McCain: Life shaped judgment on use of force

WASHINGTON -- On Sept. 28, 1983, a freshman Republican took to the House floor and did something unexpected: He opposed President Ronald Reagan's plan to keep U.S. troops in war-torn Lebanon.

"I am prepared to accept the consequences of our withdrawal," said Rep. John McCain of Arizona.

That speech helped make McCain a national political figure. It also marked the first time he publicly wrestled with a question that has vexed many presidents. When and how should American troops ever be committed to battle?

A quarter-century in the House of Representatives and Senate yields a mixed answer in McCain's case. He has backed the use of force many times, including Grenada, Panama, the Balkans and the Persian Gulf (twice). The presumptive Republican presidential nominee opposed military missions in Lebanon, Somalia and Haiti, arguing that the national interest did not justify them.

"My judgment is shaped by a total of my learning and study and experiences for all my adult life," McCain said in an interview this month with USA TODAY.

Foreign policy will be McCain's theme today as he addresses the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. The speech is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. ET.

He spent 51/2 years as a Vietnamese prisoner of war, but the 71-year-old senator from Arizona calls "experience in combat" only one of his qualifications for commander in chief. He also cites his education at the U.S. Naval Academy, reading, consulting with experts and years in Congress.

It's that résumé he plans to emphasize in the race this fall against the Democratic nominee, either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York or Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

Any use of American troops, McCain said in the interview, must involve a threat to national security, promote U.S. interests and values and have a well-defined mission with a good chance of success. "You look at all the factors," he said.

Military force, he said, should be used only after diplomacy has failed. "We always resist it," he said, "to the point where it has to be the ultimate last resort before you send young Americans into harm's way."

The Iraq war met this test at first, McCain said, as a U.S.-led coalition quickly captured Baghdad and deposed Saddam Hussein. However, the United States "squandered" its victory because "we allowed chaos, and we allowed the whole thing to deteriorate," he said.

Such failure, McCain said, is a lesson for future U.S. interventions: "The post-conflict phase" must "be prepared for and executed."

Before the war, McCain said little about a post-Saddam Iraq. "It's a safe assumption that Iraqis will be grateful to whoever is responsible for securing their freedom," he said in a Senate debate in October 2002.

Susan Rice, an Obama foreign policy adviser, said McCain failed to follow his own guidance in supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Rice calls it "the Bush-McCain war in Iraq."

McCain's record indicates he is "quite ready to use force when he thinks it would be a necessity," said Charles Kupchan, a Georgetown University foreign relations specialist. Kupchan, a national security aide under President Bill Clinton, calls McCain "more of a pragmatic hawk than a hawkish ideologue."

Examples of McCain's conditions for using military force include:

Lebanon and Panama:Though military intervention should be determined by threats to U.S. interests, McCain said, a president should also ask, "Can United States military intervention achieve the goal?"

In 1983, McCain said the answer was no, so he opposed Reagan's request to extend the U.S. deployment in Lebanon. Preventing chaos there was in the U.S. interest, he said, "but sending Marines in a 'peacekeeping' role was not going to beneficially affect the situation."

In October of that year, McCain looked prescient. A TNT-filled truck rammed a Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. U.S. forces left Lebanon the next year.

The invasion of Panama in late 1989 was an achievable national interest, McCain said. It had the specific mission of arresting Manuel Noriega after he had been indicted on drug charges, refused to honor election results and his troops had killed a U.S. Marine.

The Balkans:Military force, McCain said, must be used to ensure American values, such as democracy and freedom, as well as U.S. national interests.

That's why he backed the commitment of U.S. troops to the former Yugoslavia in 1995 to protect a peace deal with Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. Although he once opposed sending troops there, he said then that the United States had to honor international commitments and that "there is a real prospect that hostilities will reignite" without U.S. troops in a multinational force.

"America's security interests were not threatened in Bosnia," McCain told USA TODAY. "They were not threatened in Kosovo. … But America's values — to prevent genocide — are our interests. It was not in our interests to see genocide in Bosnia."

When Serbia invaded the renegade province of Kosovo in 1999, McCain criticized President Clinton for ruling out the possibility of ground troops in favor of an air assault. He urged Clinton to use all necessary force. Still, the air assault drove the Serbs out of Kosovo.

Somalia and Haiti. McCain said the invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980s met his test of a well-defined mission for U.S. troops, but not the interventions in Somalia and Haiti in the 1990s.

In late 1992, McCain backed the first President Bush's humanitarian mission to Somalia.

In 1993, however, he criticized Clinton's efforts at nation building in Somalia, calling it "an unfocused mission that lacks an objective."

McCain also opposed Clinton's planned invasion of Haiti in 1994.