WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has staked much of his campaign on a proposal he hopes will convince voters that he can extricate the United States from Iraq more quickly and at less cost than President Bush.
But Kerry’s plan, which promises to effectively shift much of the Iraq war burden from America to its allies, so far is failing to receive the international support the proposal would need to succeed.
Kerry in recent appearances and interviews has been intensifying his effort to spotlight what he sees as the Bush administration’s mistakes in Iraq – especially the failure to broaden international involvement – as a fundamental difference between the two candidates. But Kerry’s proposals depend on changing the minds of foreign leaders who do not want to defy their electorates by sending forces into what many consider to be a U.S.-made mess.
“I understand why John Kerry is making proposals of this kind, but there is a lack of realism in them,” Menzies Campbell, a British lawmaker who is a spokesman on defense issues for the Liberal Democratic Party, said.
Many allied countries may welcome a new team in Washington after years of friction with the Bush administration. But foreign leaders are making it clear they don’t want to add enough of their own troops to allow U.S. forces to scale back to a minority share in Iraq, as Kerry has proposed.
“Some Europeans are rather concerned that Mr. Kerry might have expectations for relief (from abroad) that are going to be hard to meet,” said one senior European diplomat in a statement echoed in several capitals.
Kerry said last week that by building up international support, it would be a “reasonable goal” to replace most U.S. troops in Iraq with foreign forces within his first term.
In an interview with National Public Radio on Friday, Kerry said: “I believe that within a year from now, we could significantly reduce American forces in Iraq, and that’s my plan.” The plan could be accomplished by increasing the number of other foreign troops, and increasing the size of the Iraqi security personnel, Kerry aides say.
Yet some key countries have already ruled out providing troops, and others are badly strained from the deployments they have already made.
The French and German governments have made clear that sending troops is out of the question. Although Japan has supplied a 550-member force as a symbol of its international commitment, analysts there see little chance it would agree to send more.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, ruled out a commitment of troops.
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