Yesterday in Denver, John McCain gave a speech setting out his latest views on nuclear weapons. Citing Ronald Reagan, he stated that it was his "dream" to "see the day when nuclear weapoons will be banished from the face of the earth." But can McCain's proposed policies get us there?

McCain's current patchwork position doesn't look like a recipe for nuclear disarmament. But we should remember that it was Ronald Reagan who started out denouncing the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and ended up negotiating deep nuclear cuts with Mikhail Gorbachev, including the historic 1986 meeting at Reykjavik where he almost agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons (before some of his hard-line aides reeled him back in). Of course, Reagan was pushed by a mass movement, including the Nuclear Freeze campaign in the United States and the European Nuclear Disarmament movement across the Atlantic. Today's most visible push for eliminating nuclear weapons comes from the foreign policy elite, including former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senate Armed Services Committee chair Sam Nunn.

We should also remember that it was George W. Bush, campaigning in 2000, who called nuclear weapons (or at least those that were in excess of requirements, whatever that means) a "relic of the Cold War."

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that rhetoric is just part of the equation; politics is the other. Even so, it is worth looking at what McCain actually said in Denver.

For starters, it is clear that McCain's "dream" of a nuclear free world is a distant one. Before embracing Reagan's vision, he spoke in much more limited terms, of "a world in which there are far fewer such weapons than there are today."

McCain stuck with his tough talk about North Korea and Iran -- including the suggestion that "the use of force may be necessary," if only as a last resort -- in ending Iran's nuclear ambitions.

McCain endorsed a new arms treaty with Russia, but failed to explain how his plans to exclude Moscow from attending meetings of the G-8 group of industrialized nations and to deploy missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic would set the groundwork for such discussions, rather than just antagonizing Russia to the point that its leadership won't want to negotiate any major deals with Washington.

McCain seemed to soften his opposition to a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, a measure he voted against in the Senate in 1999; but he clung to the opponent's rhetoric about its "shortcomings."

McCain also endorsed the U.S.-India nuclear deal, a civilian technology sharing arrangement that could free up energy and resources for India to expand its nuclear weapons program, even as it undermines the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and gives countries like Iran the ability to talk about Washington's double standards when it comes to nuclear development.

Positive elements of the McCain plan include seeking a cutoff on the production of new fissile materials (plutonium or enriched uranium that can be used to make nuclear weapons), and for some sort of verification regime to monitor U.S. and Russian nuclear forces akin to that established under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which runs out in 2009.

So, McCain's nuclear posture is a decidely mixed bag. It's not a neo-con concoction (it talks about new treaties, after all), but it's not in step with growing anti-nuclear opinion, either. The fact that all three remaining presidential candidates have spoken of the need to eliminate nuclear weapons is testimony to a culture shift that may finally achieve that long sought goal. But McCain would have to resolve the contradictions in his current stance if he wants to project a plausible vision of how to achieve significant reductions in nuclear weapons, much less their elimination.

In a later post I will examine the proposed nuclear weapons policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and talk about some of the concrete measures that have been proposed to achieve a nuclear free world.