said. "I'm reminded what Einstein said: Our wisdom has not caught up with our technology."
Trips like this are successful if they evoke such big-picture sentiments, Lugar said, in addition to providing a "profound, gut feeling about the place of the United States in the world--strength and vulnerability."
"He has profited from it. It becomes capital in the bank, in terms of knowledge," Lugar said, reflecting on Obama's first foreign trip as a senator. "I hoped he would be on the Foreign Relations Committee. This was an important decision in shaping his career."
At the end of a 13-hour day, as Lugar settled in for an espresso in the bar of his hotel, a longtime staff member handed him a copy of a Russian newspaper that announced his arrival in Moscow. It featured an old picture of the Indiana senator's short-lived 1996 presidential campaign.
"That's for Barack," Lugar chuckled. "I'm beyond that now."
Still, a senator only eight months into his Washington career always has something to learn. Especially when his traveling mentor has been in the Senate since Obama was 15.
In the final hours of the trip, Lugar and Obama arrived in London to meet with the prime minister. As a van took them to 10 Downing Street, there was one unexpected lesson.
When an embassy official pointed out that a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln stood near Westminster Abbey, both senators turned to catch a look. Lugar proudly noted that Lincoln, who is always thought of as a son of Illinois, spent his formative years in Indiana.
As Obama challenged his older colleague, Lugar playfully pushed back, saying: "You better believe it," pointing out that the nation's 16th president lived in Indiana from age 7 to 21.
Obama didn't say a word. The education of the senator continues.