Few campaigns in post-war American history have appeared to be as divisive as the one drawing to its still uncertain conclusion on Tuesday. The voters’ decision whether to re-elect President Bush or hand the mantle over to Senator Kerry — to judge from much of the coverage and the comments of the candidates themselves — is a choice so profound that it will shape the destiny of the planet for generations. The American electorate seems faced with a choice between two fundamentally different visions of their nation’s role and purpose.
The reality is different. There are indeed large differences between the two men contesting the presidency. But the hidden truth of this campaign is that far more unites them than divides them. On the issues that matter most — which revolve, in one form or another, around the threat posed by global terror — they share a remarkably similar analysis, despite each candidate’s attempts to portray his opponent as dangerously deluded.
Both see the risk to security posed by allowing weapons of mass destruction to end up in the wrong hands. Both agree that global terror is a new, nihilistic force which has to be destroyed. Both agree that the United States has to lead that fight. And both dismiss the increasingly fashionable idea outside America that these new threats are more imagined than real — that they have been somehow cooked up by supporters of President Bush (and his friend Tony Blair) to hoodwink the electorate into re-electing him.
Senator Kerry knows as well as anyone else that there was nothing imaginary about 9/11, and there is nothing imaginary about Al-Qaeda, as Osama Bin Laden’s appearance in a typically timed video on Friday showed. As president, Senator Kerry would be just as determined as President Bush to deal with the threat. Just as in the 1970s when the likes of Carlos the Jackal and the Red Brigades were offered sanctuary by the Soviet Union’s satellites, so today it is imperative that those states that fund and harbour terrorists are held to account for their actions. The Bush doctrine, enunciated in the aftermath of 9/11, holds that states which protect terrorists would be treated as no less guilty than the terrorists themselves. Senator Kerry has been explicit in his support.
It has become clichéd to observe that America changed overnight on September 11, 2001. It has become a cliché because it is true. When George W Bush ran for the presidency in 2000, he barely mentioned foreign policy, and when he did it was to damn President Clinton’s foreign engagements. That struck a chord with a nation that wanted to rest upon the laurels of its cold war victory, and which was beginning to question its burden, through Nato, as the prime defender of western security.
America is today a very different place from that of four years ago. The presidential debates last month were dominated by Iraq and foreign policy because that is now the prime concern of most Americans. The events of 9/11 ensured that American security, and thus foreign policy, have become the pivotal point of electoral politics. No candidate can win office unless he convinces the American public that he is best placed to deal with the terrorist threat.
It is de rigueur for European commentators to sneer at President Bush’s “obsession” with the war on terror, as if in fighting it he is somehow beyond the pale. Yet such a view ignores one of the main reasons why Senator Kerry was picked by his party to run against the president — that as a decorated veteran he was immune from the charge that he would be soft on terror. Yet the perception abroad is of a battle between a gunslinging “shoot first, ask questions later” Texan and a smooth “consult and pacify” East Coast intellectual. No such battle exists. President Kerry would perhaps speak less starkly and would make foreign allies feel more loved. But actions really do speak louder than words, and President Kerry would act in the American national interest just as has President Bush.
Both candidates have, of course, their strengths and weaknesses. President Bush’s charge that Senator Kerry has “flip-flopped” has stung because it is accurate. He might speak the right words but, by definition, he is untested in the highest office. President Bush has indeed been tested, and led his country with remarkable purpose in the immediate wake of 9/11, but he has been guilty of needlessly antagonising natural allies. And whatever the rights and wrongs of invading Iraq, there can be no doubt that he failed to plan properly for the peace, with the terrible results we see now daily. The abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib was shameful. On that occasion the buck didn’t stop anywhere.
All of this is to ignore domestic issues. They too matter to the rest of us. Senator Kerry’s lasting flirtation with protectionist economic policies sits ill with his claim to be the better internationalist. President Bush, too, once dropped his free-trading principles for political expediency. An “open doors” America with its economy on the right track is essential for the prosperity of the rest of the world.
But America is now a nation at war. In fighting that war, the US is defending not just itself but the security of the rest of the free world — whether we like it or, as seems to be the fashionable view in Europe, not. That is why we should be relieved that, whatever the result on Tuesday, the fundamentals of American policy are in place.
