Shortly before Germany’s Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, flew to Washington for talks with George W Bush last month, a journalist asked if he was going to say goodbye to the president ahead of the United States elections in November. Schröder’s adviser grinned broadly before saying: ”I won’t speculate on that.”
Although Schröder deliberately avoided Democratic candidate John Kerry during his two-day trip to the US, there is little doubt that a Kerry victory would provoke rejoicing inside Germany’s government, as it would in many other countries worldwide.
This week Kerry claimed that foreign leaders had told him they could not publicly offer him their support, but added: ”You’ve got to beat this guy, we need a new policy.”
Hostility towards a second Bush term is assumed to be widespread throughout the world because of the Iraq war, the concept of pre-emptive strikes and bullying of small countries. On issues from the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court to antipathy towards the United Nations, Bush has alienated countries Washington would normally classify as allies.
Distress over Bush’s foreign policy is not confined to the world beyond the US. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll on Tuesday, 57% of Americans want their next president to steer the country away from the course set by the current leader.
It is difficult to assess the level of worldwide opposition to Bush. When he put together a ”coalition” for the war against Iraq last year he gathered just 43 countries — and it included countries such as Azerbaijan, Eritrea and Uzbekistan, not normally in the forefront of international diplomacy.
Tom Ridge, the US Homeland Security Secretary, told diplomats and academics in Singapore on Tuesday that 70 countries had joined an informal alliance against terrorism. But this is no evidence of support for Bush; there are leaders who will think it prudent to back the world’s sole superpower though privately they would welcome a Kerry presidency.
Schröder’s spokesperson on Tuesday denied he was one of the ”foreign leaders” who had sent a secret message of support to Kerry.
Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of the United Kingdom’s Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, said he doubted if any head of government had been unwise enough to say in private to Kerry that they wanted him to win and thought it more likely that the ”foreign leaders” to whom Kerry referred were foreign secretaries or heads of parliamentary delegations.
He said there was a difference between how a second Bush presidency was perceived by the ”masses” — who wanted shot of him in the belief there would be a return to a golden age — and the elite — who leaned towards ”better the devil you know”.
Unsurprisingly, this does not seem to be the view in France. Guillaume Parmentier of the France-America Centre said: ”The whole country and the government would rejoice if he lost.”
Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, and Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, are unequivocal in their support of Bush, as are many Eastern European countries and former Soviet republics. But opinion in Spain is divided. Spanish opposition leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said: ”I want Kerry to win.”
The position of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and of Russian President Vladimir Putin is ambiguous.
In the Middle East there is overwhelming antipathy for a second Bush term. Egyptian political columnist Salama Ahmad Salama said on Tuesday: ”The mood in Egypt is that nobody wants Bush any more. He has built a big reservoir of suspicion…”
Israel has benefited from the Bush presidency, but would probably embrace Kerry, whose emotional article expressing support for the country has been widely circulated.
Members of the Iraqi governing council have mixed feelings. One said he was unimpressed with the handling of post-war Iraq, but would not welcome an abrupt change of personnel.
A source in the Iraqi foreign ministry said: ”We are relaxed about the idea of a Kerry presidency, provided he doesn’t sell us down the river … to gain votes.”
Most Pakistanis claim to despise Bush for what they consider an unjustified attack on Iraq. But regime change in Washington is probably the last thing President Pervez Musharraf would want. ”The government would like Bush to win,” said Tahir Mirza, editor of Dawn, a leading daily paper. ”We think the Republicans are much more sympathetic to Pakistan. And … they’ve given us a lot of money.” — Â