George W Bush’s return to the White House has profound consequences for the world — not all of them as disastrous as they might appear at first glance, especially for progressive forces and governments.
The dangerous men and women around him will regard the election result as nothing less than a ringing endorsement of their attitude to the rest of the world. So the instrumental value of international law and justice, the reputation and credibility of liberal democracy and the human rights associated with it, the future of multilaterism in the management of global affairs, and the just cause of liberal interventionism, will all be further harmed in the coming years.
By 2009 there may be little left of these ideas, any trace of their original nobility shredded by the incompetence and extremism of two Bush terms of office. Or, the re-election of Bush may galvanise the global left into more concerted action.
South African President Thabo Mbeki is in the middle of perhaps the most ambitious and important exercise in multilateralism in the history of the Africa, with the establishment of the African Union, and its major economic programme, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad). This intricate process will continue to be undermined by the blinkered unilateralism of Bush’s approach, even though the Bush doctrine is so manifestly counterproductive — not least for the opportunities it provides for rogues such as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to mask their own nefarious activities with attacks on American imperial adventurism.
The African National Congress has an historic solidarity with the Palestinians. The support for Israel and its refusal to control the brutality of the Sharon regime, is the root cause of distrust of United States foreign policy.
The 9/11 Commission concluded that September 11 hijack leader Khalid Muhammad’s animus toward the US ‘stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his disagreement with US foreign policy favoring Israel”. So, too, for the ANC government and many South Africans. Iraq is an extension of this injustice.
The world is less safe as a result. Iraq has served to propel the world towards the depressing prediction of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations thesis. Today the world is an even less civilised place than it was before the results of Tuesday’s election.
Bush’s America is not hated for what it is, but for what its president stands for. The US will begin to be hated for what it is.
We are on the cusp of a new Cold War, only this time with the US as the pariah, shunned by all but a few client-state accomplices. Certainly, the political leadership of this region will now be more inclined to turn away from the principles of Western liberal democracy, contaminated as they increasingly are by association with Bush’s extremism and the American electorate’s grant of an extended mandate, and towards new ideas and new alliances. This represents a process whose outcomes are uncertain — giving rise to hope and fear in equal measure.
Richard Calland is a political analyst based with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa