Rivals split on U.S. power, but ideas defy labels

Mr. Obama has praised what the United Nations calls a “responsibility to protect,” a doctrine that elevates aiding oppressed populations over respecting national borders. Mr. McCain has agreed, but both men have emphasized the need for case-by-case judgment.

In Foreign Affairs, Mr. Obama laid out a position that is the opposite of President Bush’s attitude in 2000 but sounds much like his attitude now. Mr. Obama wrote that he would use the military to “support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations or confront mass atrocities.” But he cited the first President Bush as the example to follow in gaining “the clear support and participation of others.”

In a debate in early October, Mr. Obama said that in Darfur the United States “could be providing logistical support, setting up a no-fly zone, at relatively little cost to us” if it had help from other nations. But when pressed, Mr. Obama’s aides said that he would be hesitant to commit American ground troops, who are in short supply because of the demands of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dealing with great powers
Within hours of the Russian attack on Georgia in August, Mr. McCain was on the phone to his foreign policy advisers, seeking to calibrate the right response. It was a critical moment for a man who has surrounded himself with members of both warring camps in the Republican Party — the neoconservatives nursing their wounds after Iraq went bad, and the pragmatists who rose again in Mr. Bush’s second term.

“He had people telling him, ‘John, you want to think about the long term — we need the Russians on Iran, and the Georgians sort of invited this,’ ” a friend who talked to him in that period said. But in the end, Mr. McCain stepped out with a strong defense of Georgia, while Mr. Obama issued a more even-handed statement, calling for all sides to return to the uneasy status quo that had prevailed in South Ossetia.

While Mr. Obama’s reaction was much closer to the Bush administration’s, Mr. McCain seized on the moment to portray Mr. Obama as weak. Mr. McCain’s friends say his criticism of Russia was a direct outgrowth of his prisoner-of-war experience and his cold war upbringing. He regularly reminds voters than when he looks into the eyes of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, he sees three letters: K.G.B.

The difference has also played out in how Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama have embraced a proposal by four prominent cold warriors — former Senator Sam Nunn, former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, and former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger — toward reducing the American nuclear arsenal to zero. Both candidates have said they support the goal, but Mr. McCain has sounded less enthusiastic, saying he would reduce nuclear weapons “to the lowest level we judge necessary.” Many conservatives also object to deep cuts in the arsenal, saying that could harm the country’s ability to remain the world’s dominant superpower and encourage nuclear challengers to build up to American levels.

By contrast, Mr. Obama, who was only 28 when the Berlin Wall fell, has argued that unless the United States and Russia radically reduce their stockpiles, they will never persuade smaller nations like Iran and North Korea to forgo their nuclear weapons programs.

Both men say they share the goal of keeping the United States the most powerful nation on earth. Mr. McCain emphasizes hard power first, though his advisers say that on global warming, among other issues, he has shown a flexibility that President Bush rarely demonstrated. More than any previous presidential candidate, Mr. Obama has emphasized the idea of soft power — the ability to lead by moral example and nonmilitary action — and his challenge if elected, his advisers acknowledge, is to convince the world that an untested young senator also has a steely edge.

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