John McCain, Interventionist

John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and one of eight major GOP candidates for the U.S. presidency, doesn't speak Arabic. But at least he's calling on top military brass and members of the Foreign Service to crash and learn more of those languages from other countries (Arabic, Persian, Urdu) that have been beguiling America's foreign affairs staffs. That suggests McCain is the internationalist of the bunch.

Not even close (not that there really is an internationalist in either the GOP or the Democratic field). McCain will pay lip service to the United Nations, but he isn't thrilled by the institution. To his mind, it doesn't reflect American interests enough. He does like the ring of something like the "Coalition of the Willing." But that's taken. So he's come up with his own coalition: the League of Democracies. "This would be unlike Woodrow Wilson's doomed plan for the universal-membership League of Nations," he's quick to say (in a piece for Foreign Affairs on his conduct of foreign policy). The League of Nations wasn't willing to put guns where its ideals were. McCain's League would be: "The organization could act when the UN fails -- to relieve human suffering in places such as Darfur, combat HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, fashion better policies to confront environmental crises, provide unimpeded market access to those who endorse economic and political freedom, and take other measures unattainable by existing regional or universal-membership systems."

Think of it as a rapid-deployment NATO, with the United States at the helm and at the ready to dispatch troops to the four corners of the world, if those "other measures unattainable by existing regional or universal-membership systems" are to be taken seriously. That's just one of many aspects of a John McCain foreign policy, which takes unilateralism to heart and would project unabashed and unhesitant American power wherever McCain thinks it's needed.

Luckily for McCain, the League of Democracies wouldn't have to worry about Iraq and Afghanistan much. There, McCain intends a long and ample American military presence, and eventually, if sanctions against Iran don;t work and Iran carries on with its nuclear ambitions, military strikes against that country of 70 million. Bonus proposal: McCain wouldn't stop at bombing Iran only if it were developing nuclear weapons. "The notion that non-nuclear-weapons states have a right to nuclear technology," he says, "must be revisited."

It's getting difficult to figure out who among the GOP candidates (and, for that matter, the Democratic candidates as well) is the Top Hawk. In this continuing series analyzing all the candidates' positions regarding Middle East issues, see my complete profile of what a John McCain Middle East policy would look like.

See also:

• Rudolph Giuliani's Middle East Policy
• Hillary Clinton's Middle East Policy