Although the candidates have been campaigning for months, the Iowa caucuses today represent the first real step towards the election of the next President of the United States (Absolutely tonnes of coverage here and here. And while - of course - those of us who are not US citizens don’t get a vote, the next occupant of the White House is likely to have a serious impact on our lives. So who should concerned “citizens of the free world” endorse for President?

What are the issues that matter to people who don’t live on American soil? As passionate as we might be about Social Security, universal healthcare or taxation, if we are to act as “rational self-interested (non-)voters”, we should stick to those areas where the US President exerts real influence on the rest of the world. It’s debatable which these issues are, but the fields of foreign policy, climate change, human rights and trade seem the most obvious.

Obviously, extra-American views on these topics are far from homogeneous, but for the sake of argument, let’s set up the kind of European liberal that American conservatives love to hate. This person wants an America committed to multilateralism, action against global warming and a robust defence of human rights (including a repudiation of torture, extraordinary rendition, etc). Trade, perhaps, is more complicated, but on very basic level our European prefers US engagement with the world to isolation. So who should she support?

I think - and given the ferocity of some of the campaigning and the insults traded between camps this may seem surprising - that the European liberal can be basically indifferent between the Democratic candidates. Sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start, while Hillary voted for it - but then, so did a lot of European liberals. It’s clear that either (and Edwards too) would be worlds apart from the Bush Administration in terms of their relationship to the rest of the world. All three major candidates believe that climate change is a real and present threat and all three have expressed their abhorrence of torture and called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay.

So, the question really is which Republican to endorse. Now for some European liberals putting the words “endorse” and “Republican” in the same sentence is psychologically impossible, but first, I’m not one of them, and second, there is a serious possibility that a Republican will win in November. Which makes the question of who we might prefer important.

On foreign policy, all four leading candidates (I’m counting McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee) supported and continue to support the war in Iraq, with McCain perhaps the most vocal. Mike Huckabee, who Andrew wrote about a few weeks ago, is probably the candidate who puts the most emphasis on diplomacy and rebuilding America’s relationships with the rest of the world. McCain has spoken about wanting to create a “League of Democracies” to supplement the UN, though how far this would differ from a “Coalition of the Willing” is unclear.

McCain, however, is probably the most encouraging Republican on the environment. He sponsored the first Senate bill specifically geared towards combating climate change, which would have introduced a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. None of the Republican candidates would sign the Kyoto agreement, but McCain appears to take America’s responsibility for leadership of climate change seriously. Romney too has a reasonable record here, having proposed measures to reduce carbon emissions while Governor of Massachusetts. However, he has also been accused of “flip-flopping” on the environment and withdrew from the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in 2005. Giuliani and Huckabee both claim to take the problem seriously too, but beyond rather vague calls for energy independence, don’t seem to have any clear plans for achieving it.

Where the decision becomes easy for the European liberal is the candidates’ position on human rights, detention without trial and and torture. Romney says the US should double the size of Guantanamo Bay, Giuliani says he isn’t convinced it should be closed and Huckabee says that prisoners in his home state of Arkansas would love to be there. McCain alone says it should be closed. Moreover, as a former prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam, McCain has been forthright in his repudiation of torture as a means of interrogation.

In short, McCain seems the only Republican candidate who would be able to restore America’s moral leadership of the world. European liberals may long for Obama, but if the other party take the White House again, they should hope it is the 71-year-old Senator from Arkansas who gets the nod. Any dissent?

Filed under: election2008, mattclifford, mikehuckabee, uspolitics on January 3rd, 2008