Newly re-elected US President George W. Bush with his family on November 3, 2004. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP-Getty Images)

Cologne Deutsche Welle (international broadcaster), Nov. 3: Analysts in Europe say that President Bush's re-election will raise transatlantic tensions and prompt Europeans to ask what they have in common with their US ally. Most Europeans have been strongly opposed to Bush's conservative views and his unilateral approach to foreign policy, in particlular with regard to Iraq. A top analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre said Bush's re-election was likely to increase anti-Americanism in Europe. Other commentators said a second Bush term will make it less likely that more European nations will send troops to Iraq.

Toronto The Globe and Mail (centrist), Nov. 3: PM To Broach Key Issues With Bush Prime Minister Paul Martin said Wednesday that he would waste no time getting down to key Canada-U.S. issues with newly re-elected President George W. Bush.

Mr. Martin told reporters he would call and congratulate both newly re-elected President George W. Bush and his challenger, Senator John Kerry, some time on Wednesday afternoon.

...Mr. Martin emphasized, however, that his call would not merely be congratulatory, noting that he would also bring up important issues such as the closing of the U.S. border to Canadian beef over the mad-cow issue.

"In my conversation with President Bush, in addition to my congratulations, I will, as well, be saying that obviously during any election campaign, there is a hiatus in a number of matters, and I would hope that we would be able to get down to discussing those matters, which of are great concern to Canadians," he said in Ottawa after a Liberal caucus meeting.

The Prime Minister said he wanted to speak with Mr. Bush on "very serious issues, whether we're talking about mad cow or lumber or wheat." While he believes Canada is making progress on getting the border reopened to Canadian beef, he said more needs to be done. He said mad cow and softwood lumber are priority issues for Canada.

"Certainly we're going to talk about our international vision as well," he added.

But later, during Question Period, Opposition Leader Stephen Harper attacked Mr. Martin and the Liberal caucus, saying they have driven a wedge between Canada and the United States.He said various negative comments made by Liberal MPs toward the United States have been harmful to Canada-U.S. relations.

Mr. Harper referred to a recent comment by Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi, who said actions by Washington have only fuelled anti-American sentiments and terrorism.

"Mr. Speaker, not only is this party [the Conservatives] unequivocal in its fight against global terrorism, we are unequivocal that that fight is with the United States and not against it."

He added: "Why did the Prime Minister permit his cabinet ministers to so recklessly jeopardize our administration?"

Mr. Martin fired back at Mr. Harper, saying that the Liberals work alongside the United States and it's the Tories who do real harm to the relationship.

"The fact is that we are not Anti-American. Canadians are not Anti-American. We are pro-Canadian," he said. He slammed Mr. Harper for several moves he has made since the war in Iraq began.

"Being pro-Canadian means that we would not go down to the United States and use an American television network to slam Canada," he said, referring to when Mr. Harper went to the United States to appear on a Fox News program and criticized the Liberal government for refusing to join the war in Iraq.

"It means, Mr. Speaker, that we would not write articles in the Wall Street Journal criticizing our country," Mr. Martin added, referring to a letter Mr. Harper co-wrote with Tory MP Stockwell Day, apologizing to the United States because Canada did not send troops to Iraq.

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Martin noted that Ottawa wants to play a much stronger role in relations with Washington than in the past.

"That's why we opened up the Canada/U.S. Secretariat in Washington, and we really intend to make full [use] of it."

Mr. Martin hopes to have discussions with the United States on the issue of multilateralism and the way in which the two countries will work together in the future. He will discuss that issue with Mr. Bush at the APEC summit in Chile a few weeks from now, he said.

Regardless of the outcome, Canada would have co-operated with whichever party was elected to the White House, Mr. Martin told reporters Wednesday morning.

Mr. Martin again dismissed questions about whether Mr. Bush's win would mean Canada would make more of a commitment to troops in Iraq.

