If non-Americans could vote in the US presidential election, John Kerry would win. These are the findings of a recent GlobeScan poll that showed that the public in 30 out of 35 countries surveyed favoured Mr Kerry, on average by a two-to-one margin, over George W Bush.
Their hope is that America under Mr Kerry would return to an era in which it worked with its allies in the international arena rather than acting unilaterally. The divisions between Europe and the US that have emerged over Iraq woulddisappear and the world would return to “normal”.
This may be the hope of the majority of French and Germans – but it is a forlorn one. The fact is that political leaders, even those at the helm of the US superpower, still act within the political structure in which they find themselves. During their time in office, they may make momentous decisions, but even so, the scope of their decision-making is dependent on the features of a wider political landscape. And this landscape has changed from the Cold War one that threw up a more multilateralist America.
In the cover story of this special IMF issue of The Banker, we explore the changes and conclude that Mr Kerry, if elected, would be different in tone, but not in substance, from Mr Bush.
The fact is that the US defence budget outstrips the military spending of all 25 EU countries combined and the US contributes 85% of NATO military capacity. Small wonder that the US does not want to submit to allied procrastination in international affairs.
The US can and will choose which countries it wishes to work with at a particular time. One professor refers to this as interest-based multilateralism, rather than the value-based multilateralism that existed in the Cold War.
While Mr Bush has not been as ardent a unilateralist as his rhetoric sometimes implies (under his administration, the US has repaid its arrears to the UN and carried on supporting IMF bail-outs), Mr Kerry in office would not be as committed a multilateralist as Europeans and others are hoping.
One commentator has dubbed the next US president “George W Kerry” – whose policies may not look that unfamiliar when he finally takes his place in the Oval Office.
