25 July 2008
Candidate McCain Aims to Revitalize U.S. Global Standing
Says foreign policy seeks better, more peaceful world
Washington -- The United States needs a foreign policy that can revitalize the country's unique purpose and standing in the world, defeat the terrorist threat and build an enduring peace, according to Republican Senator John McCain.
"Our next president will need to rally nations across the world around common causes as only America can," McCain said. He has stated he sees defeating terrorism as the national security challenge of our time and Iraq as the central front in this continuing struggle.
McCain, a senator from Arizona and the presumed Republican presidential candidate, is set to face Democratic Senator Barack Obama in the November 4 general election. (Each still must receive their parties’ formal nominations at national conventions later this summer.)
McCAIN’S WORLD VIEW
McCain, a former U.S. naval aviator with decades of experience in Congress, outlined his foreign policy vision in the November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, a journal of New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, and amplified it in a speech before the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles March 26.
Wesleyan University professor Douglas Foyle said the Los Angeles speech reaffirmed neoconservative beliefs that shape McCain’s world view.
"He's talking about idealism with realistic tendencies but he's still talking about God and destiny for the United States, which is very neoconservative," Foyle told researchers at the council.
Neoconservatism, a political philosophy that emerged in the 1960s, stresses foreign policy as government’s greatest responsibility. Neoconservatives tend to see the United States as the world's sole superpower, indispensable in establishing and maintaining global order, according to John McGowan, a professor at the University of North Carolina.
Gary Samore, director of studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, said McCain is a mix of a neoconservative and the traditional internationalist.
"There has been an element in American foreign policy, which has been expressed in both liberal Democratic administrations and conservative Republican administrations, for making the world in our image," he said. "That's American. It's just that the latest manifestation has been by a conservative Republican administration."
APPROACH TO ENGAGEMENT IN IRAQ, IRAN
McCain, in sharp contrast with Obama, maintains the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is succeeding.
"The consequences of failure would be horrific," he writes in Foreign Affairs. "The war in Iraq cannot be wished away, and it is a miscalculation of historic magnitude to believe that the consequences of failure will be limited to one administration or one party. This is an American war, and its outcome will touch every one of our citizens for years to come."
McCain opposes premature troop withdrawal from Iraq, stating that strategy would compromise U.S. ability to meet subsequent threats to national security and regional interests.
Since the Foreign Affairs article, he has said that U.S. forces could be drawn down in a phased approach that would remove most U.S. combat forces by 2013, the end of the next presidential term.
Stopping al-Qaida in Afghanistan is tied to success there but also to success in neighboring Pakistan, in McCain’s world view. It is essential, McCain said, to keep Pakistan from becoming another sanctuary for al-Qaida.
"These groups still have sanctuaries there, and the 'Talibanization' of Pakistani society is advancing," he said. Countering this threat means "enhancing Pakistan's ability to act against insurgent safe havens and bring children into schools and out of extremist madrassahs and supporting Pakistani moderates."
Regarding Iran, McCain advocates a strong, highly focused set of policies -- political and economic -- to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions and sponsorship of terrorism.
"If the United Nations is unwilling to act, the United States must lead a group of like-minded countries to impose effective multilateral sanctions, such as restrictions on exports of refined gasoline, outside the U.N. framework," he said. "And military action … must remain on the table: Tehran must understand that it cannot win a showdown with the world."
EXPANDED MILITARY
McCain also believes the United States needs a new national security architecture to meet the challenges of the 21st century. He would increase the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps from a planned level of 750,000 active forces to 900,000 troops.
In addition, he would expand U.S. special operations forces, civil affairs units, military police and military intelligence units.
His global view also calls for expanding foreign language training in civilian and military schools in critical languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and Pashto.
McCain also advocates a new round of arms control agreements with Russia. "As our two countries possess the overwhelming majority of the world's nuclear weapons, we have a special responsibility to reduce their number. I believe we should reduce our nuclear forces to the lowest level we judge necessary."
McCain's proposed policy initiatives also include:
• Establishing a new intelligence agency modeled after the World War II Office of Strategic Services (later the Central Intelligence Agency) but more agile, smaller and responsive to world crises;
• Expanding post-conflict reconstruction capabilities;
• Re-establishing the U.S. Information Agency to revitalize U.S. public diplomacy;
• Creating a League of Democracies that could act with the United Nations or when the United Nations fails to act;
• Revitalizing the trans-Atlantic partnership, by adding Brazil and India to the Group of Eight highly industrialized nations but excluding Russia;
• Increasing cooperation among Asian allies including defense cooperation with some Southeast Asia nations;
• Recognizing U.S.-China relations can benefit both nations and the Asia-Pacific region, but also that the U.S.-Chinese relationship should be based on shared interests rather than shared values "until China moves toward political liberalization”;
• Engaging friendly African nations on a political, economic and security level; and
• Improving relations with some nations in the Western Hemisphere.
For information about Senator Obama's foreign policy positions, see "Obama Emphasizes Multilateral U.S. Foreign Policymaking."
