These days, it has become fashionable to claim that the foreign policies of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) are nothing but the continuation of the misguided policies of President George W. Bush. Democrats point to McCain’s initial authorization for the war in Iraq and his support for the surge as a sign of a trigger-happy warhawk, too much like the current president. His rhetoric about the war on terror as the “transcendent struggle of our time” is taken to be evidence for his support of a militarist neoconservative agenda. In all this, they happen to be right.
By coming out against the Iraq war from the beginning, Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) appears to have a fundamentally different foreign policy. Nevertheless, there are some issues with Obama’s foreign policy ideology that all Americans should be concerned about.
Consider Obama’s statement, “I am proud that I opposed this war from the start, because I thought that it would lead to the disastrous conditions that we’ve seen on the ground in Iraq.” Though this was an accurate forecast, Obama’s comment suggests that his opposition to the Iraq war stemmed not from a general dislike of foreign entanglements, but the specifics of Iraq. One must wonder whether he would have supported the Iraq war—or “spreading democracy” elsewhere—were it just a bit easier. Though Obama opposed this war, we have no good reason to believe he will be against the next one.
At different times, Obama has also mentioned the lack of international support and the uncertainty in the costs and length of the mission as reasons for being opposed to the war in Iraq. What’s wrong with this picture, you might ask? When one bases his judgment to go to war on so many disparate criteria, chances are that one of them will fit the bill some time or another. The lack of a single consistent principle for opposing a war allows politicians to pick and choose their wars based on the reason du jour. The fundamental problem is that even though politicians often accuse one another of supporting unnecessary and ill-conceived wars, rarely do they articulate a firm moral and philosophical foundation for how and when to use military force against others in general.
Unfortunately, this broader problem is reflected in both of the major-party candidates this year. Even though McCain and Obama differ on Iraq, their respective failures to articulate a general standard by which the use of military intervention could be justified is a great concern. For this reason, it is difficult to have confidence that their foreign policies would be dramatically different. Were Obama or McCain to voice their support for a ‘non-interventionist’ foreign policy—advocated by our Founding Fathers—things would be different. Reserving military force for responding to clear acts of aggression would make it clear to the American people under which strict conditions their sacrifices would be required.
The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in biology. He is the vice president of the Columbia College Libertarians.