"We're playing a very important role, and there is a limit to the capacity that we can devolve, and I think it's simply a functioning of the world sharing," he said, noting Canada is already playing an important role in Afghanistan, Haiti and contributing to peacekeeping efforts in Sudan
- Allison Dunfield

Havana Granma (communist party), Nov. 3: President George W. Bush has been reelected for a second term in the White House. Democratic candidate John Kerry called him by phone to concede defeat without waiting for the vote recount in New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio, the states that contributed the 32 decisive votes. The Republican electoral campaign was aimed at convincing U.S. citizens that it is Bush who will safeguard them in the context of his proclaimed war on terrorism. That could bring with it the bellicose policy that prompted him to unleash two overseas wars during his first mandate.

Tel Aviv Ha'aretz (liberal), Nov. 3: Bush May Press Israel Next. Why Is Sharon Smiling? Is George Bush likely to step up pressure on Israel in a second term? More than likely. Why, then, is Ariel Sharon smiling?

It has long been axiomatic in Israel that a first-term president will do everything in his power to cement his place in the White House, while a second-term president will do everything in his power to cement his place in history.

At first blush, the principle - which implies that a history-conscious chief executive could resort to vigorous if elegant twisting of Israeli arms in order to wring concessions aimed at Arab approval of peace accords - would seem to mitigate against Israeli support for George Bush.

Regardless of the incumbent president, Republican or Democrat, neo-con or bleeding-heart, born-again or scandal-stained, Israel's unspoken fear of Washington applies. So does the prescription: Keep your enemies close, and your re-elected allies closer.

Analysts agreed Wednesday that a new Bush administration would, indeed, drop the hammer on Israel, but not enough to put a significant cramp in Sharon's policy style.

Asked outright if Sharon was likely to have awoken with a smile when he was told that Bush would likely emerge the winner, analysts were unequivocal.

"Without a doubt," said commentator Ben Caspit, in Tel Aviv Wednesday. "You could hear the sighs of relief resounding from Jerusalem all the way here, without a cellular phone, without a microphone.

"I'm not certain that he's right in smiling that smile, but the assumption is that 'We know Bush, and Bush, at least in his basic instinct as religious, as an evangelical, leans in our direction."

This, Caspit added, despite factors that may act to the contrary, among them "the fact that this is a second term, despite the catastrophic last visit to Washington of Dubi (Formaldehyde) Weisglass."

Last month Weisglass angered and embarassed U.S, officials, when he told Ha'aretz in an interview: "Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."

"The disengagement is actually formaldehyde," Weisglass said. "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."

In the coming months, the administration may also attempt to curry lost favor with the Muslim world "on our backs," Caspit told Army Radio.

All this notwithstanding, he concluded "the the sigh of relief from Jerusalem is a very strong one."

In fact, observes Ha'aretz analyst Akiva Eldar, the relief that Sharon feels derives from a number of sources.

First there is the sense that Sharon has been spared a flurry of visits from spirits of Washington past, in particular Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, who filled key roles during the Oslo years.

"Sharon also can sigh in relief over the circumstance that the 'threat' that Abu Mazen [former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas] is going to replace Yasser Arafat, is also apparently not going to take place."

Accordingly, two of Sharon's principle "assets" remain in place in the event of a Bush victory, Eldar says. The first is Bush himself, "who accepts Sharon's views on unilateralism and that there is no Palestinian partner for peacemaking.

"Then there is the 'No Partner' himself, Arafat, who is staying on the scene.

In sum, Eldar concludes, "This is one of the happiest days of Sharon's whole life."

In an election that flew in the face of many guiding principles, the prime minister made little secret of his affinity to Bush, who has publicly gone to great lengths in efforts to back Sharon's policies.

Senior Israeli diplomats, stepping gingerly throughout the campaign, took pains to state that both candidates would support Israel with equal conviction and equal ferver.

A Foreign Ministry report cited by Israeli media accounts, meanwhile, gave a diametrically different spin to the equivalence argument.

The thrust of the report was summed up in a Ma'ariv newspaper headline, which appeared Wednesday as the first election returns were streaming in from the United States: "In any case, Israel will be the loser."

