How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” John Kerry faced the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and spoke of an unjust, unwinnable war in a distant land. “We have watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn’t lose, and we couldn’t retreat, and because it didn’t matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point.”

A fierce opponent of continued American military intervention overseas, Kerry addressed the Senate with the passion of an angry young man – which is exactly what he was at the time. The subject of his speech to the Foreign Relations Committee was not Iraq but Vietnam, and was made more than three decades ago. How has the Democratic candidate for president changed over the ensuing years, and what would it mean for the world if he defeats George W. Bush in the November election? Who would form the foreign policy team of a Kerry administration, and what would that mean for the Middle East?

Consider, first, that Kerry is no longer an angry young man: he is a veteran politician, running for the highest office in the land. As such, he needs to win the middle – to please the greatest number of voters and to offend as few as possible. Not surprisingly, his rhetoric contains less fire than it did three decades ago, his opposition to the current war couched in countless qualifiers. Senator Kerry voted in favor of war in Iraq, then voted against funding it. He wants to have it both ways, charge his critics; he flip-flops, they say. He stands for everything – and nothing at all.

Although most Democrats and some Republicans say they are dissatisfied with the way the Bush administration has handled foreign policy, both show lackluster support for the Democratic challenger. They complain that Kerry does not do enough to challenge the current administration’s policies. Indeed, Kerry shares many of the same foreign policy positions as Bush.

In agreement. Liberal Democrats are dismayed that Kerry stands by his vote for the war in Iraq, supports the concept of using a preemptive strike to thwart threats against the United States and wants to keep US troops in Iraq for an indefinite period of time. Kerry also generally agrees with Bush’s aspiration for reforms of Middle Eastern political systems.

“I certainly wouldn’t expect any dramatic change in terms of Middle East [policy],” said Ted Galen Carpenter, an analyst at the nonpartisan Cato Institute in Washington. Carpenter said he thinks Kerry supports the same plan for US military in Iraq and the broader Greater Middle East Initiative – which would push leaders in Arab states to open their economies and political systems. But Carpenter also said Kerry might be more proactive on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and return to a policy less devoted to a “pro-Sharon” plan.

Some Democratic Party leaders – including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and former presidential candidate Howard Dean – are demanding a bigger shift in the direction in US foreign policy. They have been more critical of the Bush administration, and Dean has even called for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

Democratic Party leaders say they hope Kerry can bridge differences within the party and win voters over with an attractive alternative to the current administration. The real test for him won’t occur until Kerry and Bush meet in a series of debates this fall. In the meantime, Kerry has been slowly shaping his policies and presenting them to the public. He typically uses advertisements and speeches to highlight his experience as a veteran in the Vietnam War and to portray himself as a knowledgeable, more moderate contender.

While Bush is known for his inclination to see the world as being either black or white, Kerry sees many shades of gray and his policy positions reflect those nuances. That style doesn’t always help Kerry on the campaign trail, however. The Bush team criticizes Kerry for saying he wants to devote more funds for foreign aid while voting against Bush’s $89 billion spending package for development in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Kerry voted against the package on the grounds that it was not offset in the budget with a US tax increase.)

Lead advisers. Kerry has first-rate foreign policy credentials that help him. As a senior member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry has formed relationships with foreign leaders and helped shape policy objectives. Kerry has also assembled some of the best minds in international security and diplomacy to advise him. The campaign advisers meet regularly to discuss foreign policy, convene a conference call every Monday to stay on top of breaking international news and exchange e-mail on a daily basis about the campaign’s positions.

Kerry surrounds himself with advisers who share similar principles. They want to make greater use of international organizations; they view the United States as a world leader that can push its allies to accept greater roles in the war on terror, devote more resources toward nation-building, reduce US dependence on foreign oil and rein in the development and proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Kerry’s advisers come from different backgrounds. Some served as President Clinton’s top foreign policy advisers and want to do the same for Kerry. Others formed close bonds with Kerry in the Senate and now advise him on an informal basis.

Rand Beers, a career bureaucrat in the Washington establishment who has served four administrations, was first to sign on to the campaign. He is Kerry’s top adviser on foreign policy and his likely pick to head the National Security Council. Due to an unusual set of circumstances, Beers’s decision to join the campaign created a buzz and drew attention to Kerry long before the senator emerged as the lead Democrat for the party nomination.

Beers joined the Kerry campaign eight weeks after he walked away from a job as Bush’s chief counterterrorism czar. His timing was as striking as it was explicable. Beers sent Bush a letter saying he needed to resign for family reasons – a standard line Washington political appointees use when they want to quit a job – just five days before the United States launched its war against Iraq in the spring of 2003.

Soon after, Beers complained that the Bush administration had mishandled the war in Iraq because it had not formed a broader coalition to support it, and he criticized Bush for abandoning the US military presence in Afghanistan. “The administration wasn’t matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They’re making us less secure, not more secure,” Beers told the Washington Post. Beers has since told Kerry campaign contributors he believes Kerry “will make peace a reality.” Beers now coordinates the team of Kerry foreign policy advisers.

