McCain's "Rogue State Rollback" Sounds Like John Foster Dulles & Curtis LeMay
My colleague and friend Anatol Lieven published a no-punches pulled critique of John McCain's foreign policy and national security probabilities in the Financial Times today, titled "Why We Should Fear a McCain Presidency."
Lieven makes a point I did recently: McCain used to be considered "an old-style conservative realist." I suggested that McCain's Nixonian DNA had gone underground. But the kind of realism McCain used to demonstrate is not old-style. It's making a comeback in hybrid form, tempered somewhat by a less harsh calculation of state interests and leavened by concern about progressive goals and objectives. Lieven himself makes this point in his excellent book, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World.
I remain befuddled by McCain's policy positions.
I have long admired McCain on many fronts and like the maverick in him. There are many parts of his profile that I am in complete sync with. However, on the biggest issue of the Iraq War, I differ from him as well as on his seemingly desired Iran War. I keep hoping that we will see evidence eventually that the McCain we have been seeing lately is more veneer than deep -- but even veneer can't be written off easily. This country can't afford more "wars of choice" and is badly prepared to deal with the type of war in which America has no choice.
We are in a weakened position because our enemies see our limits -- and our allies, seeing the same, don't count on the U.S. as much as they once did. No nations in the world think America is more able today to achieve its objectives internationally than was the case before the Bush administration. And John McCain, much to my own dismay, is suggesting a national security course for the nation more strident and detached from reality than that which the Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal was promulgating.
John McCain apparently thinks he can win by stirring up the storms of pugnacious nationalism and fear -- and calling for "rogue state rollback" in much the same tenor that John Foster Dulles and Curtis LeMay talked casually about "massive retaliation" against and "Rollback" of the Soviet Union.
I'm less strident in my critique of McCain than Anatol Lieven, mostly because I have heard directly from him different sorts of approaches to and framing of what America's foreign policy should look like, but I agree with Lieven today on much of his argument.
Here is a clip:
It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.
The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.
Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called "national greatness conservatism". In 1999, Mr McCain declared: "The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history . . . We have every intention of
continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity's benefit."Mr McCain's promises, during last week's visit to London, to listen more to America's European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe's request.
Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: "I'd institute a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback'. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments." Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing "Bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann".
-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note
It also sounds like Cheney/Bush.
March 24, 2008 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
If McCain said "The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history" then that should disqualify him from being president. I happen to think that there is much good about the US but this statement completely ignores some very horrible acts that have been committed in our name. That statement or simlar could have been made by Napolean about France, by Lenin for the Soviet Union and by Mao about Red China.
March 24, 2008 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I remain befuddled by McCain's policy positions.
What's really frightening is that McCain himself seems equally befuddled . . .
This may be unkind to say, but I fear McCain's age may be catching up with him. There was a time when he seemed sharp and on top of things, even if his positions weren't always to my liking. Increasingly, however, he seems a bit confused, a bit erratic, and a bit grumpy as if he's tired and having trouble keeping up. He's approaching 72 now, if I'm not mistaken, and may simply be getting to an age at which the rigors of Presidential politics--and Presidential leadership--are too much for him. While McCain's age has not become much of an issue so far, I suspect it will become an issue before November--or, if not and he manages to win the election, sometime after November.
March 24, 2008 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is depressing in the extreme to discuss what McCain policies might turn out to be. That they have any hope of achieving observable reality is beyond belief.
Unfortunately, reality may trump belief and elevate McCain to his Peter Principle apotheosis. If that happens, the decline will continue, more disasters await. Finances will trend down, terrorism will trend up, and the rest of the world will wait for us to go away.
March 24, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't mean to be rude or cruel, but I honestly believe McCain is insane. When the final campaign gets underway and he is under pressure, his mental problems will come out for all to see.
March 24, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
If he is insane, I'm sure Dick (It takes one to know one) Cheney will welcome McCain to the club.
March 24, 2008 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post, and it illustrates the corrosive effect Republican Party politics can have on the thinking of even the most independent-minded "straight-talking" of Republicans.
McCain's comment about the "indispensable nation" reminds me of De Gaulle's epigram that "the graveyards are full of indispensable men".
March 24, 2008 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Short resonse: "You can't do a wrong thing the right way."
Longer response:
Nothing about grandpa John McBomb's "foreign policy" should befuddle or confuse a single-cell amoeba. You can boil his entire cavalier jingoism down to a paraphrase of the Third Reich's imperial militarist slogan: "Wherever the [American] soldier plants his boot, there he must remain." (This worked out really well for the German boots at Stalingrad. Many of them will remain buried there forever.)
