McCain and Obama share some military policy goals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Under the next U.S. president, the military will grow, fewer troops will be in Iraq, more will go to Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay prison will close.

Those visions are shared by John McCain and Barack Obama, the two candidates for the November election, demonstrating a large measure of agreement on how to run the world's only superpower military despite their public clashes over issues such as Iraq.

Both Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, and McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, support a large, strong and well-funded military and have made clear they are willing to use it to protect U.S. interests -- alone if necessary.

"There is a consensus on the attitude towards the military between McCain and Obama," said Josef Braml, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

"The United States is looking for allies, but when it comes to certain security issues -- the protection of the United States and Israel -- neither of the two has left any doubt over the fact that they are willing to use military action unilaterally," he said.

Advisers to both candidates say they do not foresee cuts in the defense budget, at least in the short-term.

At more than $600 billion this year, U.S. defense spending accounts for about half the global total and has risen by about 85 percent under President George W. Bush, who initiated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Both McCain and Obama also support continuing a program begun under Bush to expand the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, severely strained by the two wars, to a combined strength of some 750,000 active-duty troops.

McCain favors going further, with up to 900,000 personnel. But neither candidate supports a draft, which military officers also strongly oppose.

IRAQ DIFFERENCES NARROW

The deeply unpopular Iraq war was long expected to be a major campaign theme and it may still be significant. But a big decline in violence there has taken some of the heat out of the issue and the candidates' differences have narrowed.

Both now foresee troop cuts in Iraq, even if they disagree on the reasons for them.

Obama says forces must be freed up to tackle worsening insurgent violence in Afghanistan, which he views -- together with lawless border areas of Pakistan -- as the central front in America's fight against Islamist militants.

He has a goal of withdrawing all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. But he has signaled flexibility and wants to keep a "residual force" in Iraq, likely to consist of tens of thousands of troops.

McCain says Iraq is where al Qaeda has chosen to fight the United States and must have priority. But he too predicts troop cuts in Iraq, based on security gains there.

"Certainly the positions of the presidential candidates seem to be converging," said Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

The United States currently has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq and about 35,000 in Afghanistan.

Obama has pledged to send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan -- probably around 7,000 troops.

McCain has said commanders should get three brigades they have requested but his emphasis on Iraq raises some questions about when they would be available.

He has also vowed to reform complex command structures in Afghanistan, where about 15,000 U.S. troops serve in a NATO-led force with contributions from some 40 countries.

MORAL REPUTATION

Both candidates have also pledged to restore America's moral reputation, tarnished by the detention of terrorism suspects for years without trial following the September 11, 2001 attacks and harsh interrogation of detainees.

McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, and Obama have both said the detention center for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba will close if they are elected.

Despite their support for a strong military, the two candidates have also pledged to use force only as a last resort. Obama in particular has stressed that he wants more use of other elements of U.S. power such as diplomacy.

"Obama has, I think, struck a different tone," said Michael Fullilove, an Australian analyst for the Sydney-based Lowy Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"Certainly you get the impression he's going to at least de-emphasize the use of force."

Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the two candidates' differences were due more to their different backgrounds than any deep ideological divide.

McCain was more likely to focus on national security and defense as president as he had more experience in that area while Obama would more likely concentrate on domestic policy as that was where most of his expertise lay, said Cordesman.

"I think that the basic difference isn't philosophical," he said. "The fact is these are both pragmatic men."

Cordesman also cautioned against trying to predict too much based on campaign policies.

Jimmy Carter ran for the presidency in 1976 pledging to withdraw U.S. ground forces from South Korea, Cordesman noted. Carter won but more than 30 years later there are still more than 28,000 U.S. troops in the east Asian country.

(Additional reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich in Berlin; Editing by Kristin Roberts and David Storey)