NEWS Analysis : Elections give Bush new economic and security clout
International Herald Tribune
November 8, 2002
Brian Knowlton and Thomas Crampton

CORRECTION PUBLISHED IN THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE DATED: Friday, November 15, 2002:

Two recent articles incorrectly described the late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota as the only Democratic senator to vote against the resolution to authorize war with Iraq. In fact, he was the only Democratic senator in a close re-election race to do so. In all, 22 Democratic senators and one Republican, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, opposed the measure.
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By effectively winning the mandate that eluded him in the 2000 elections, President George W. Bush has armed himself to pursue more vigorously economic goals that could please world markets and investors and to act on foreign policy and security issues in ways that might heighten foreigners' concerns about what they see as his unilateralist tendencies.

"The president put his leadership on the line and the American people backed him in a historic sense," said Clark Murdock, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"That's going to strengthen the president and his supporters and weaken the critics — both here and abroad."

Murdock predicted an increase for the political health of such Bush allies as Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has risked public anger in Britain by supporting a tough U.S. line on Iraq, and no quick end to the chill in relations with the Germany of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder or to recent differences with France.

In Asia, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia acknowledged that the election results were "a vote of confidence in the policies" of the U.S. president, but also warned of a corresponding strength in the world's extreme Islamic groups.

"The Islamic parties are also becoming popular, so there is also going to be increasing confrontation," Mahathir said.

"Both sides are going to play up their anger and hatred to the maximum. So we're going to see a world which is not going to be very calm."

Newspaper editorials in Hong Kong and Singapore warned against excess U.S. unilateralism.

"There must be many today, in the capitals of Europe and Asia, who wonder if Mr. Bush may not have become a little too strong," the Singapore Straits Times wrote in an editorial.

In Europe, relations with Germany are likely to remain "abysmal," said John Hulsman, senior European-policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "Nor do I see cartwheels being done down the Champs-Elysees," he added.

"Any hope of the Europeans of a tempering of Bush foreign policy is gone," he said. "If anything, the center of gravity becomes more realist and hawkish."

Some Europeans were far more sanguine, however.

"I don't see any change, neither positively nor negatively" in U.S.-European Union relations, said Romano Prodi, the former Italian prime minister who heads the European Commission in Brussels.

That sentiment was echoed in Asia by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, who said he expected no shift in Japan-U.S. relations.

Japan's government spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said he believed the victory would not diminish Bush's commitment to international cooperation on the issues of Iraq or North Korea.

"He has been saying that he will cooperate with related countries and the international community in dealing with Iraq and North Korea," Fukuda said. "I think he will stick to those commitments."

Others, however, expressed fears that the election might make a war with

Iraq more likely.

Khaled Ghamdi, a Saudi political analyst, said that the likelihood of a war against Iraq was "now greater than ever," The Associated Press reported. And Mohammed Shaker, director of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Relations, spoke direly of the newly strengthened Bush administration as "a power that has no limit in its dealing with foreign issues."

Bush had already obtained the backing of both houses of Congress to take military action against Iraq. Only one Senate Democrat, the late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, voted against it.

And through what might once have seemed a surprising recourse to the most multilateral of organizations — the United Nations — the Bush administration appears slowly to have worn down foreign resistance to its desire to take tough action against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Although Bush was on no ballot Tuesday, he now holds ample trump cards — his Republican Party controls both houses of Congress and he enjoys an uncommon public popularity that will leave Democrats loath to confront him too directly — to press forward with trade-liberating negotiations, to make tax cuts broader and more lasting and possibly even to ease recently imposed steel tariffs, bitterly denounced abroad as protectionist.

Sidney Weintraub, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international finance, referred to those tariffs as "bad decisions made just for political reasons," adding that "now that the elections are over, hopefully we'll see a more aggressive free-trade policy."

This could include an attempt to "find a graceful way at least to emasculate the steel tariffs," he added.

With Bush's new leverage, and the recent passage of presidential trade-promotion authority, he and his economic team are expected to push harder for more liberalizing measures under the Doha round of world trade talks.

"The days of treading water on trade are over," said Hulsman of the Heritage Foundation.

Weintraub suggested that, in countries outside the United States, the election result would be "quietly endorsed by investors, causing a shift of some money into the U.S. economy," largely from a "sense of confidence that the U.S. is going to continue down" a business-friendly path.

"You'll get a lot of sniffling and complaining and grousing by political elites" amid fears of reinforced U.S. opposition to multilateral treaties and accords and organizations," added Weintraub. "But private investors will say, thank God we have a place to put our money."

Russia hopes the Republican control of the Senate will translate to greater U.S. support for its membership in the World Trade Organization. Bush also reportedly will shuffle a team of economic advisers whose views and attitudes have drawn some criticism abroad.

While the Republicans' gains Tuesday were historic — nearly unprecedented for the party of a sitting president in a midterm election — the Democrats, if weakened and disoriented, have not lost all capacity to resist the Bush agenda.

The Senate, which has a dominant role in foreign policy, will have no more than a slim Republican edge once the final votes are counted and a runoff is completed in Louisiana.

The economy is likely to be a priority.

Democrats had hoped that voters would blame Bush and the Republicans for the country's economic weakness and the recent business and accounting scandals; their focus instead appeared to be on security, education and other issues.

Voters are less likely to be forgiving in the 2004 elections, however.

As to the war on terrorism and military action in Iraq, Bush will have wide latitude. The Senate now will be expected to pass legislation to establish a federal Department of Homeland Security.

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