Sam Nunn Joins Obama Transition Team

To Advise on Defense Matters

The Obama Transition team has added former Senator Sam Nunn as an advisor on Defense policy. Sam Nunn used to be Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, so he would seem to be a good fit for the position. There are a couple of problems, though.

In 1993, when Sam Nunn was passed over for Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, he moved to sabotage then President Clinton's move to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Sam Nunn held hearings on Clinton's gays in the military proposal, siding with Pentagon officials who opposed the idea. Finally Sam Nunn brokered a compromise, called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", that effectively allowed gays to serve in the military so long as they remained in the closet.

Gay activists, nerves still raw at the abolition of same sex marriage in California by Proposition 8, may look askance at the idea of Sam Nunn advising Barack Obama on defense matters. This will especially become true should Barack Obama nominate Sam Nunn for his Secretary of Defense. Sam Nunn has expressed his disinterest in the job, but that might be playing coy in order not to appear too interested.

Sam Nunn, though considered a hawk on defense matters, has also signaled that he wants to go slow on the deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. "For us to deploy a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland - the system itself is not yet mature, and the Iranian threat is not yet mature. So we've got some time. Russia offered their territory, and it seems to me we ought to be working with Russia on missile defense." The problem, of course, is that a move to slow down or even stop building missile defenses in Eastern Europe, in the face of Russian threats, would be seen as a sign of weakness. Even opening the matter up for diplomacy would cause all sorts of opportunities for deals that would reward Russia for bullying behavior.