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28 Apr 2008 02:44 pm

Neocon-Realist-Blah

Fareed Zakaria considers McCain's foreign policy proposals:

McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers?

When you look at McCain's fiscal proposals and his foreign policy vision, one begins to sense he actually doesn't have a firm idea of where to go from here. It is three-quarters trying to give every faction in the GOP something to appease it and one-quarter winging it. Leadership? Nowhere I can see. And fellow journalists who have interviewed him recently report that he seems alternately confused, defensive and cranky. Even on the Wright stuff he seems to be on every side of the issue. I like the man, but I wonder if he isn't running eight years' too late. In a debate with Obama, he might come undone.

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