Though domestic concerns and the country’s future in Iraq will most likely decide the 2008 United States presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, something greater rests on the outcome: The global reputation of the world’s lone superpower.
Sadly, too few Americans care about that reputation, and many who do are aligned behind Obama already.
What’s most paradoxical about the attitude toward the rest of the world exhibited by a certain subset of Americans is that they relish the US’s role as the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, yet misunderstand that that our influence derives from something greater than markets or might. As Obama eloquently declaimed during his speech to the Democratic national convention in Denver last month, the world respects the US more for ”the power of its example than the example of its power”.
Allow me to set aside judgements about the quality of that example, for plenty of critiques have already been written about how the US flexes its military and economic muscle around the world. Given the growing level of suspicion directed from abroad toward my native country, the Realpolitik question is whether and to what degree the US can temper its increasingly chilly relationship with other nations, be they friend or foe.
The 2004 results, it must be noted, were a key turning point for the US’s reputation.
That year, prior to the election, I travelled as a US State Department-sponsored speaker to India, Italy and Turkey to talk about the match-up between President George Bush and Democrat John Kerry. (Disclosure: If this piece does not by the end make abundantly clear, my government’s sponsorship of these trips in no way prevents me from offering my unvarnished personal assessments and critiques of the candidates, parties or the present administration.)
What I learned in 2004 from my travels is that, despite their generally adverse reaction to the Bush administration’s response to the September 11 attacks and, more specifically, the Iraq invasion, people across the world were willing to suspend judgement about the United States until the results were in. That suspension, I was often told, was based on a belief that our colonial-era Electoral College had, as if by some trick, installed Bush by accident — with a wee bit of help from the Supreme Court, alas. I was repeatedly asked, ”Surely Americans have seen the light and Mr Kerry will win, correct?”
Well, no: Bush won, albeit narrowly. Lost, however, was the benefit of the doubt long granted to the US by observers abroad. One could almost hear the sound of minds snapping shut behind the impenetrable conclusion that Americans must indeed be a renegade bunch of cowboy imperialists.
We are not. But I must report that there is a significant element within the country that does in fact embrace the idea that the US should rarely if ever concern itself with how its allies and enemies perceive us. More tragically is the subset of citizens who go so far as to believe that our unpopularity should be worn as a badge of honour — as if planetary rebuke somehow confirms the wisdom of our politicians and their policies.
But how can the US be the indispensable nation she believes herself to be when friend and foe alike would rather just dispense with us? It is the power of our relations that magnifies the power of our example; it is what gives the US its moral authority and the ability to act on that authority. A global leader without willing partners is meaningless.
This year, similar speaking tours brought me to Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa and Egypt — a different yet similarly diverse set of countries where people remain deeply suspicious about the US’s behaviours and ambitions.
Though I could be wrong, beneath this thick cover of suspicion I detect a thin layer of hope. And that hope — to borrow a word now in vogue stateside, thanks to Obama — is that the Democratic nominee, the first-ever non-white major party nominee in our 220-year presidential history, will prevail and a new era will commence.
Although Obama presents an imperfect — and, perhaps ultimately, disappointing — opportunity to begin thawing those chilled relations, a victory by him this November at least offers that opportunity. The prospects of McCain, the man who campaigned harder than any elected official on behalf of President George Bush’s re-election, are far slimmer — if they exist at all.
South Africans and others across the planet should, however, brace themselves for another close election, including the prospect that the McCain-led Republicans will remain in power. Yes, the Arizona senator would be an improvement over Bush. (Who would not?) But a huge and unprecedented opportunity will be lost if McCain wins.
Thomas Schaller is the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How the Democrats Can Win without the South