In an anti-Bush world, key backers
A roundup from Monitor correspondents around the world.
(Page 3 of 3)
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, recently elected to a fourth term, has been one of Bush's staunchest allies in the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Australia currently has 920 troops in Iraq and the region, and Mr. Howard has resisted all calls to bring them home. "I express my strong support for the leadership that the president has continued to display," Howard told Bush earlier this year.
Leaders in South Africa may quietly support Bush, experts say, in part because he sees sub-Saharan Africa's wealthiest nation as the regional power broker and peacemaker.
The African continent in general is one region Bush where seems to have gained kudos simply because of his strong involvement. He's promised $15 billion for fighting AIDS. He has revamped foreign aid, demanding accountability on good governance and other standards - an effort that dovetails with growing African efforts to address the continent's problems. And he has invested far more political capital than many expected to halt genocide in Sudan. "None of us forecast Bush would be as favorable to Africa as he's been," says international relations professor John Stremlau at Witswatersrand University.
But it's what the Bush team refers to as "Old Europe" - especially Germany and France - where much of the antipathy toward Bush is rooted. So when the tabloid Bild, Germany's biggest paper, endorsed Bush last week, it set off groans of controversy. "There has already been an American president the Germans haven't thought very highly of," the article said. "His name: Ronald Reagan.... We have him to thank for the end of the cold war and reunification. There's a good chance that we'll also be thankful one day for George W. Bush."
The comment bordered on blasphemy in a nation where polls show up to 80 percent of Germans would vote for Kerry. Yet many aren't excited by the Bush alternative. "If you look at the rhetoric, you ask yourself how much different Kerry really is, aside from the fact that he's a bit more diplomatic," says freelance journalist Martin Schrader of Berlin.
Meanwhile, in Britain, where public support for Bush is weak, Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken hits for backing Bush. "If Bush is defeated, there will be a strong assumption it's because of Iraq, and Blair might well be concerned that he'd be next in line," says Dana Allin at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Even in perhaps the most anti-Bush region of all - the Middle East - there are those who support the incumbent, if for unconventional reasons. Many in the region figure that lobbyists for Israel have big influence on US policy and that a second-term Bush might be able to brush off their pressure. "Bush won't have to answer to the Jewish lobby and that could help," says Mohammed Essam, a Cairo cab driver.
Osama El-Ghazali Harb, an Egyptian analyst, is another who argues for Bush. "Being a second-term president, Bush will have the benefit of experience, which will make him wiser," he says. But, as befitting his region's sentiment, Mr. Harb was one of only 12 people in a 110-person straw poll done by a local paper who said they'd vote for Bush.
