Simon Heffer:
Exactly a year from today – how could we forget? – the United States of America will elect its 45th President. Sometimes it is hard to believe the 44th, Barack Obama, is still extant. He does a better impersonation of a nonentity that any president in living memory, quite an accomplishment when one recalls Jimmy Carter.
I covered Obama’s 2008 campaign and watched with dismay as America, wounded and humiliated by the pratfalls and absurdities of the George W Bush years, fell for the smooth, stage-managed articulacy of the vacuum that Obama, even then, was. His record of unachievement should have come as no surprise.
Our Prime Minister says our future lies in Europe, so we may think it of little consequence that Mr Obama has detached America so much from the rest of the world, and that the socalled special relationship between Britain and the United States is, for now, little more than a figment of the imagination. If you seek a monument to US foreign policy look no further than the intervention of Russia in the mess in Syria and Iraq; a mess Mr Obama may not have caused, but which he has contrived to do absolutely nothing to resolve.
Given the unintended consequences of American foreign policy under George W Bush, it is tempting to rejoice that America is so disengaged from international relations. But there is such a thing as a world balance of power, and America, by its inertia and (whether it admits it or not) perceived isolationism has altered it. Vladimir Putin now prevails, which, given the true state of Russian power, is preposterous and shameful: and the most pre-medieval variant of Islam imaginable stalks what we once thought of as Western civilisation.
Thus I would make a bold contention: that the 2016 presidential election is likely to be the most significant for Britain since Franklin D Roosevelt trounced Wendell Wilkie in 1940. Wilkie was in some respects the Donald Trump of his day: a maverick businessman who managed (unlike Mr Trump, so far) to secure the Republican nomination. He was an isolationist, and for the reasons why many intelligent Americans of his era were: partly because the country’s priority had, as he saw it, to be to rebuild after the devastation of the slump of the Thirties; and partly because it served the purposes of one section of American political thought to have Europe tearing itself apart, finishing off the British Empire, and leaving America as the undisputed power in the world.
Britain today, like America, has nothing we can dignify with the term “foreign policy” any more than America seems to. (What is the last thing of any significance you can recall John Kerry, the Secretary of State, saying or doing? Quite.) That is why rogues such as Putin can command such respect internationally, and can exert themselves as they do. If America elects the right president, it might once more get a coherent foreign policy; and if it does, we might be provoked into acquiring one too.
For there is no doubt that America and Britain (and indeed Europe: but that is another matter) have common interests, and that those interests are best served by a decent degree of co-operation between our two countries. And by co-operation I mean just that: not the ugly, masterand-servant relationship that the last Labour government had with Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, nor the humiliating dependence that we have on American arms for the enforcement of international security, given the idiotic running-down of our Armed Forces. But it will take the right sort of president to make that work, and to put the West back on an even keel again.
If I knew who will win the main nominations, and then the presidency, I should be sitting in a tent at a circus telling fortunes, not writing a newspaper column. The balance of probability is that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic contender, though Bernie Sanders, her socialist rival, remains strong in the polls and may take her to the wire if America – which shows increasing signs of joining the Western world’s revolt against the traditional political class – chooses to have a Corbyn moment.
The Republicans show no signs of coalescing around a candidate, and Donald Trump still appears to lead a field of around a dozen hopefuls. Mr Trump is the Republicans’ Corbyn moment, and he could yet happen: though the supposedly oracular political website FiveThirtyEight.com has published an analysis this week that claims to show how more moderate Republican candidates are favoured by the weighting of the party’s primary voting system.
Because America knows what effect electing a maverick such as Mr Trump would do to its reputation in the world, I suspect Republicans will, in the end, choose another candidate. Jeb Bush looks increasingly posthumous; Rand Paul, who seemed to have more ideas than the rest of the field put together, is also tanking – and, given his isolationism, it is probably as well. Three candidates look impressive, almost presidential, and perhaps the fight will come down to be between them: the former Hewlett-Packard boss Carly Fiorina, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
Although Sen Cruz has his isolationist moments, he appears to be more realistically ambitious for America’s role in the world than the current president; and Ms Fiorina and Sen Rubio certainly are. But whoever gets the nomination still has to beat Mrs Clinton, who despite (or because of) having been Secretary of State seems to have no clear idea of what she wants America’s role to be.
For a country whose self-obsession has reached new depths under Mr Obama, Mrs Clinton’s concentration on domestic policy may be just what Americans want. For a West that desperately needs American engagement in world affairs, it could be catastrophic. The sooner the Republicans settle on their man, or woman, and their plan, the better for all of us. At this immensely dangerous time in international relations, and given his sensible and robust approach to foreign policy, I hope the candidate will be Mr Rubio.