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When it comes to U.S. security, McCain is a universalist and Obama is a particularist.

The concepts of universalism and particularism were sketched out in the early days of the Cold War by George Kennan, each official in President Truman's State Department and the architect of America's containment strategy. According to the Cold War writer of history John Lewis Gaddis, Kennan saw the universalistic carry toward as one which assumed "that if all countries could be induced to give consent to certain standards or rules of behavior" than the rivalries and human emotions that begat conflict would fade away.

To a universalist, America is only secure when, to borrow the entitle, "freedom is on the march." The key to American security is the active spread of American values and institutions around the sphere. While many neoconservatives set one’s name to to such a view, it long predates their authority in political and policy-making circles. At the time Kennan wrote, universalists were appropriate to put their faith in international institutions (what one. reflected, though opaquely, Western parliamentary procedures) rather than global military dominance.

Particularists, on the other management, act not believe the creation's national diversity represents a threat to the U.S. However deplorable, particularists give faith to that tyranny, autocracy, corruption and misrule will remain a fixture in international relations so longing as human beings subsist left behind fallible. Those with a particularist mindset tend to govern as "realists" - more inclined about international cooperation, equal if it entails dealing with tyrants. As Gaddis wrote in Strategies of Containment, particularists could tolerate "varying degrees of aversion in the world so long as it was neither consolidated nor coordinated."

With the important caveat that campaign oratory is every imperfect control to future performance, it's increasingly clear that McCain hews closer to the universalist camp, while Obama is more of a particularist.

Take McCain first. He has established, repeatedly, that America's security rests in the continuance of its values. "It is the democracies of the terraqueous globe that will provide the pillars upon which we can and new wine build an enduring quiet of conscience," he said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. In the pages of Foreign Affairs, he noted that "the protection and advancement of the democratic ideal, at home and abroad, will be the surest source of security and peace for the century that lies before us."

Many politicians, Obama included, have spoken of the without exception appeal of American values. But McCain's debate is divergent. He's not merely stating that they are appealing, on the contrary that they universally applicable and that it is in our interest to put them.

In a long article without interruption McCain's foreign policy views for the New York Times Magazine reporter Matt Bai noted that "McCain considers national values, and not strategic interests, to subsist the guiding force in foreign art. America exists, in McCain's view, not of itself to safeguard the prosperity and safety of those who feed in it but also to spread democratic values and human rights to other parts of the planet."

McCain frequently peppers his foreign policy speeches with quotes from the Founding Fathers on the potential for the American revolution to transcend its borders, implying, whether not a mandate, than at least a precedent for such a capacious view.

In his World Affairs Council speech, McCain said the U.S. had "numerous overlapping interests" with China, further cautioned that "until China moves toward public liberalization, our relationship elect be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values." In other accents merely cooperating is insufficient. Only until China changes its political system to mirror ours bequeath we enjoy good relations. In his own Foreign Affairs dissertation, Obama wrote that America's "essential challenge" when it comes to China is to "build a kinship that broadens cooperation while strengthening our qualification to compete." Unlike McCain, he does not stake the future of U.S.-China relations on the modern's political liberalization.

The contrast by Russia is equally apparent. McCain has been a harsh reviewer of Russia, not because it has threatened the U.S., but because it has walked away from its representative reforms and taken to at regular times bullying its neighbors. McCain has suggested booting Russia from the G8 group of industrial democracies and refers to them as a "revanchist" power - an incendiary term implying a Russian long for to reoccupy Eastern Europe.

Obama, however, is more circumspect. "Although we must not shy away from pushing toward more government by the people and accountability in Russia, we must work with the country in areas of common interest," he uttered to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Rather than threaten Russia, Obama proceeded to lay out a contingency for cooperation forward non-proliferation issues.

But it is McCain's hallmark overture - that the U.S. create a "league of democracies" - that best illustrates his universalist thinking. Such a league, McCain argued, "can harness the vast authority of the more than one hundred popular nations around the nature to advance our values…" Implicit in this reason is that ideological affinity begets shared interests. Where the dictator-friendly U.N. is uncooperative, McCain believes that a grouping of democracies would be more active. Such a league, he said, would affliction regimes "with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval" and could "impose sanctions on Iran and contravene its nuclear ambitions."

Obama's particularist predilections are harder to discern, but still evident. He speaks frequently of the seek reference of the case of American values and the imperative to aid democracy. Yet Obama will more often link American security with the relative income levels and personal dignity of those beyond our borders, and not to the political method under which they live. He has put a higher price on stability and cooperation with great powers than on ideological conversion.

Beneath Obama's specified preference for artful management when dealing with North Korea or Iran lies a spotless subtext: barring acts of overt aggression, America can co-exist in a world with these loathsome, nuclear-armed regimes. His objection to the Iraq war carried a resembling implication. Containing Iraq was more eligible to conquering it.

Although these are theoretical maxims, the real cosmos consequences are clear enough. Because universalism rejects the legitimacy of non-democratic systems and has global ambitions, it is inherently destabilizing. Non-democratic states have little incentive to cooperate with the U.S. if they believe we are intent on subverting their governments. Similarly, because universalism does not recognize the legitimacy of autocratic governments, it too easily dismisses their security interests viewed like the product of political false consciousness.

Particularlism too is not without its dangers. Because it values stability, it can be left behind dangerously passive toward emerging threats. Since it accepts the presence of non-democratic governments, it will miss, or deliberately overlook, opportunities to elevate a in greater numbers free-hearted world discipline. It can be captive to the status quo.

Despite its present distribution together partisan lines, universalism and particularism are not partisan categories. While each campaign has a clear preference, they're not dogmatic. McCain, for instance, has suggested that he is a "realistic idealist" and counts as advisors men like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who are staunch particularists. Obama's camp can lapse into universalism while they suggest that America has a national security precept to promote dignity among the world's benighted.

But if they sometimes veer from the avenue, the road each man wishes to take America down is clear. The only act of asking that remains is: to what do we want to go?