The Wrong Man At The Wrong Time

I'm not going to waste time and space on an endorsement column. I am sure you already know who I am supporting in the 2004 U.S. presidential election and why. Instead, let me offer something more useful: a sober assessment of what a Kerry victory would mean and what consequences it might have.

If John Kerry wins the presidency on Nov. 2, Champagne corks will be popping all over Europe. Radio and television broadcasters worldwide will assure their audiences that the United States has repented and given up its aggressive, provocative ways. "Neoconservative unilateralism" will go out of style; multilateralism and consultation will return to vogue. The international conference circuit will buzz with activity. The leaders of the European Union will plan a royal welcome for President Kerry on his first tour abroad. It will be a joyous first three or four months.

And then reality will kick in.

John Kerry will not have won the presidency, if he wins it, by promising to get out of Iraq and create a Palestinian state. He will have won it by promising to wage a more effective war on terror than George Bush has waged and to gain more foreign support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Europeans will quickly discover that President Kerry has no more power than president Bill Clinton had to ratify the Kyoto treaty or the International Criminal Court: Ratifying treaties is the Senate's job, and there probably aren't more than six votes in the Senate for either agreement. They will discover that Kerry has no power on his own to stop the death penalty or to ban genetically modified foods.

At the same time, Europeans will find themselves under harsh and immediate pressure to produce troops for peacekeeping in Iraq. If there is any one thing that American voters will believe John Kerry promised them, it is that he could do a better job than George Bush of winning international support for the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign in the Middle East.

Producing those troops will constitute a Kerry administration's first and most important foreign policy test. Kerry cannot afford to fail. And the more it becomes apparent that he will fail, the harder he will twist European arms to give him something, anything, he can call a contribution to the Iraq mission.

Underpinning all these frictions, Americans and Europeans will soon be waking up to a more bitter and intractable problem: the problem of American "unilateralism." This is a word that means very different things on either side of the Atlantic. When Americans hear Europeans complain about the Bush administration's "unilateralism," they tend to think that Europeans are complaining about the Bush administration's manners -- its failure to consult widely enough or listen carefully enough before taking military action.

But that is not what Europeans and European governments tend to mean. They tend to think that American military force is only legitimate when it is approved by an international organization -- that is to say, when they themselves have a veto over it. Many in Europe think it is only the detested "neocons" who would deny Europe this veto. But no American president, not even John Kerry, can concede such a thing, and it will be a very nasty shock for Europe when they learn the truth.

Not so nasty, however, as the shock in store for the Islamic Middle East.

Should George Bush lose on Nov. 2, you will see the cities of the region erupt in delirious celebration. His political defeat will be interpreted as an American admission of military defeat, not only in Iraq, but in the larger struggle against Islamic militancy. But if Kerry wins in November, it will only be because he has persuaded a majority of the American people that he means to fight the war on terror with just as much determination as George Bush.

It's not true of course. Kerry will fight the war in a weak and vacillating way. He has no vision, no plan, no definition of success. But it will be politically very important to him to conceal his inner weakness from the public. For that reason, anyone hoping that he might -- for example -- relax visa requirements for Middle Eastern visitors to the United States is due for a nasty disappointment. Ditto for those who might hope that a President Kerry would rehabilitate Yasser Arafat or order Israel to tear down its security fence. Ditto for those who think that he would release the detained terrorists in Guantanamo or other secure locations.

John Kerry is popular around the world because he is seen as a president who will lead an American retreat. And that may be the kind of president he wants to be. But Kerry does not even have the courage of his weakness. He will veer unpredictably between appeasement and anger, between strong words and weak actions, between wooly excuse-making and panicky over-reaction.

By the end of it all, Kerry will have left the world angrier and America's alliances weaker than ever before. I think Americans will sense that. I think they already do sense it. Which is why I confidently expect that they will never put this inadequate politician to the test of leadership - why they will on Nov. 2 return George W. Bush for four more years.