John McCain’s ‘Frightening’ Strategy

While at WORLDMEETS.US, we have seen a good deal of support for John McCain in the Portuguese-speaking countries ofBrazil and Portugal, chiefly due to McCain’s promise to include Brazil in the G8 and his relatively liberal trade policies, this op-ed from Portugal’s Jornal de Negicios is decidedly concerned about what might happen under a McCain presidency.

After examining some of the specifics of McCain’s foreign policy plans, including his plans to create a “League of Democracies,” “expand NATO to include all democratic states,” exclude Russia from the G-8 and include Brazil and India, João Carlos Barradas writes for Jornal de Negocios:

“McCain’s plans are frightening in their incoherence, total lack of realism and underestimation of economic and financial constraints. … Even before Beijing or Moscow put the heat on the eventual Republican president, the apprehension of allies in Berlin, Tokyo and Riyadh would be such that either McCain will have to change course or he will condemn the United States to a proactive interventionism capable of bringing even greater misfortune.

Barradas concludes:

“It is a worrying state of the mind that animates McCain in his desire to reform the world.”

By João Carlos Barradas

Translated By Brandi Miller

April 30, 2008

Portugal – Jornal de Negocios – Original Article (Portuguese)

A son and grandson of admirals, a Navy pilot and a prisoner in Vietnam, John McCain says that he “hates war” and is open to promoting democracy, “by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance peace and freedom.”

This statement is contained in a March 26th speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, and it backs up the Republican candidate’s ideas about “United States leadership” in a world with multiple centers of democratic power, from India to the European Union, and where the influence of countries like Russia and China is growing.

The systematic explanation of McCain’s foreign policy goals was initially overshadowed by the dispute between the Democratic candidates, but as the possibility of a Republican victory in the November presidential election grows, so too does the difficulty in discerning the strategic wisdom of the senator from Arizona.

THE MCCAIN ‘LEAGUE’

McCain believes that the dialogue with the Democratic partners of the United States obliges Washington to adopt behavior in accord with constitutional values and, consequently, the repudiation of “torture or inhuman treatment of detained terrorist suspects.”

The closing of the prison at Guantánamo and negotiating with allies for “a new international understanding” on the status of “dangerous detainees” is the corollary of this laudable position of principle.

An old international institution like the United Nations, however, can’t be what McCain is referring to when he argues for the reinforcement of “global alliances” with Washington as “the core of a new global compact – the League of Democracies.”

The League is defined by McCain as the “more than one hundred democratic nations around the world” capable of “advancing our values and defending our shared interests.”

Another statement of principle from McCain about U.S. involvement in negotiations to establish a globally and “economically responsible” post-Kyoto system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions is sufficiently broad to allow for just about any kind of interpretation.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. elections.