{"id":4429,"date":"2008-07-20T00:50:13","date_gmt":"2008-07-20T07:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=4429"},"modified":"2008-07-20T00:50:13","modified_gmt":"2008-07-20T07:50:13","slug":"mccain-as-neo-con-obama-as-neo-con","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/20\/mccain-as-neo-con-obama-as-neo-con\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain as Neo-Con, Obama as Neo-Con"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a big fan of The New Republic<\/em>, but there are two articles in the July 30 edition that are well worth a read.<\/p>\n

The first essay<\/a> is by the always-insightful John Judis, who two years ago wrote the best account<\/a> to date of McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evolution from realist to neo-conservative in the late 1990s. Now Judis revisits the issue to determine McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely trajectory, focusing in particular on the candidate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Manicheanism, especially with regard to Russia. Money lines are found right up front:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Two 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 (\u00e2\u20ac\u009dNeo-McCain,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s warrior exterior\u00e2\u20ac\u201cthat a President McCain might be able use his hawkish reputation to, say, bring Iraq\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s warring parties together or to lure Iran to the bargaining table.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only one. Since McCain secured the Republican nomination, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard echoes of my ambivalence from foreign policy experts, including some who plan to vote for Obama. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153McCain has Nixon-goes-to-China credentials,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one told me. But, based on McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions over the last two years and conversations I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second article<\/a> is the cover story by Eli Lake \u00e2\u20ac\u201d yes, the Eli Lake who writes for the ultra-Likudist New York Sun<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Contra Expectations: Obama isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Jimmy Carter \u00e2\u20ac\u201d He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ronald Reagan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Based in his understanding of and interaction with two Obama advisers, Richard Clarke and Rand Beers, Lake concludes that Obama may turn out to be a neo-con more in the tradition of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who came to prominence as a result of her attacks in Commentary <\/em>on Carter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s human rights policy and its alleged subversion of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153friendly authoritarians\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, than in that of Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan who summoned the country via the Project for the New American Century, among other avenues, to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153national greatness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and neo-imperialism, something that made Kirkpatrick uneasy. Lake argues that Obama may turn out to be much less \u00e2\u20ac\u0153naive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and reluctant to use force than McCain or today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neo-cons believe.<\/p>\n

I have a number of serious problems with the essay, not the least of which is the fact that Israel, which has been central to both the older and younger (now middle-aged) generations of neo-cons, goes entirely unmentioned by Lake. He also fails to distinguish between Kirkpatrick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neo-conservatism and a classic realist position which, I think, defines more where Clarke and Beers are coming from. Finally, Clarke and Beers are no doubt advising the Obama campaign, but their voices are two of many that also include classic liberal internationalists, who were and, for that matter, still are, quite comfortable with Carter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s human-rights policy and took strong objection to both the old and new neo-conservative critique of it. (Steve Clemons just posted<\/a> an interesting take on the relationship between Obama and his foreign policy advisers on his blog, thewashingtonnote.com.)<\/p>\n

But Lake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basic point \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely approach to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153global war on terrorism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is likely to be much more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153realist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in orientation than McCain, neo-cons, and other Republicans have tried to depict \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is, I think, on point, as is his comparison of that approach to the strategy pursued by Gen. David Petraeus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in Iraq (\u00e2\u20ac\u009dcollaboration with security forces, militias, and tribal leaders who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t conform to our highest ideals\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153finding proxies to fight the enemy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a strategy designed to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153isolate and shrink the pool of irreconcilable insurgents\u00e2\u20ac\u009d after buying off the rest). Of course, Petraeus, who has been hailed by the neo-cons as the great Caesar of Mesopotamia, has, in reality, pursued policies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d particularly the recruitment of former Sunni insurgents, and especially former Baathists within it, to fight al Qaeda in Iraq \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that the neo-cons had long abhorred.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Visit Lobelog.com<\/a> for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a big fan of The New Republic, but there are two articles in the July 30 edition that are well worth a read. The first essay is by the always-insightful John Judis, who two years ago wrote the best account to date of McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evolution from realist to neo-conservative in the late 1990s. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4430,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions\/4430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4429"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}