In the last issue of 2007, John McCain wrote an essay describing his vision for America’s foreign policy during his presidency in Foreign Affairs journal. In his essay, he highlighted several important things he plans to do if elected president of the United States, most crucial of which was of course establishing freedom and democracy around the world, while protecting liberties at home. Pardon me, but doesn’t everyone want that, including all the presidential candidates running now?

In the very first paragraph, under the heading “Winning the War on Terror”, John McCain states

Iraq is this war’s central front, according to our commander there, General David Petraeus, and according to our enemies, including al Qaeda’s leadership.

This is very important, because this is an example of any politician’s cheap tactic - state something debatable, but present it as though it is a fact. On top of that, he attempts to strengthen it by inserting a general’s name there, which means it shouldn’t even be questioned, because to question anything, especially of a general, is obviously tantamount to lack of patriotism. Hence, this now becomes the primary premise of his whole argument and there is no need to even examine it.

He continues,

So long as we can succeed in Iraq — and I believe that we can — we must succeed. The consequences of failure would be horrific: a historic loss at the hands of Islamist extremists who, after having defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the United States in Iraq, will believe that the world is going their way and that anything is possible

“Succeed” is an interesting and a very broad term that must be defined to fit the context. But John McCain doesn’t do it, because we are supposed to assume that succeed means to win and win requires us to stay in Iraq. Notice he does the same with “failure” - it goes undefined. Then he makes a great leap by confidently stating that terrorists defeated Soviet Union. What is omitted from that is that those so-called terrorists were our beloved friends at the time of Soviet invasion, which CIA explicitly supported by arming it and channeling money to Al Queda, if not directly to Bin Laden. Now that is a crucial fact, because it’s debatable whether “terrorists” would have defeated the Soviet Union if it weren’t for the support of the United States. But that is consciously omitted by McCain, because it carries the consequence of undermining his entire argument.

McCain’s foreign policy arrogance gets more maddening as he outlines his vision under the heading “Uniting the World’s Democracies”, which sounds like a noble pursuit until one reads further into it. McCain’s big plan is to create what he calls a “League of Democracies”, which in his words would “…could act when the UN fails”. Ahh, when UN fails - the constant complaint from the conservative establishment. However, what is consciously omitted from this again, is the notion that “failing to act” simply means “to fail to act in the interests of the United States. Of course the UN, a body of almost 200 nations is not supposed to act within the our interests all the time and for that it must be punished by creating a new league which would conveniently bypass the UN on crucial US invasions, undermining of foreign governments and sovereign nations when they fail to meet our interests.

The fundamental question that deserves to be asked is: In what ways does McCain’s foreign policy differ from the current Bush administration’s? While a singular answer cannot be provided, one can make a qualitative judgment from his essay in a journal that is considered to be a leading publication on foreign affairs. Of course what he would actually implement and how far he would go as president is anyone’s guess. I think it would not be an exaggeration to add John McCain to the list of the most dangerous Neoconservatives in America.