McCain's Foreign Policy Could Ignite Cold War II

John McCain’s foreign policy—“combustible” and “idealist”—could provoke a second Cold War, pitting the world’s democracies against its autocracies, John Judis writes in the New Republic—at best creating “gratuitous tensions” and at worst wholly “reproducing” the USSR-US “confrontation.” Mac’s proposal for a league of democracies shows that the Republican—erroneously—thinks the world is defined by regimes struggling to impose their form of government on others.

"McCain, known in the Senate for his quickness to anger, has displayed a growing tendency to personalize foreign policy, seemingly basing his approach to Moscow on his hostility toward Vladimir Putin," Judis writes. "If John McCain's foreign policy is changing, it is only becoming more combustible, not less." His "cowboy antagonism," Judis concludes, "may be more a product of his tendency to anger—and a mentality that more closely resembles the warrior than the statesman." (More John McCain stories.)