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SENATOR JOHN McCain (R-AZ) may describe himself as a “realistic idealist,” but this formulation does little to paper over the very real schism among Republicans (and conservatives in general) about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy. McCain has assembled a diverse group of advisors for his campaign, but should he win the presidency this fall, he will have to choose between two markedly different approaches to guiding America in the world.
In the aftermath of the Bush administration, particularly the impact of the war in Iraq, conservative politicians and policy intellectuals are again debating the nature of the global order, the purpose and use of American power, and what, if anything, is required to legitimize the exercise of that power, particularly military force. What is striking is the extent to which the divide between the two broad groupings in the McCain campaign (the pragmatists or realists on one hand and the idealists or neoconservatives on the other) resembles the divisions that had emerged in the closing days of the George H. W. Bush administration—and the continuing relevance of two documents, one produced by then–Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney’s Pentagon, the other developed by the James Baker/Lawrence Eagleburger State Department.
The former, the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), has been widely discussed, and many have linked the ideas of its authors in the early 1990s to the 2002 National Security Strategy and the subsequent war in Iraq.