McCain's plan for the next cold war
Back to the USSR
John B. Judis, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008
John McCain
John McCain likes to compare himself to Theodore Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan. But, if he were to become president, could he more closely resemble Richard Nixon? Not Nixon the Watergate dirty trickster, but Nixon the statesman. Could the Arizona senator, despite his extreme rhetoric of the bomb-bomb-Iran variety, be less like a cowboy politician and more like the man who re-opened relations with China and signed a wealth of arms control agreements with the Soviets?
Two years ago, I wrote a profile arguing that there were reasons to believe that McCain was more pragmatic than his support for the Iraq debacle suggested ("Neo-McCain," October 16, 2006). In the interviews I conducted with him in 2006, he repeatedly distanced himself from neoconservatism, reminding me that he talked regularly to realists like Brent Scowcroft. I thought there was a good chance that there was a peacemaker lurking beneath McCain's warrior exterior--that a President McCain might be able use his hawkish reputation to, say, bring Iraq's warring parties together or to lure Iran to the bargaining table.
I wasn't the only one. Since McCain secured the Republican nomination, I've heard echoes of my ambivalence from foreign policy experts, including some who plan to vote for Obama. "McCain has Nixon-goes-to-China credentials," one told me. But, based on McCain's actions over the last two years and conversations I've had with those close to him, I have concluded that this is wishful thinking. McCain continues to rely on the same neoconservative advisers; he still thinks U.S. foreign policy should focus on transforming rogue states and autocracies into democracies that live under the shadow of American power; and he no longer tells credulous reporters that he consults Scowcroft.
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