Fred Kaplan wonders how much John McCain actually knows about foreign policy. Forget the gaffes, or the unfortunate invocation (well, the three unfortunate invocations) of "Czechoslovakia," a country that hasn't existed for a few decades. Look at McCain's real ideas. For instance, McCain wants to boot Russia out of the G8. Kaplan sees two main problems with this. "First, all the G-8's other members are opposed to the notion. Second, the main issues that concern the G-8—for instance, climate change, energy policy, nuclear nonproliferation, and counterterrorism—cannot be fully addressed without Russia's participation." Oh. Okay, but everyone gets one bad idea, right? Well, what about McCain's rhetorically appealing call for a League of Democracies (a pretty clear way to reformulate a UN-style body that leaves out China and Russia). Kaplan's not much more taken with this approach. "First," he writes, "democratic nations often differ on high-profile issues (e.g., the invasion of Iraq, the rules of engagement in Afghanistan, the Kyoto Treaty, etc.). Second, very few of the world's pressing problems break down along the lines of democracies vs. nondemocracies, either by topic or constituency. Third, creating such an overtly ideological bloc as a central tool of foreign policy would only alienate the excluded nations—and possibly incite them to form an opposing bloc. The challenge is to find common solutions to global problems, not to encumber them in a new Cold War." And let's not even get into Rogue State Rollback. So what we're left with is a candidate who makes a lot of foreign policy gaffes, has a lot of bad foreign policy ideas, and was wrong on the central foreign policy question of the past decade -- yet none of this has proven an impediment for him to run on his foreign policy chops.Weird country we've got.
