So-called pragmatists worry that they are being outmaneuvered by neocons
Sen. John McCain has long made his decades of experience in foreign policy and national security the centerpiece of his political identity and suggests he would bring to the White House a fully formed view of the world. But now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake are expressing concern that McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush's first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.
The concerns have emerged in the weeks since McCain became his party's presumptive nominee and began more formally assembling a list of foreign policy advisers. Among those on the list are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan, an author who helped write much of the foreign policy speech that McCain delivered in Los Angeles on March 26, in which he described himself as "a realistic idealist." Others are security analyst Max Boot and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.
Prominent members of the pragmatist group, often called realists, say they are also wary of the McCain campaign's chief foreign policy aide, Randy Scheunemann, who was an adviser to former Sens. Trent Lott and Bob Dole and who has longtime ties to neoconservatives. In 2002, Scheunemann was a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraqi exile and Pentagon favorite, Ahmad Chalabi. "It maybe too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain's soul," said Lawrence Eagleburger, a secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, who is a member of the pragmatist camp. "But if it's not a fight, I am convinced there is at least going to be an attempt. I can't prove it, but I'm worried that it's taking place."
McCain, who is aware of the concerns, said this week that he took foreign policy advice from a wide variety of people. "Some of them are viewed as 'more conservative,' quote," he said, adding, "but I do have a broad array of people that I talk to, and hear from, and read what they write."
The worry about McCain is centered among a group of foreign policy realists who have long been close to him and who lost out to the hawks in the intense ideological battles of the first term of the current White House. The group includes former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush.
Although the concerns at this point are focused more on access to McCain than on major policy differences, there have been some substantive areas of dispute. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was said to have been disturbed by McCain's hard-line attitude toward Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the March 26 speech, according to someone who has spoken recently with Kissinger. "I have no comment on that paragraph," Kissinger said when asked directly. "You have to take my judgment from what I have written. But I am a strong supporter of the senator."
Similarly, Scowcroft is said to have expressed reservations about McCain's call for creating a League of Democracies as a complement to the United Nations. An associate of Scowcroft's said he viewed it as an effort to diminish the United Nations a target of scorn among neoconservatives.
Philip Zelikow, a former top adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is not working for McCain, said it was not surprising that there were worries among the realists about the presumptive Republican nominee. "It's partly because McCain hasn't settled himself in one camp," said Zelikow. " ... But if you're in McCain's position, is it in his interest to settle the argument now? It's in his interest to embrace the largest number of Republicans and not declare that he is in favor of one faction or another." 
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