This is a provocative analysis of John McCain’s foreign policy by John Judis, who sees McCain as less flexible and more emotional than Nixon. His conclusion:
Nixon, who could get into a funk over domestic opponents, was capable of an eerie detachment when it came to evaluating foreign leaders. He could also appreciate the historic insecurities that led countries to distrust the United States and each other. He confined his apocalyptic warnings of a worldwide communist conspiracy to domestic politics. He understood that beneath the appearance of socialist solidarity lay growing hostility between Russia and China, which the United States could exploit.
By contrast, McCain is a radical idealist who wants to transform the world and is reluctant to acknowledge limits to this enterprise. He imagines a “democratic” Iraq opposed to Iran and occupied indefinitely by American troops. And McCain does not seem to possess Nixon’s detachment when it comes to foreign affairs. He can’t see what drove Putin and now his successor to distance themselves from the United States; or what–since the time of the pro-American Shah–has driven Iran, irrespective of Ahmadinejad, to seek a nuclear capability.
If anything, McCain brings the same readiness to anger to bear in foreign relations that marked his tenure in the Senate. But it’s one thing to blow up at a colleague and quite another to do so at a foreign president. The former may lead to difficulties in getting a bill passed; the latter to protracted conflict and even war. If one insists upon identifying a nation with its leader and seeing that leader as either incurably wicked or deeply irrational, then that rules out diplomacy or deterrence. Regime change becomes the only way of addressing a foe’s antagonism. That, of course, was the argument that McCain and others used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and he seems to be making the same argument about Russia and Iran. John McCain has certainly had moments of greatness as a man and a politician, but, as a statesman, he’s no Richard Nixon.
Update: Meanwhile, I wonder what McCain–who scoffs at talking to the Iranians–is going to say about this. For the rest of the world, however, it’s terrific news that Bush has agreed to talk to the Iranians about nuclear issues–and a sign, perhaps, that the Administration has learned something from its experience with North Korea. (One lesson: This meeting is the beginning of a long, long process, so don’t expect the U.S. and Iranian negotiators emerge from it singing kumbaya.)