The report was quoted as saying that no matter who won the election, the next administration would put pressure on Israel, in Kerry's case, to forge a united front with Europe over the Middle East. In the case of Bush, the aim of the White House would be solving woes in Iraq and throughout the Arab world, at Israel's diplomatic expense.

Israeli fears over a possible escalation in pressure, and a resulting narrowing of manevering space, were little allayed by the response Wednesday of U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, when asked if the new administration was likely to pressure Israel.

"The word pressure does not figure in my vocabulary, and I don't assume that it's going to be part of the next president's vocabulary," Kurtzer said.

"We have issues that are on our mind. Prime Minister Sharon knows that, and he's made commitments that he has told us that he intends to fulfil, and I think that's the important part at this juncture."

The Bush administration has made unprecedented efforts to demonstrate backing for Sharon policies, often to the dismay of Palestinians, who earlier this year were rocked by new Bush formulations indicating that West Bank blocs might be made permanently part of Israel, and that Palestinian refugees would be denied their oft-expressed dream of returning to former homes within Israel.

At the same time, corps of administration emissaries have quietly pressed Israeli officials for action on such commitments as dismantling illegal West Bank settlement outposts and easing military restrictions on the daily lives of Palestinian civilians.

"Clearly there's a lot of work still to be done," Kurtzer said. "There's a lot of work here in Israel.The Knesset is meeting today on aspects of disengagement. There's unfinished business with respect to the letter that Dov Weisglass sent to Dr. Rice, and we'll continue our efforts in this."

The Knesset was to vote later on Wednesday on the first reading of the Evacuation and Compensation Bill, which would set out legal and financial details of the prime minister's plan for a withdrawal from 21 Gaza Strip settlements and four in the West Bank.

Sharon is expected to prevail on the first reading, but the bill, seen as crucial to the success of the disengagement plan, faces two further parliamentary votes before it becomes law.

Prior to the expected vote on the disengagement bill, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom said that factors such as the personal chemistry between Bush and Sharon - who came to power within weeks of each other in 2001 - could be overriding factors even in the context of American expectations of the Sharon government.

Shalom conceded that "It's generally common to say that a president elected to a first term immediately begins thinking about being elected to a second term. By contrast, a second-term president immediately wants to know how he will be inscribed on the pages of history books in the U.S. and the world.

In the case of Bush and Sharon, however, "There's no question that the chemistry has been very great, as has President Bush's friendship. This is something that no one can take from him. His standing alongside Israel has been a very, very clear stance."

In any event, said Itamar Rabinovich, an ex-Israeli ambassador to Washington and a former senior peace negotiator, the expectation that a second-term president would go full bore in search of a historical legacy, is far from realistic.

"There is no such thing as a 'pure' second term, four years free of political worries for the president. Two years from now, there will be elections again, for Congress, the Senate and governors, there's a need to preserve majorities in both houses.

"No president can truly feel himself exempt from political constraints, even in a second term.
- Bradley Burston

Doha Aljazeera.net (online publication), Nov. 3: Middle East Concern Over Bush Victory  Most countries in the region opted for caution after the White House claimed victory for the incumbent and challenger John Kerry conceded defeat.

The Palestinian Authority's envoy to France admitted that veteran leader Yasir Arafat, who is being treated in Paris for a serious but undiagnosed illness, was "worried".

Arafat "hopes the second mandate will be different" if Bush is confirmed the winner of Tuesday's election, Laila Shahid said.

Echoing a generally negative Palestinian stand towards Bush, deputy parliament speaker Hasan Khraishah said that "neither Bush nor Kerry spoke about the Palestinian question during their campaign".

"Bush has only served to isolate the Palestinian leadership and block the peace process," he said.

In a region rife with anti-US sentiment, Kerry was seen by many Arabs as the candidate with less aggressive policies, or at least as the sole alternative to a man whose unpopularity is matched only by Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.

Anti-US demonstration
However, polls revealed some Arabs wanted Bush to win a second term in the hope that the Republican's Middle East policies would backfire on the United States.

