Crimson Autograph

I watched the US Presidential Campaign debate last night. Something that struck me was how limited a range of subjects were discussed given that the subject was "Foreign Affairs". There was one question on Sudan and one on relationships with Putin (if GWB is going to try and present himself as a close friend of Vladimir Putin he might at least learn how to pronounce "Vladimir"). The Kyoto Protocol was mentioned in passing, but largely as something that if signed up to might help build a stronger coalition to deal with Iraq not as something of any importance in its own right, North Korea and Iran came up in terms of nuclear proliferation, Libya was mentioned as no longer a threat, Israel as either more or less threatened, and Poland, Australia and the UK mentioned in the context of Iraq.

It gave an impression that US foreign policy ONLY consists of dealing with nations deemed to be a threat, or with nations willing to ally against nations deemed to be a threat. I didn't notice a single mention of NATO, the European Union, poverty, or ANYWHERE in South or Central America. This worries me. It worries me in terms of how the US currently sees the rest of the world. It leads me to believe that Bush can't lose the election, because if the debate is purely going to be in terms of the US against the bad guys, for us or against us, then his absurdly simplistic views may make more sense than Kerry's more complex ideas. Unless the existance of the rest of the world is admitted to as part of the election campaign then Kerry pretty much must lose, and he can't set the news agenda.

I'm warming to Kerry. He's not trying to play the "great leader". Having lived under Thatcher and Blair I don't like "great leaders", they are just people who are good at getting their own way. That doesn't make for good government. A poor leader HAS to make good decisions, it takes a "great leader" to persuade and entire nation to mess up in a big way. I don't feel safe living under a "great leader" even though Blair hasn't been all that bad in most respects, the problem is that he can be.

Bush, on the other hand, continues to glorify stupidity. His whole campaign seems to be based around appealling to people as somebody who will be doggedly dumb, and who will refuse to accept that anything complex can be important. Especially as a lot of it seems to be based around ridiculing Kerry for going to a good university, for being fairly well travelled, and for attempting to express ideas that can't be encapsulated in a single sentence.

The USA used to celebrate cleverness. It used to be one of the things I believed the UK could learn from. I guess the lesson went the wrong way.

One thing that I haven't seen picked up in the media that exacerbates my fears of the direction the USA would take under a further Bush administration, it came up in the context of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

"But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted."

All I can say to that is "Camp Zero you damn hypocrite!"

Of course since the first uncensored communications from the British captives in Guantanamo Bay reveal that prisoners there are routinely abused and (at least) threatened with torture, it's certain that there are US military personnel who are open to prosecution by the ICC. The question is does that include their Commander in Chief?

What really upsets me about all this is that those Americans who have a serious interaction with the world oustide their borders tend to be amongst the most open-minded, tolerant and morally upright people one could wish to deal with. I assume that a fair number of those who don't ever look beyone the USA would be much the same.