Bipartisan critics blast Kerry on foreign policy

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back Tuesday against withering criticism by Republicans and some fellow Democrats, defending the Obama administration’s response to an emboldened Russia, nuclear talks with Iran and the Syrian civil war.

Defiant before the committee he once chaired, Kerry dismissed arguments that his globe-trotting attempts to broker a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians was a futile exercise and that the U.S. has been ineffective in ending the three-year civil war in Syria.

His insistence did little to deter members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a nearly three-hour hearing that was supposed to focus on the State Department’s budget but instead turned into a rapid tour of world conflicts and divisions.

“I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whom Kerry fleetingly considered as a possible running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2004. Pointing to negotiations on Syria, the Middle East and Iran, McCain said that on the major issues, “this administration is failing very badly.”

Republicans seized on President Vladimir Putin’s bold moves in Ukraine and Russia’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula last month as further signs of an Obama administration policy “spinning out of control” as Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, described it. McCain reminded Kerry that President Theodore Roosevelt had adopted the tenet to speak softly and carry a big stick.

“What you’re doing is talking strongly and carrying a very small stick; in fact, a twig,” McCain said.

Kerry rejected McCain’s “premature judgment about the failure of everything,” and reminded his fellow Vietnam veteran that the peace talks to end that war took years with months debating the shape of the negotiating table. Diplomacy is a far better option than the alternative of war, the secretary said.

“Your friend, Teddy Roosevelt, also said that the credit belongs to the people who are in the arena who are trying to get things done, and we’re trying to get something done,” Kerry told McCain.