The Arizona Republic: McCain's Policy
 

By The Editor, The Arizona Republic
March 27, 2008

Article Excerpt:

John McCain picked a good time to give voters a glimpse of what he might look like as a certified Leader of the Free World.

The prospective Democratic opponents of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee remain otherwise occupied. One is struggling to wiggle out from under her tales of harrowing adventures under "sniper fire" in Bosnia. The other is enmeshed in some delicate issues involving his former pastor.

Neither is in a position just now to do what McCain sought to accomplish: speak expansively to voters and to America-watchers around the world about what his priorities as a world leader would encompass.

His primary message, delivered Wednesday at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, is that, in key respects, a McCain foreign policy would not reflect a George W. Bush foreign policy.

McCain emphasized, as virtually all the major aspirants to the presidency have emphasized since January, that the United States "cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves."

But not everything the candidate said was conciliatory.

Vladimir Putin, the outgoing president of Russia who will almost certainly remain his nation's most powerful citizen, would not have liked McCain's speech. The Republican repeated his belief that Russia should be expelled from the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations if it continues down its totalitarian path. And he reiterated his interest in seeing former Soviet bloc nations such as Georgia and Ukraine gaining membership in NATO . . . a geostrategic sea change that would infuriate the Kremlin.

"Senator McCain has been very clear that we cannot paper over our differences with Russia," Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior foreign-policy adviser, said during a telephone news conference.

McCain's lengthy speech was sweeping in scope, with observations regarding the U.S. relationships with China, Latin America and Africa, among several other regions, and on issues ranging from global warming to free trade. But the nation's most urgent foreign-policy issue remains Iraq and Afghanistan.

We certainly are familiar with McCain's view of the war in Iraq. He is not merely supportive, he was among the very solitary advocates for a troop "surge" in that nation long before it became White House policy.

"Critics say that the surge of troops isn't a solution in itself," he said. "I agree. Iraqis themselves must increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and they must become responsible political actors. It does not follow from this, however, that we should now recklessly retreat from Iraq regardless of the consequences." . . .

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