Global memo to Bush: Be involved, but not bossy
The American people may have been deeply divided over their choice of leader, but the rest of the world is remarkably unanimous in its message to the new US president: "Don't ignore us."
"But don't boss us around, either," say political analysts and ordinary citizens from China to Brazil, asked for their advice to the newly reelected President Bush as he looks forward to a second term of office likely to be dominated by the global "war on terror."
Few other countries would have chosen George W. Bush over John Kerry, international polls have revealed. But nobody anywhere doubts the impact that the US president has on his or her life.
If there is one task to which foreigners would like to see Mr. Bush devote himself, to judge by dozens of interviews on four continents, it is to restore America's reputation as a fair and honest arbiter of world affairs, damaged by what many abroad see as the administration's tendency to throw its weight around in its own narrow interests.
"Given that [the president] heads the most powerful nation in the world but that it has the worst reputation of all time, there is a paradox," says Stanley Symington, a retired marketing executive in England. "He should pay more attention to restoring America's reputation in the world, rather than to guarding its security."
It would help, suggests Jagjit Bagga, as he walks around a fashionable shopping center in New Delhi, if the president adopted a more diplomatic tone with the rest of the world. "America shouldn't be arrogant when it deals with other countries," he says. "It comes across that what they choose to do, they will do it and then expect others to follow."
That perception undermines international support for American goals, though many people in many countries share them, says Jeanne Lescure, a retired French Metro worker. "I understand that [Bush] is worried about security," she says. "We are all worried about it. But he goes about things the wrong way."
A more productive approach, suggests Karsten Voigt, a top adviser to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, would be to pay more attention to America's friends.
"In the end even the world superpower USA needs allies and they can't get any better ones than the Europeans," he told German radio on Wednesday. "And in order to have Europe on their side they need to keep an open ear to our arguments."
The most immediate and crucial test of such efforts, it is widely felt, will come in Iraq, now that even the fiercest opponents of the US-led invasion fear for the international fallout if Baghdad descends into civil war.
"If I could sit down with Bush, the first thing I would do is see how he could leave Iraq in a coherent fashion, with his head high and without dividing the European allies," says Catherine Durandin, an analyst at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations, a think tank in Paris.
That is a goal broadly shared in the Middle East. "This is the issue I care most about," says Sumer Said, a young Egyptian woman who stayed up all night with friends in Cairo to watch the election returns. "I want to see the American forces leave as soon as possible. But it shouldn't be immediately because then there would be chaos. The best thing the American president could do would be to set a timetable for withdrawal."
On very different issues, Latin Americans would also like to see more cooperation from Washington. In particular, they want the US to negotiate a planned free trade agreement "not as another instrument designed to benefit the USA, but rather as something to benefit the continent as a whole," says Geraldo Monteiro, who teaches at the State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
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