Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max The last time Russia invaded a former Soviet state, one of JOE BIDEN's top foreign policy advisers saw it firsthand. JONATHAN FINER was one of just a few Americans on the ground when Russia sent forces into Georgia to support separatists in the South Ossetia region in 2008, sparking a brief war that lasted several weeks. Then a reporter for the Washington Post, Finer got a front row seat to — what he wrote in the paper at the time was — the "most serious crisis between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War." Now, with Russia's more expansive and deadly invasion of Ukraine entering its second month, Finer is helping navigate a war with similarities to the one he once covered. As the White House's deputy national security adviser, he has had an increasingly visible presence as part of the Biden administration's response to the Russian invasion. With National Security Adviser JAKE SULLIVAN traveling with the president to Europe last week, Finer was the administration's natsec pointman in Washington, appearing for an interview on MSNBC at the White House's behest to discuss the latest updates on the conflict. The definitive feature of Finer's media appearances is that he almost never deviates from his talking points, which is why the news articles he wrote provide interesting windows into how he conceptualizes these types of conflicts. The White House declined to make Finer available for an interview. But an administration official told West Wing Playbook that Finer has been influenced by his firsthand experiences covering conflicts. In particular, the official noted that his reporting on the human costs of war and the implications of policy for people who live in war zones weighs on him. "Jon covered a lot of war in his time at the Post, and I think that must give him a really important and unique perspective at the White House," said DAVID HOFFMAN, a contributing editor at the Washington Post who edited Finer when he covered the wars in Iraq and the Gaza Strip. "There are a lot of people detailed to the White House who may have served in the armed forces. Jon saw conflict up close not through the perspective of the U.S. military, but as an independent observer." West Wing Playbook reviewed a dozen or so stories Finer wrote about the conflict in Georgia, many of which are difficult to find online through the Washington Post's website, but are accessible in research databases. Some of his work at the time touched on the high-level geopolitical angles regarding the motivations and strategies of VLADIMIR PUTIN and then-president DMITRY MEDVEDEV — including Putin's conspiratorial statements in which he tried to draw links between the Georgian military and the 2008 U.S. presidential election. But the overwhelming focus of the nearly dozen articles Finer filed from Georgia centered on the painful and terrifying impact of the war on civilians. In one piece, he interviewed Georgians whose homes had been robbed when they fled the invasion. In another, he reported on civilians worried about stepping on hidden landmines or having their crops burned by vandals. He also wrote about some of the complexities in the region, including Georgians who sided with the Russians in the invasion. And he wrote extensively about the plight of refugees in Georgia who were displaced by the conflict, a concern that he continued to focus on after he left the Washington Post and served as an advocate for refugees. West Wing Playbook reached out to a number of his former colleagues at the Post to get a sense of what he was like as a colleague, and whether they saw continuities between his time as a reporter and career in government. MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ was a national editor at the Post when he got to know Finer, who was covering New England at the time. He said that while his memory was a bit fuzzy, he recalled that staff were impressed by Finer's coverage of the New Hampshire presidential primary in 2004. Others said he first impressed editors as an intern at the paper, where he wrote a front page story in 2002 about the relationships between poor countries and the International Monetary Fund. According to Abramowitz, Finer was seen as a rising star within the paper before he left, and a possible candidate for leadership roles, including foreign or even eventually executive editor. But Abramowitz recalled that he was "always hemming and hawing about staying as a journalist and going to law school." (Yale eventually won out). "He was a really outstanding journalist and I thought that many people at the Post thought he would've had an outstanding career in journalism if he stayed," said Abramowitz, now the president of Freedom House, a group that advocates for democratic values in the U.S. and abroad. PHILIP BENNETT , a former managing editor at the Post who worked with Finer when he was embedded with the marines during the U.S. invasion of Iraq and now produces documentaries for PBS, had similar feelings, emailing to say his "decision to go into public service was journalism's loss." Finer's connections in media run deeper than his tenure at the Washington Post. He covered the invasion of Iraq alongside EVAN OSNOS, then a Chicago Tribune reporter, and now a Biden chronicler for The New Yorker ( Osnos and Finer were also college roommates at Harvard). In an interview with the Harvard Political Review in 2017, Finer said that as a journalist he had less sympathy for the complexities of policymaking than he should have. But he felt that being a reporter helped him get the perspective of ordinary citizens in different countries, an opportunity not often afforded to government officials. "What you don't tend to do is have conversations with people who just live in these places which is a big part of what journalists do, and I think you get an important perspective that way," he said. TEXT US — Are you RUSH DOSHI, Biden's director for China at the National Security Council? We want to hear from you (we'll keep you anonymous). Or if you think we missed something in today's edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr/WhatsApp Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427.
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