Kerry talks with several former Clinton administration advisers who have spent the past few years in academia, working as universities professors and think-tank analysts. The Kerry crowd rejects the notion shared by many liberals in the Democratic Party that the United States should not exert its power through military force, and view military action as a last resort that should be used only after all diplomatic means are exhausted. They value a system where nations make permanent alliances to achieve common security objectives. They believe in devoting resources toward nation-building, but are less likely than the Bush administration to push for democratic reforms.

Kerry’s defense. William Perry, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and Clinton’s defense secretary, was among the first to endorse Kerry during the Democratic primaries. Perry is the lead contender for the role of defense secretary in a Kerry administration. Although Kerry once flirted with the idea of appointing Republican Senators John McCain or John Warner to the spot, conventional wisdom says he is more likely to appoint a Democrat to the role. Kerry has also named Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as a possible candidate, and Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense under Clinton who now teaches at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School, is also a contender for a high-level position in the Defense Department.

But Perry remains the most likely choice. In a May, Perry predicted that a President Kerry would persuade European nations to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq. “If we fail in Iraq, it will become a breeding ground for chaos and terrorism,” Perry said. “That is why [Kerry] has said, and I say again, we must not fail in Iraq, we must have necessary steps to keep from failing. But in order to not fail in Iraq, we must get the security right. And to get security right may take more troops than we have now, and those troops should be coming from other nations.”

Perry is known for his work on issues surrounding nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. While leading a bipartisan commission called the Aspen Strategy Group, Perry worked with Republicans – including Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice – on a proposal to strengthen the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty regime to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. Perry advocates using a combination of preemptive strikes, arms control, export controls, diplomacy, missile defense and deterrence to stop the proliferation of WMD.

“Like the war on terrorism, the war on WMD requires strong US leadership but cannot be accomplished by US action alone,” Perry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last March.

Kerry promotes himself as a leader who would restore US relations with its allies. His heavy emphasis on diplomacy promises to elevate the role of the secretary of state, which the Bush administration has been accused of downgrading. Several Kerry advisers are vying to lead the charge to restore that position. The competition primarily involves two men: Richard Holbrooke – a former ambassador, assistant secretary of state and US representative to the United Nations during the Clinton administration – and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the lead Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Both candidates have impressive resumes. Holbrooke is known for his role in negotiating the Dayton peace agreement in Bosnia and for developing a strategy for rebuilding the country. He has an advantage in that he is vice chairman for Perseus LLC, the same private-investment firm in which James A. Johnson, director of the campaign’s vice-presidential search, has worked. Holbrooke and Johnson also both served on the Council of Foreign Relations.

But Holbrooke advised other Democratic candidates during the party’s primaries. With the hopes that Kerry isn’t the type to value loyalty over qualified advice, Holbrooke made himself available to Kerry once he won the party’s nomination.

Kerry might prefer a candidate for the high-level cabinet position whom he knows and trusts. Biden has an advantage in that he has Kerry’s ear. The two senators formed a close relationship in the Senate and on the Foreign Relations Committee. Kerry often calls Biden for his opinion after a long day on the campaign trail. “They probably talk as much as anybody,” Biden spokesman Norm Kurz said. “It goes back to their relationship that has been forged over 20-25 years.” Kurz said he thinks Kerry trusts Biden to give him straightforward advice, even if it contradicts Kerry’s own thinking.

Biden’s leadership role on the Foreign Relations committee has give him years of experience and allowed him to forge close relationships with heads of state in the Middle East. “There’s not a country in the region he hasn’t been to several times,” Kurz said.

“Kerry is a foreign policy expert in his own right,” Kurz said. He said he thinks the Bush administration has a problem because the Cheney-Rumsfeld “ideologues have kind of won the day.” They shaped the administration’s initial war plans in Iraq without planning for the reconstruction or coordinating enough with the State Department, Kurz said. “Basically, we didn’t do the things necessary to win the peace,” he said. “Look, everybody would like to see democracy in the Middle East; the question is how you go about accomplishing it. You can’t go about it strictly by the use of force.”

Divide and fall. Other policy analysts who cite a lack of coordination within the Bush administration and the conflicts between Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell say Kerry has learned from Bush’s mistakes. “I think this president has a style where he chose a divided cabinet,” said Michele Flournoy, a former deputy assistant secretary for defense for President Clinton and a senior adviser for international security at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think we’ve seen the cost of that approach over the past four years,” she said. “I’m guessing that a President Kerry would go more consciously to a consensual model, rather than a competitive model.”

Flournoy said she thinks Kerry would make a better diplomat because he would be more willing to listen to coalition partners and would form long-term strategies for fighting terrorism. “Many in the Democratic camp fault the Bush administration for framing the war of terror too narrowly,” she said, adding that some Democrats want to place a greater emphasis on international intelligence sharing and investment in secular education.

Flournoy argues that Kerry has moved aggressively toward building consensus among his advisers so the team would be ready to implement changes when and if they take office next January. “There are some very fundamental issues that need to be addressed over the long term,” she said, describing a need to win the “hearts and minds” of Arabs.