World Receives Bush With Wonder and Worry

Bent but not broken. That best describes the global post-mortems on the American judicial and political institutions tested by the protracted election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush as the next U.S. president and found sorely wanting.

From Berlin to Beijing, from ardent allies as well as ideological rivals, there is surprise and some worry at the flaws exposed by this most contentious of elections in the machinery of U.S. democracy long assumed to be a model of perfection.

Vaunted reputations for impartiality have been shattered from Tallahassee, Fla., to the U.S. Supreme Court, but America’s diplomatic partners around the world praise the calm with which voters persevered through the 36-day drama and the equanimity with which the defeated Democrats have accepted their fate.

Fears persist that the man who will become the next president is a foreign policy lightweight who is not well-traveled and who is likely to fashion a more isolationist policy in a country that many believe is already myopically focused on domestic issues. But the emergence of a peaceful resolution to a political crisis that would have brought tanks and troops into the streets of other countries has bolstered confidence even among the fretful that a U.S. president with a shaky mandate is unlikely to seriously rock the foreign policy boat.

“The main message is that the system is working despite the fact that there are a lot of archaic elements in the election laws,” said Alexander A. Konovalov, head of Russia’s Institute of Strategic Assessment. He adds that a similarly confusing outcome in a Russian election would probably instigate arrests and armed power grabs while judges quivered on the sidelines.

One irony of the outside world’s reaction, though, has been the harsher criticism directed at the U.S. electoral and legal systems by its closest friends than by states such as Russia and China, long disparaging of American claims to having cast the ideal democratic mold.

Perhaps those most alarmed by Bush’s victory are the populations in Bosnia and Kosovo that are grateful for the stabilizing presence of U.S. troops within the international peacekeeping forces deployed there. Bush’s likely choice for national security advisor, Russia scholar Condoleezza Rice, has observed that the president-elect envisions a “new division of labor” that would shift responsibility for Balkan peacekeeping to Europeans to free up the 11,000-plus American troops now there for missions closer to home.

“Kosovo is not a very secure place,” said Dukagjin Gorani, a leading ethnic Albanian journalist in Pristina, capital of the Serbian province. “Every statement coming from the powerful Western governments that some changes may take place can eventually spread some political panic.”

In the Middle East, Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat congratulated Bush, but there were rumblings of fear in the turbulent region that the Republican may have neither the experience nor the interest to help end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The emphasis is going to be different in a Bush administration,” said political scientist Gerald Steinberg in Jerusalem. “To the degree that Bush will be involved in foreign policy, he will be reasserting American dominance and hegemony.”

Leftist leaders in allied states, such as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, also officially congratulated Bush. But those less constrained by the politesse of diplomacy have been critical of the U.S. electoral process and what they see as an illegitimate outcome.

“The election has been a calamity without precedent,” said Hugo Young, a columnist for Britain’s respected newspaper The Guardian. “Its result is unacceptable and will not be accepted by large numbers of Americans. What they see before them is the brute fact of several thousand uncounted votes that would have made a difference. Democracy, quite simply, was poisoned to put George W. Bush in the White House.”

Political scientists and common people around the world have expressed disbelief over the confusion surrounding U.S. voting procedures.

“I have been so confused, and the system does not match my understanding of democracy,” Moeko Tawara, a prominent Japanese writer and feminist, commented in Tokyo. Political science professor Minoru Tada at Nishogakusha University added that Florida’s voting machines might not be as outdated as those in developing nations, “but for the country that leads the world, they are unthinkable.”

In Poland, “people are asking themselves how a country that presents itself as a model of democracy could not handle the question of counting the votes more efficiently,” said Longin Pastusiak, a member of the Polish Parliament’s foreign relations committee.

Criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention to stop the Florida recounts has been particularly candid.

“The Supreme Court decision is contrived, politically biased and very injurious to the whole legal system,” said Stephen Haseler, a professor of government at London Guildhall University, contending that several of the justices should have recused themselves for clear conflicts of interest.

Few analysts in Western Europe expect watershed change in U.S. foreign policy, but some express concern that Bush will insist on building a national missile defense shield for the United States, while leaving North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies exposed to Russian anger over a revitalized arms race.

“There is widespread concern in NATO that the Republican administration would combine disengagement in Europe with a return to the antimissile project as a centerpiece of national defense,” Italian Sen. Tana De Zulueta said. “That would be very divisive for the alliance.”

At the German Society for Foreign Policy in Berlin, analyst Michaela Hoenicke shares concern that the missile shield could provoke new friction with Russia. But she sees a reduced U.S. role in military activities on the continent as “highly compatible” with the European Union’s expressed desire to take on more responsibility for peace and security in its backyard by creating its own rapid-reaction forces.

Mandate Could Mean Little Change

Some European political commentators suggested Bush’s convoluted victory and lack of a clear public mandate may be just the right curb on foreign policy upsets. “A weak president forces the political parties to make compromises,” the Netherlands business daily Het Financieele Dagblad observed, adding that Bush’s moral authority is restricted by the legal and political manipulations to which he owes the outcome.

“At the end of its labyrinth, America finds itself with a president it did not elect,” Italy’s La Repubblica commented. “From today, [Bush] must begin a campaign to justify his victory, which is more legal than real, to put a halt to a decline in the status of the American presidency.”

In China, official reaction was a polite congratulation and an observation by President Jiang Zemin that his country and the United States “shoulder a common responsibility” to foster peace and stability at the start of the new millennium. On the streets, there was little surprise at the victory by “Little Bush,” as he is called in China, but some derision of the election and judicial actions. “Americans always brag about how sophisticated their Constitution is. The reality is they had a pretty big mess,” said Lu Xuefei, a 25-year-old clerk munching fries at a Shanghai McDonald’s.

The irony of election irregularities in the self-proclaimed bastion of democracy was not lost on those living in countries more commonly associated with corruption. A former president’s son emerges as winner amid allegations of fraud in a state governed by the victor’s brother. “That really looks Latin American,” joked Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a professor of international relations at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. Yale-educated political scientist Carlos Escude in Buenos Aires deemed the American electoral college “far from exemplary” when it allows a candidate to best the popular winner by a few suspect votes in one key state.

Africans greeted news of Bush’s victory with some anxiety that he would further isolate their continent. “Because of Bush’s linguistic deficiencies, inability to grasp complex issues and a deeply right-wing disposition unlikely to favor Africa . . . most people were not excited by his imminent declaration as the next president,” said an editorial in Kenya’s Daily Nation. Many Africans also fear Bush’s promised tax cuts will mean less foreign aid and slower debt relief.

Tabloid newspapers and editorial cartoonists had a field day lampooning Bush’s lack of foreign experience and his dubious stature as the U.S. state leader who has authorized the most executions--150--in his six years as Texas governor.

A front-page cartoon in The Guardian shows a stock trader reacting to news of the Bush victory by screaming into the phone: “Buy lethal injections!”

The cover of London’s mass-circulation The Mirror proclaimed: “Congrats on becoming the president, Dubya.” Beneath it was a picture of the planet Earth with an arrow designating Britain with the headline: “P.S. We are here.”

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Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Rome, Mary Curtius in Jerusalem, John Daniszewski in Moscow, David Holley in Warsaw, Marjorie Miller in London, Ching-Ching Ni in Shanghai, Valerie Reitman in Tokyo, Sebastian Rotella in Buenos Aires, Ann M. Simmons in Nairobi, James F. Smith in Mexico City and Paul Watson in Vienna, and special correspondents Zoran Cirjakovic in Belgrade and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this story.