Now that John McCain has all but secured the Republican nomination, Hannah Mintz looks at the candidate's record on foreign policy Following Super Tuesday, Arizona Senator John McCain essentially became the Republican nominee for president, though Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul remain as distant challengers. Since McCain has centred his campaign on his strong national security stance, maybe it's time to examine what exactly he means by national security, and what a McCain presidency would mean for the rest of the world. Security for McCain means èber- hawkish support of the Iraq war and fighting what he calls the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century: radical Islamic terrorism. Despite the fact that 70 per cent of Americans are against the Iraq war, McCain's national security rhetoric targeting "Islamic terrorism" in the Middle East resonated with voters, who still appear deeply affected by the memory of 11 September. Once a long shot for the nomination, McCain's campaign was rescued by the latest developments in the Iraq war. McCain, who served in the Navy for 22 years, has taken credit for authoring Bush's latest troop surge, which by some measures has been successful. Though McCain's move was unpopular at the time, the decline in terrorist attacks and civilian deaths in Iraq in recent months provided McCain the opportunity to tout his aggressive stance on the war as effective policy. McCain has simultaneously scored points for criticising Bush's mishandling of Iraq from the right, calling for even more troops and funding. While Democrats in Congress, including Clinton and Obama, call for prompt troop withdrawal, McCain has said he would be fine with the US military remaining in Iraq "for even 100 years". McCain justifies this position with the same tactics used by the Bush administration to round up support for its 2003 invasion: by linking the terrorist attacks of 11 September with the war in Iraq in Americans' minds. McCain consistently invokes the presence of Al-Qaeda when discussing his Iraq policy. McCain has a long way to go in his quest for a conservative coalition. The four-term senator's reputation as a political maverick -- whether a deserved badge or an attention-grabbing façade -- has made him unpopular with many prominent Republicans. McCain has eschewed the party line and cooperated with Democrats on key domestic issues, such as campaign finance, immigration, and global warming. On the other hand, many left-leaning voters support McCain for taking these stances against conservatives. To unite his party, McCain is seeking to paint his Democratic rivals as weak and inexperienced on national security as he defines it. Citing his own long military career and experience as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, McCain said of Obama and Clinton: "They don't understand warfare." Ironically, those who know warfare the best, enlisted and retired military personnel, are not backing McCain. Representative Ron Paul, the only legitimate anti-war candidate, has received by far the most support from the military. Paul, who called McCain's policy on Iraq "out-of-sync" and "reckless", garnered more military donations than all of his Republican rivals combined at the end of 2007, according to a Federal Elections Commission report. But Paul has faced a concerted media blackout, ridicule and intimidation, which greatly hindered his campaign. By contrast, McCain has enjoyed consistent and positive press coverage throughout his career in Congress, despite his reputation as the black sheep of the Republican Party. Apparently the military themselves see the issue of "national security" differently than do McCain and his media acolytes. Alarmingly, Iraq may only be the beginning for McCain. His propensity for pre-emptive war as part of "national security" extends far beyond the task of toppling Saddam Hussein. Matt Welsh, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, told Al-Ahram Weekly that a McCain presidency would increase the likelihood of the US going to war in places like Iran. McCain would do this, Welsh said, "through his bellicosity and war policy of 'rogue-state rollback', which he first unveiled back in 1999." While running for the 2000 Republican nomination against George W Bush -- who looked gun-shy and humble by comparison -- McCain called for a systematic crackdown on nasty regimes, even if they did not pose an imminent security threat to the US. This "rogue-state rollback" programme predated President Bush's similar "axis of evil" doctrine by two full years. "McCain has zero sense that there is any drawback to having the US police the world indefinitely, station troops anywhere and forever," Welsh added to the Weekly. With his eagerness to eradicate evil and impose American values, McCain became the favourite candidate of leading neo-conservatives during his 2000 campaign. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, praised McCain's philosophy, which anticipated Bush's foreign policy: "McCain articulated something much closer to what has now become the Bush Doctrine, in terms of a muscular internationalist American foreign policy that addressed both American interests and American principles," Kristol said in 2003. And McCain's attention would likely be focussed on the Muslim world. "Like his fellow neo-conservative champions," Welsh said, "McCain has essentially swapped out 'communism' for 'Islamic fundamentalism' in terms of direct military and psychological threat to the United States." As during the Cold War, this perceived threat provides justification for use of force in the name of spreading American values. In a recent campaign stop, McCain flippantly sang, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," to the tune of the Beach Boy's hit, "Barbara Ann". But McCain has not always championed the interventionist cause. In 1983, during his first term in Congress, McCain argued that his military experience led him to oppose sending troops into Lebanon. Additionally, in 1990 he objected to sending troops to Saudi Arabia before the first Gulf War. McCain's shift from pragmatist to interventionist came in the 1990s with the crisis in the Balkans. Though he initially opposed intervention in Bosnia, by the end of the decade, McCain advocated entering the war in Kosovo, and pushed President Clinton to send even more US troops to resolve the conflict. "At any given time, he considers this or that dictator or authoritarian or mean guy to be the transcendent issue that we must focus on." Welsh said. "It is the only sort of lever that he knows to approach the world's problems, which is 'identify evil everywhere and get in evil's face'," he added. But what makes McCain especially dangerous is his appeal to liberal and independent voters who admire his defiance on issues like campaign finance and ending torture in US prisons. McCain's reputation as a maverick politician distracts these voters from his interventionist side, characterised by his reverence for the turn-of-the-century imperialist, Theodore Roosevelt. Hard as it is to believe, if McCain follows in the footsteps of his stick-carrying hero, the world will look back on the Bush era with nostalgia.
