July 11 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain would take a ``harder line'' toward Iraq, Iran and Russia than the Bush administration, said Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
``Senator McCain is running to the right of President Bush,'' said Holbrooke, a supporter of McCain's Democratic rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. ``He is taking very strong positions which really are neoconservative.''
McCain's foreign-policy ``advisory team has the same schizophrenic approach that George W. Bush has had,'' said Holbrooke. The Arizona Republican senator's backers, he said, include ``realists'' such as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker, as well as ``neoconservatives'' such as Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who split with the Democrats over his support for the war in Iraq.
To date, McCain, 71, has sided with the more hawkish elements, said Holbrooke, a longtime Democrat who served in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
``Iraq, he's harder line; Iran, he's harder line,'' Holbrooke said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' scheduled to air today. ``He's famously said that the only thing worse than war with Iran is a nuclear Iran.'' In addition, Holbrooke said McCain ``wants to throw the Russians out of the G-8, which is an impossibility and a bad idea.'' |
