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E-mailKerry forming an army of foreign policy advisers
The experts being consulted span a broad ideological range of Democratic opinion -- to the point where some party thinkers worry that the presumptive presidential nominee is not defining a sufficiently distinctive vision of how America should pursue its goals in the world.
Insiders, though, said they believe those with the most influence tend to be advisers who support the forceful use of military power -- including in Iraq -- yet place a much higher priority than Bush and his team on maintaining support among allies.
Early speculation about who might serve as Kerry's secretary of state centers mostly on candidates who fit that description -- Richard Holbrooke and Sandy Berger, former top officials in the Clinton administration; U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., D-Del., the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee; and more distantly, U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., whose commitment to traditional alliances now place him much closer to the center of thinking in the Democratic than the Republican Party.
"I think the mantra of the Democratic thinkers is: 'Together, if possible; alone, if absolutely necessary,' " said James Rubin, a former senior Clinton official who is joining the Kerry campaign as a top foreign policy adviser.
"That's a key difference between the Bush foreign policy and the Democratic foreign policy: Do you get enough benefit out of the (argument for) international legitimacy and burden-sharing in order to justify adjustments in tactics and timing in what you are trying to achieve? More often than not, (Democrats think) the answer is yes. Clearly in Iraq, the answer should have been yes."
The common assumptions among the Democrats advising Kerry contrast with the dominant views in the Bush team -- not just on the value of alliances, but also on many other fronts.
One of the most important distinctions involves the risks the United States now faces.
Although the Bush team tends to see the greatest danger in "rogue regimes" -- such as the three nations the president identified in his "axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran and North Korea) -- many Democrats place more emphasis on problems rooted in forces beyond the control of any state or government, such as the spread of militant Islamic ideology or the growth of al-Qaida.
The foreign-policy team coalescing around Kerry has drawn little attention; however, it could shape the interactions between a President Kerry and the world ,as much as the candidate's own pronouncements on the campaign trail.
Surrounded by a team mostly committed to the aggressive projection of U.S. power, Bush has pursued a far more confrontational approach than he indicated in the 2000 campaign, when he called for a "humble" foreign policy.
For all the shared foreign-policy views among the Democrats whom Kerry has consulted, many questions remain about how he would fill in the details -- and whom he would ask to do so, if he should win. Although many believe Kerry listens most to the tough-minded internationalists, such as Biden and Holbrooke, he hasn't formally identified an inner-circle of advisers considered favorites for the top foreign-policy jobs.
Adding to the uncertainty over his direction, the campaign effectively has delegated the process of defining foreign-policy alternatives on many issues to the Alliance for American Leadership -- a Democratic group that organizes task forces of party thinkers on world affairs.
After serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 19 years, Kerry has placed much less emphasis on identifying a formal team of foreign-policy gurus than Bill Clinton in 1992 or George W. Bush in 2000.
As governors with limited experience in world affairs, both men wanted to buttress their foreign-policy credentials by conspicuously associating themselves with experienced and reassuring figures.
At the outset of his campaign, Clinton met with Democratic foreign-policy thinkers in a series of dinners organized partly by Berger, who went on to serve as his national security adviser.
Beginning in early 1999, nearly two years before he was elected, Bush convened regularly with a group assembled by Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz. Almost everyone in the group, which dubbed itself the "Vulcans," obtained senior foreign-policy positions in the Bush administration.
Probably the closest analogue to Bush's Vulcans have been a group of Kerry advisers, who hold a weekly conference call directed by Rand Beers, the campaign's "national security and homeland security coordinator."
The group has included Lee Feinstein, the former deputy director of policy planning at the State Department; and Joe Wilson, the former diplomat whose report to the CIA challenged Bush's claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.
Most observers consider the Kerry campaign's signing of Beers last May a major coup -- Beers had served every president since Richard M. Nixon and had resigned only weeks before from the White House's top counter-terrorism job under Bush -- the same position earlier held by Richard Clarke.
Beers quit in protest over the war in Iraq, which he believed would weaken the struggle against al-Qaida.
Beers said he never had met or even spoken with Kerry before accepting his position as the campaign's top foreign-policy official.
"I met him the end of May, the beginning of June," Beers said, who came to the campaign largely through a contact with a former Kerry aide who served under Beers in the Clinton State Department.
Kerry's foreign-policy team also is operating in an environment of intellectual change, which inevitably could shape his presidency if the Massachusetts senator would win the Nov. 2 election.
Even though Democratic Party divided over the U.S.-led war on Iraq, most of the Democrats likely to fill key positions in a Kerry administration are comfortable using American force than Democrats a decade ago, or certainly two decades ago. The party is continuing an evolution -- which began in the Clinton administration -- to be less reluctant to commit U.S. forces abroad, a common stance among Democrats for years after Vietnam.
