Reply #3: Bingo!

[aneerkoinos]

Bigger issues are at play than the personality of US President - national interests, remember them?

US want's to keep dollar as reserve currency, and that means oil currency. EU, at least Eurozone, want's to be able to buy oil with Euro's. Fundamental conflict of interests.

Both EU and US want strong influence in Middle East and Gulf. EU strategy is to build strong, mutually beneficial economic ties to it's neighbours and use influence through rather carrot than stick, main goal being stability which EU understands cannot emerge without justice. US strategy is use of the stick of military might to support friendly oligarchies servile to US interests, because it has no comparable economic carrot to what EU can offer being geografically far away from the area. So the EU model is cooperation, US model is Master and Squire. The US model has the additional benefit besides guaranteeing supply of oil, also the potential threat of stopping flow of oil to powers that US perceives as potential enemy, including EU. This, needles to say, is essential for US to keep up the appearance of the sole Superpower, leader of the world. Again, fundamental conflict of interests.

Iraq is the grinding stone. EU very much want's truly independent Iraq to be it's future neighbour, after Turkey joins EU, US needs to maintain strong military precense in Iraq.

These conflicts are not going away unless US radically re-evaluates it's interests and gives up the fantasy about New American Century, and the US consumers accept the reality of need to give their standard of living build on oil addiction much more severe than EU.

Alas, Kerry promises nothing of the sort, and I'm doubtfull if any American President could promise that, and the fundamental conflicts of interests is not going away. Given the current fundamental imbalances of world economy, escalating (economic) conflict would be the ruin of US, on the other hand ruin of US would hurt world economy and thus EU also very badly, so what Kerry will try to do is navigate in international relations trying to keep some sort of status quo, and EU will be reluctant to challenge the status quo, because we are spineless wankers. What I'm pretty certain of is that no matter what Kerry tries, the whole global house of cards will fall on his watch and the status quo will be history by 2008.

Of course, what this will mean for America is that the left will take the blame for the fall of Empire and hence destruction of US middle class, which means that there is high propability that US goes openly fascist and even more militaristic and paranoid, after the moral self-destruction of the left. I would feel much safer if Bush won and took the blame for what is to come during his second lame-duck presicency (more likely to end Nixon way than not), and the left would be forced to come up with truly radical alternative to the bankrupt policies of the former US empire (after Democratic Oligarchs of the DLC took the blame for their failure).

But hey, it's your country and your world to screw up, I just live here. :)