[The Telegraph, U.K.]

Financial Times Deutschland, Germany

America 'Past its Zenith'

"Should she make it, President Hillary Clinton and her first gentleman Bill will find that American power under the first President Clinton was far greater than it will ever be again."

By Thomas Klau

Translated By Ulf Behncke

October 18, 2007

Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)

The Democrats hope that with them, the United States will find the way back to its previous power and glory. The effort will be in vain.

In an article for magazine “Foreign Affairs,” Hillary Clinton outlined her foreign policy agenda; it reads just as fine-tuned and politically sterile as all the other remarks made by this sensationally competent and sensationally dreary presidential candidate. In private, Hillary can be charming, ironic and surprising. But publicly the politician, who has been damaged as well as battle hardened by the purgatory of our media age, avoids any expression that might betray spontaneity or innovative thinking.

Were it not for the fact that she is Mrs. Clinton, i.e.: a Clinton and a woman, Hillary Rodham as a candidate would be considered so boring as to be unelectable. This is, incidentally, less a criticism of the candidate than of America's national political landscape, which cannot indulge a candidate on the left unless against his or her own convictions, they represent conservative positions.

This mix of progressive mainstream impulses and hawk-like logic can be seen in her foreign policy. Yes to multilateralism and serious peace talks on Palestine; Yes to bombing attacks against Iran to deny it The Bomb. Take five-tenths cooperative-thinking à la démocrate, add five-tenths of patriotism à la républicaine - and the batter for the next election is ready to bake.

THE LAST POWER THAT'S GLOBAL IN SCOPE

Far more interesting than Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy cuisine is something entirely different: the candidate's electoral plan for obtaining power. While understandably fixated on the aberration of the current U.S. government - first and foremost the fiasco in Iraq - many international strategists in the United States have forgotten, or more likely: don't fully realize that the world since George W Bush took over Bill Clinton's office hasn’t stood still.

Democrats in particular are debating the restoration of American leadership as if it would suffice merely to admit to mistakes in Iraq, practice a bit of multilateralism and take the climate disaster seriously. Then, the theory goes, America would again lead the world and the natural order of things would return. There would be a honeymoon between the United States and the rest of the world, once reason together with the Democrats returns to the White House; the wounds of the past would quickly scar.

This analysis is right in as many ways as it's wrong. It is true that that the rest of the world will enthusiastically and euphorically celebrate virtually every Democrat and pragmatically and competently thinking and acting, non-illuminated Republican for a long time to come; In contrast to all the widespread whining, the love of America is at least as widespread and deeply-rooted around the world as anti-Americanism. It isn't only in Europe where an overwhelming majority of people are happier if there is a U.S. President they can extol and trust. It's also true that the United States, measured by its military, political and economic influence, remains by far the leading power in the world, as it's the only nation capable of acting in all three of these areas and thus exert its influence around the globe.

But the Democrats are mistaken if they believe that by returning to competence and reason, the strategic debacle of the past eight years will be ousted from peoples' awareness; And they are mistaken if they believe that American leadership in the second decade of the 21st century can be what it was during the years of the first President Clinton.

I don't think I speak only for myself when I write that the experience with this President Bush, his Vice President Cheney, his far-too-long tolerated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and his catastrophic top general, Peter Pace, has destroyed a basic assumption: That the management expertise of American policy at the State Department and U.S. military are reasonable reliable.

This country has elected and re-elected a President whose incompetence beyond any ideology was and remains breathtaking; yet the wheels of U.S. policy have kept turning without going too far off course, although the government has created an unparalleled foreign policy fiasco and has annihilated a consensus that dates back to the days of the U.S. founding fathers: that democracies never torture, kidnap or detain people arbitrarily, either by law or Presidential decree.

I don't know what kind of person the next U.S. President will be. What I do know is that I won't forget that the American res publica [public] was not smart enough to refuse election and re-election to a man like Bush. Neither am I now sure that this one debacle makes them immune to repeating it in my lifetime. Bush has destroyed confidence and has made more than just one generation skeptical of America's wisdom.

DIMINISHING INFLUENCE IN THE WORLD

The change in the perception of the United Stets over the past six years is important Even more important is the shift in real global influence, which has coincidentally occurred during the reign of this worst-of-all U.S. President.

China, India and even Brazil have become global players to a degree hardly inconceivable ten years ago; China in particular probably has more influence than the U.S. in major trouble spots from Sudan to Myanmar to North Korea. Then there's Russia. Due to oil and gas revenue, Moscow has for the moment at least liberated itself from dependence on the West, which was taken for granted during the days of Clinton and Madeleine Albright.

Should she make it, President Hillary Clinton should help restore the reputation of the government of the United States of America. But she and her first gentleman Bill will find that American power under the first President Clinton was far greater than it will ever be again.

Thomas Klau is a FTD columnist and heads the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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