Important visit for McCain
U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain joined Vice President Dick Cheney on March 17 on an official visit to Iraq, where the two held separate meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi leaders. Though this is not McCain’s first run in Baghdad, the timing of this particular visit will give his foreign policy credentials a significant boost in the U.S. presidential campaign.
It is no coincidence that Cheney and McCain have popped up in Iraq side by side. The main audience for this visit is Iran, and the message being delivered is clear: the Iraq policy of U.S. President George W. Bush is here to stay if McCain becomes the next U.S. president. While the Democratic nominating contest is still in full swing, McCain appears (for now) to be the candidate to beat in the U.S. presidential race. The Iranians, having just come through their own parliamentary elections, are watching the race closely to decide their next steps on Iraq.
Iran is facing a crucial decision: strike a deal with the current U.S. administration on Iraq, or risk facing the unknown when a new president takes office. And time is running out. With the U.S. presidential election absorbing much of Washington’s attention this year, Tehran is looking at a tight window of opportunity in which to come to an understanding.
But McCain is taking a calculated risk in aligning himself so closely with the Bush administration: The decision could turn into a major liability for him if Iraq falls apart at the seams before November. The bulk of Iraq’s stability rests on a foundation of continuing progress toward a U.S.-Iranian deal — but with Israel signaling an offensive in Lebanon against Iran’s Hezbollah proxy, and with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad stalling on the crucial issue of Iraq’s Sunni former Baathists into the political and security apparatus, the security situation in Iraq has the potential to run into real turbulence in the coming weeks and months.
McCain therefore must see some underlying value in linking himself to Cheney on this trip. McCain has made clear in his campaign that, under his presidency, the United States would be in Iraq for the long haul — a policy designed to assure the Sunni Arab world that the United States will remain the primary blocker to Iranian expansionist desires in Iraq. But McCain could just as easily relay this message — and thus ground himself with the national security vote in the United States — while keeping his distance from the unpopularity of the Bush administration. In other words, McCain has no real need to show up in Baghdad alongside Cheney — who is perhaps the most unpopular government official in the United States — unless he sees the current administration heading for a foreign policy success on Iraq that he could use to ride his way to the presidency.
Regardless of his campaign strategy, McCain is signaling to the Iranians that his presidency would continue the Bush administration’s policies on Iraq, and that Tehran should not maintain any false hopes that U.S. troops will withdraw from Iraq and leave a massive power vacuum for the Iranians to fill. Whether the Iranians take that message to heart and decide to roll the dice on Iraq now, rather than later, remains to be seen.
AI
