Washington Post: McCain Details His Foreign Policy
 

By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post
March 26, 2008

Article Excerpts:

LOS ANGELES, March 26 -- Sen. John McCain today promised a collaborative foreign policy that seeks the input of allies abroad and contrasts sharply with the go-it-alone approach of the Bush administration.

In a powerfully delivered speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles Wednesday, McCain called himself a "realistic idealist" and outlined a world view that mirrors some Bush administration critics, who say the first task of the next president must be to repair relations around the world.

"Today we are not alone," the Arizona senator said in the speech. "Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed."

Despite McCain's support for the Iraq war, which has helped to deflate the image of President Bush and America across much of the world, the Arizona senator said the U.S. should take a different approach to future conflicts.

In the speech, McCain renewed his call for a "global compact -- a League of Democracies" that would unite the world's free countries against tyranny, disease, and environmental destruction. As he did in Europe last week, he downplayed cowboy diplomacy and stressed cooperation on global warming, torture and trade.

"We need to listen -- we need to listen -- to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain said. "When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them."

Bush's foreign policy approach has moderated significantly in his second term, with greater outreach to European allies and a willingness to strike deals with countries such as North Korea. In essence, McCain suggested he would enbrace Bush's controversial policies on terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan that he would inherit while at the same time further extending Bush's newfound willingness to meet allies halfway.

At the same time, McCain indicated he would sharply break with Bush's efforts to accomodate Russia, saying he would push to eject it from the Group of Eight club of industrial powers. He also signaled his views on the need to ease global warming and bar torture in interrogations were much more in sync with European allies.

McCain is often portrayed as a global John Wayne who would tread on the world stage with a Navy veteran's swagger and talk tough toward regimes in Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- in the fashion of President Bush.

But his record of foreign policy positions during two decades in the Senate is murkier than that. A skeptic about foreign interventions when he first arrived in Congress, McCain later became a vocal advocate for unilateral action by the United States in Kosovo and the Middle East.

In his early days as a member of Congress, McCain argued against President Ronald Reagan and others in his party for a withdrawal of American troops from Lebanon. But in 1999, more than a decade later, he supported the use of ground troops to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And his full-throated backing of the Iraq war in 2002 is well-known.

McCain has acknowledged that his foreign policy views were shaped by his family's military service -- his father and grandfather were both Naval officers and McCain endured five years in a Vietnamese prison camp. In the speech, he said those experiences convinced him that war is "wretched beyond all description."

In the speech yesterday, he continued to press his case that the U.S. is now succeeding in Iraq. "Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong, just as they were wrong a year ago when they declared the war in Iraq already lost," he said, taking a swipe at his potential Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. . . .

And he once again described the war against Islamic terror as the "transcendent challenge of our time" which requires "an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists."

But since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain has rarely used the language of the "neoconservatives" in Washington D.C., who pushed President Bush to adopt a policy of preemptive strikes against foreign enemies. . . .

In the speech Wednesday, McCain cited China's emergence as a "central challenge" for America but said the two countries are not destined to be adversaries. He said relations will be based on "periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values" until China allows political reform.

He called for the exclusion of Russia at G-8 meetings of industrialized nations until that country follows through on political reforms. He said the U.S. must "strongly engage" with friendly governments in Africa, and he pledged to eradicate malaria on that continent. And he reiterated his call for a free trade zone across Latin America, the United States and Canada.

"Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery," he said. "The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that."

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