Democrats offering cowboy diplomacy on NAFTA

Washington Times:

A top foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain accused his two Democratic rivals yesterday of unilateralist "cowboy diplomacy" for demanding a re-negotiation of the NAFTA free-trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

In a debate of senior foreign policy surrogates for Mr. McCain and Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann used a line of attack often employed by Democrats against the Bush administration.

"I thought the one thing your two campaigns agreed on was that the era of 'cowboy diplomacy' was over," he said, adding that Mr. McCain was a strong backer of the NAFTA deal.

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But on a string of hot-button foreign policy topics, the Clinton and Obama advisers offered few clear policy differences with Mr. Bush on issues ranging from the Colombia-Ecuador border clash and Israel's right to target Palestinian militants to expanding NATO and the Pentagon's plan to put a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

Susan Rice, a onetime top State Department official representing Mr. Obama, and Mara Rudman, a former foreign policy aide on Capitol Hill and the White House representing Mrs. Clinton, repeatedly criticized the tone and style of the Bush administration's foreign policy, while in the end recommending many of the same policies the administration is pushing.

Both, for example, echoed Mr. Bush's strong backing of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's decision last week to strike at leftist rebels across the border in Ecuador, a decision that enraged Quito and sharply escalated tensions with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Both also said the Democratic candidates supported the administration's proposed missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, despite the fierce opposition of Russia, but only if the system proves feasible.

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Speaking for Mr. McCain, Mr. Scheunemann joked, "Please keep running those '3 a.m.' ads about who you want to answer the phone, because we like them."

The Democrat candidates have been pretty quite on events in and around Colombia, but they would be even more supportive if they would push the House Democrats to approve the trade agreement with Colombia. I question Obama's commitment to the missile defense program in Europe since he has said he will not fully fund missile defense. He has adopted the liberal Democrat critique of missile defense despite the obvious success of the program.