This is the second time that Randy Scheunemann has served as national security coordinator for a John McCain presidential run. A veteran of Republican staffs on Capitol Hill, he advocated "regime change" in Iraq for years before the 2003 invasion, first with the Project for the New American Century and then with the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
NJ: How does Senator McCain's approach to national security diverge from that of President Bush?
Scheunemann: It is obvious that Senator McCain has had some deep and abiding differences with the Bush administration on a whole range of issues: climate change, detainees, conduct of the war in Iraq, alliance management, Russia. There are many cases where he has disagreed publicly and at considerable risk politically.
He has a two-decade track record of being involved in national security policy on virtually every major decision and two decades of military service before that. Senator Obama, three and a half years ago, was an Illinois state senator. He [has] positions on his website that are based on memoranda his 200-plus foreign-policy and national security team have briefed him up on. I don't know what his position is, frankly, on so many of these issues. It's like reading tea leaves, divining what's on his website and what various advisers say. Even in the few short years he was in the Senate, he hasn't been there for that many votes. In 2007, he argued, he didn't have time to hold hearings on NATO's role in Afghanistan because he was too busy running for president.
NJ: Many observers, however, argue that there is a real convergence between Obama and McCain on some key security issues, such as adding 100,000 troops to the Army and Marine Corps--an expensive proposition. How do you see it?
Scheunemann: Senator McCain advocated going up to 900,000 [total Army and Marine Corps troops], going beyond the planned current increase [of 750,000]. And it's not just advocating enlargement of the ground forces. He's advocated the establishment of a security advisory corps, dedicated units to take over the training of foreign militaries.
I have no idea where Senator Obama is on defense spending. What Senator McCain has said is that in his first year there will be a freeze on nondefense discretionary spending--excluding the defense budget and veterans affairs.
NJ: Isn't there some real convergence of views on arms control, where both McCain and Obama endorse the kind of multilateral agreements that the Bush administration has disdained?
Scheunemann: [McCain is] calling for strengthening the nonproliferation treaty, calling for international storage and enrichment facilities--[positions that are] different in some respects from the Bush administration.
Senator Obama likes to talk about his long role of leading in nonproliferation matters, and that is at best a gross exaggeration. There is a single piece of legislation he co-sponsored with Senator [Richard] Lugar [R-Ind.], mostly about conventional weapons, [not nuclear ones]. It was so noncontroversial, it was adopted unanimously.
NJ: Moscow would have to go along with strengthening international arms control--but hasn't Senator McCain called for kicking Russia out of the G-8 summit of industrial powers?
Scheunemann: He first called for that in 2003--for a re-evaluation of Russia's role and membership in the G-8. He realizes it is not a decision the United States can take alone or will take alone, [but rather] will discuss this with our closest allies.
What Senator McCain has regularly pointed out, since 2003, is that the Russia that is in the G-8 now is very different from the Russia that was invited to join the G-7 [in 1998]. The G-8 is traditionally the organization for the world's largest market democracies, and Russia is neither. If the decision were being made today, there's virtually no one who would argue that Russia would be invited to join. Here is a country that is credibly accused of the assassination of a British citizen on British soil. This is a country that has cut off energy supplies to Europe--even in the Soviet Union, energy was never used in that manner. It does not do our values or those of our allies any good to not speak out.
But, on strategic arms reductions, and a verification regime based in a treaty--two things which the Bush administration has opposed--McCain favors taking up Russia on its suggestion that it might make sense to globalize the [1987] ban on intermediate-range nuclear forces. Right now we are the only two countries in the world that are banned from having them.
This article appeared in the Saturday, July 12, 2008 edition of National Journal.
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