Furthermore, grandpa John's oft-quoted, jolly rendition of "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran" represents no departure from Nixon's snarling frustration when he vowed: "I'm going to bomb the (Vietnamese) bastards like they've never been bombed before." After a little, pre-election "peace is at hand" deception from Henry Kissinger, Demented Dick did indeed unleash his nefarious blitzing of Hanoi on Christmas Day of (post re-election) 1972. All to no conceivable gain for American foreign policy whatsoever. True "genius" at work, that.
Precisely what about these senile, crypto-fascist maniacs can one possibly find hard to understand? Orwellian schizophrenic Doublethink has a vast psychiatric literature that explains the crusading psychosis to whatever detail one might require. Apparently, "maverick" lovers everywhere have no familiarity with any of it.
I spent eighteen months in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972) and so I never had a moment's difficulty understanding Tricky Dick Nixon and Mad Dog John McCain. It helps if one remembers "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy crediting Nixon with turning him on to that whole scurrilous red-baiting thing imputing "treason" to all those sensible Americans who slept well at night never fearing that a bogeyman "monolithic communist" might lurk beneath their beds. Gore Vidal certainly had it right when he called Americans "among the most easily frightened people on earth." A TV picture of a sleeping blonde girl in Ohio, after all, can easily set "the fate driven herd" off a predictable stampede, thus proving the point.
America's frustrated domino-theorists -- most notably Horrible Henry Kissinger -- could never resist arguing that America's "prestige" requires never ceasing to do the cosmically stupid once America has started doing it. America's discredited "leaders" -- as a generic ilk -- ceasely maintain that our friends won't respect us and our enemies won't fear us if we stop acting so self-destructively insane. This mad "logic," naturally presumes that our friends respect us and our enemies fear us when we stubbornly insist on making cosmic fools of ourselves. This sort of sloppy, solipsistic syllogism neither compliments our friends nor denigrates our enemies. So why do America's "Worst and the Dullest" continue peddling the credulous crap? Academic grade-inflation has indeed taken its toll over the last four-decades in America.
In any event, Captain Ahab's first mate Starbuck said it best when he admonished: "I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale." Mad Dog John McCain simply has no fear of whales, which makes him, as Melville said, "a more dangerous comrade than a coward," for he simply doesn't take war seriously and so cannot properly evaluate the dangers of going hunting for Leviathan in a leaky little imperialist whaleboat. America cannot afford such a "fearless" and unserious man in our national whaleboat, let alone at the tiller trying to steer it towards our doom. Crazy seventy-year-old Ahabs require early rendition to the old sailors retirement home, not further Peter-Principle promotion to even higher levels of incompetence. A firing, not a hiring, seems most appropriate as concerns the Geriatric Old Poop, grandpa John McBomb. The onset of dementia really should pose no insuperable obstacle to comprehension.
... And will someone PLEASE get Holy Joe Lieberman's face out of every picture of John McBomb confusing Shiite Iran with Sunni Shiite-killers? How much international humiliation can America take? We haven't even rid ourselves of Five-Deferment-Dick and Deputy Dubya. We don't have much, if any, credibility margin left. Yet, as the influence-peddling Henry Kissinger will still tell anyone prepared to listen (for a "consulting" fee): our steadfast stupidity has our friends cheering and our enemies cringing in fear. Only in America, and/or Bedlam, could this "logic" receive such an uncritical, browbeaten acceptance. America quite obviously fails to qualify as a serious country.
March 24, 2008 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is indeed difficult to praise the wonkiness and mastery of issues of anyone who would find in McCain someone having passed the CIC threshold.
March 24, 2008 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Marc Ambinder has a McCain quote that is absolutely mind bogggling, but here is the most baffling part:
The extended quote is at Ambinder's blog and it sounds like it was part of a stump speech. No link or citation is given so we are left to our own devices to guess when and where it was said.
It is frightening to think that this man could actually be elected President.
March 25, 2008 12:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
John McCain outlined for European readers his own foreign policy philosophy, not coincidentally, in the same newspaper last week.
Not surprisingly, as the publication of this piece occurred at the same time Obama was making his seminal speech in Philly, McCain's op-ed received virtually no coverage.
I blogged about it here, however:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/two-cheers-for-mccain.php
My main argument is that McCain recognizes that Iraq is the issue which has divided America from (most of) Europe, but his own strident hawkishness ensures he cannot apologize for the pro-War DC Establishment's creation of this division. Consequently, his vision of a new Transatlantic compact is a fantasy. And he probably knows it too. Here's how I described the elementary contradiction as found in his FT piece:
"In one breath, he consciously avoids calling for Europe to send resources to Iraq (rather, "They must spend the money necessary to build effective military and civilian capabilities that can be deployed around the world, from the Balkans to Afghanistan, from Chad to East Timor"), whilst in another, he declares that "struggling young democracies, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, [...] need and deserve help".
Perhaps the issue is this: when Pragmatist McCain battles War-Junkie McCain, the latter prevails. At least it appears that way when it comes to difficult foreign policy questions.
March 25, 2008 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink