Does McCain Want To Lock In Bush's Foreign Policy?

23.04.2008

Last time John McCain gave an in-depth foreign policy address--his March speech in Los Angeles--the papers crowed that he was abandoning George W. Bush's approach to world affairs:

"McCain Outlines Foreign Policy; In Speech, He Vows Collaborative Approach." (WP)

"McCain, in Foreign Policy Talk, Turns His Back on Unilateralism." (NYT)

I'm not so sure. McCain did indeed vow to rely on allies, but when you look closer at the substance of his proposals--his vow to create a "League of Democracies" to police the globe--it becomes clear that he's just trying to create an institutionalized version of President Bush's "coalition of the willing."

While they're rhetorically different--Bush's approach evokes cowboys rounding up a posse to go hang Saddam, while McCain's plays to his Teddy Roosevelt fetish--both proposals try to construct a world order based on moral clarity, which divides the globe into "good" and "bad" states (those willing to confront evil, say, and those who are not).

This is a fundamentally conservative approach to world affairs (cf. Peter Scoblic's U.S. vs. Them or today's LAT op-ed to see why), but McCain is trying to make it sound moderate by dressing it up as Cold War internationalism. After all, the man is fighting a general election race--he can afford to pivot to the center.

--Barron YoungSmith

Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:19 AM with 5 comment(s)

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scdrawe said:

Scoblic is right, and Bush and McCain are wrong in their foreign policy prescriptions. But that is really beside the point. The ultimate issue is how it sells on the domestic political front. And I am afraid that the Manichean world view of the right is more appealling to the general public than Scoblic's more nuanced world view that acknowledges the limitations of American power and the need to coexist with the rest of the world. The American electorate has proven time and again that they prefer riding tall in the saddle to an effective foreign policy.

April 23, 2008 12:35 PM

psantillana said:

That picture makes him look as though he has the arms of a hand puppet.

April 23, 2008 2:34 PM

Robert Powell said:

This is not a "fundamentally conservative approach". It's a fundamentally absurd approach.

John Kerry was engaging in a bald-faced lie in the debates when he scoffed at Bush's coalition ( "...Poland?"), and simultaneously suggesting that he'd get lots of international help. Sitting on the Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry surely knew at least as well as a reasonably attentive private citizen that this was nonsense. There is simply no "help" available.

Then SACEUR General Jones told BBC in 2004 that continental militaries were "less than 10% usefully deployable". That's probably double the percentage of most other countries. The countries that got involved in the "coalition of the willing" represented just about all the real military help that's available. Why not cut the crap and just face up to reality--no one is going to do a damned thing about, for example, enforcing Security Council Resolutions, stopping genocide in Darfur, freeing Tibet, civilizing Congo, or much of anything else requiring military force, including, post-Iraq, the United States.

April 24, 2008 7:11 AM

The Plank said:

Earlier this week, I described John McCain's "League of Democracies" as an attempt to create

April 25, 2008 2:37 PM