John Kerry

Within four months of becoming a U.S. senator in 1985, John F. Kerry had traveled to both of that year’s foreign policy hot spots. In Nicaragua, he sought a deal he hoped would end the Reagan administration’s “contra” war. In the Philippines, he concluded that U.S. support for the decades-long dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos had to end. Marcos was out within a year, thanks in no small measure to Kerry’s efforts. The demise of the contras took considerably longer. Kerry, 69, has tempered the approach he adopted as a freshman firebrand. But he has continued to practice personal, face-to-face diplomacy, often in the service of President Obama’s foreign policy. . . .

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At home, Kerry also served as point man for passage of the nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia that Obama signed last year, and he has been a consistently strong voice for U.S. and international action on climate change.In the months since Clinton announced she would not serve a second term, Kerry has been particularly careful to allow little daylight to emerge between his own views and those of the administration. But he is known to be frustrated with what he sees as the need for more assertive U.S. leadership in the world. He is expected to push for more aggressive, direct U.S. involvement on the interconnected challenges of Iran’s nuclear program, upheavals in Syria, Egypt and other Arab Spring countries, and dim prospects for an Arab-Israeli peace.

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In the late 1980s, Kerry used his position as a foreign relations subcommittee chairman to enlist staff investigators to look for links between the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan “contras” and drug smuggling. An investigation of money laundering involving Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International, while derided by many of his colleagues at the time, led to BCCI’s collapse in 1991. Many other investigations followed over the years, including more recent inquiries into U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Kerry has frequently referred to his decorated Vietnam service as a “swift boat” officer patrolling the waters of the Mekong Delta. “The question of being ready and certain is important to many of us of the Vietnam generation,” he said in opposing the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. “We come to this debate with a measure of distrust, with some skepticism, with a searing commitment to ask honest questions and with a resolve to get satisfactory answers so that we are not misled again.”

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He has almost always ended up in close proximity to Obama’s foreign policy positions, although not always at the same moment. Kerry pushed for establishing a no-fly zone in Libya, and called for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down from power before Obama took those positions. Even when relations with countries such as Egypt and Pakistan have gone through difficult patches, he has been a leading voice for the use of economic assistance as a primary foreign policy tool. . . .