In Iran, where hatred of the "Great Satan" is deeply entrenched, thousands of demonstrators chanting "Death to America" marked the 25th anniversary of the US hostage crisis at the former American embassy in Tehran."If Bush is re-elected or not... we will continue to resist with determination and foil the US plots," said a female member of a Islamic volunteer brigade.

And Muhammad Muhammadi, parliament's foreign affairs committee deputy speaker, warned that America was headed for "international and economic ruin unless Bush is more careful in his second term", the student news agency ISNA said.

On the other hand, Israel and the US-backed interim leaders of Iraq were confident a second term for Bush would signal more of the same policies.

Before the election result was announced, Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was upbeat.

"Whoever is the winner will be our friend. The United States has liberated us from a dictator and a very long period of war and agony," Allawi said in an Italian newspaper interview published on Wednesday.

Israeli confidence
An inexperienced new team under Senator Kerry would be worse than maintaining the status quo, officials and politicians in Baghdad said.

"We know that Bush has an overall vision for Iraq, he overthrew Saddam Hussein and liberated the country and I think he wants to see the job done," said Muwaffaq al-Rubaye, a special advisor to the interim government.The re-election of the man who decided to invade Iraq in March 2003 comes as US-Iraqi forces are braced for a military assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Meanwhile, buoyed by unequivocal pre-election messages of support from both candidates, Israel was confident it would preserve its special relationship with Washington.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he did not expect Israel to come under any heightened US pressure over the dormant peace process.

"So far we have cooperated with all American administrations and we will continue to do so. I don't think pressure will be necessary, Israel wants to advance on the road to peace," he said.

Hong Kong Asia Times Online (English-language), Nov. 3: Forget Ohio. Forget the mathematics. Forget all the lawyers. By any measure, in terms of direct - not indirect, Electoral College democracy - George W Bush has won this referendum. A president who was never above a 50% approval rate in the past few months, who lost all three debates with challenger Senator John Kerry, but now has a majority of almost 4 million in the popular vote, has in fact won the referendum on himself.

Fasten your seat belts: it's going to be a bumpy ride. Control of the presidency, Senate, House. A popular mandate. Four more years. Possibly four more wars. In a nutshell, chief strategist Karl Rove got the evangelicals out in force. According to a series of Gallup polls, 42% of Americans declare themselves evangelicals or born-again Christians. Bush always had a head start of 42%.

The widely sung-and-danced-to youth vote never materialized. The 18-to-29 generation voted in exactly the same numbers as in 2000: first-time voters - a pro-Kerry majority, worried about the economy and the war on Iraq - were only 10% of the electorate. The 30-to-44 group was even more scarce. So much for great expectations. An army of Democrats, an army of pollsters and even a few Republicans made fools of themselves. The youth vote meant, in essence, "damn politics, let's dance".

The exit polls were all horribly wrong. The blogosphere was basically calling a Kerry victory as soon as the polls closed. A Harris poll was also predicting Kerry. The exits had Kerry leading Bush among men by 51%-49%, and among women by 53%-47%. The final exits for Ohio had Kerry winning 52%-48%. Blogger Kevin Drum was saying that "in a way it's the ultimate in navel gazing. The bloggers all read the media and the media call bloggers to find out what they're reading."

Then the blogosphere went dead for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours - as if the virtual world was trying to absorb the avalanche of red states and the news from Florida and the nail-biting Ohio crawl. There was widespread talk that the Republicans were trying everything to steal the election in the courts, trying to get the courts to stop voting while people were already in line when the polls closed, trying for a ruling against provisional ballots.

Desperate Democrats started spinning that provisional ballots in Ohio would decide everything. It would take at least 11 days, according to the Ohio state secretary. All this while Bush's lead in Ohio was increasing.

PNAC's program
The United States may have gone to the polls as a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation. Today it's still a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation, but now with a clear mandate for the state really to rock the geopolitical boat.

The "most important election of a lifetime" has sent a clear message to the whole world: the face of America in the next four years - barring a Richard Nixon-style impeachment - will be of unilateralism, the "war on terror" possibly progressively escalating into a clash of civilizations. And pay attention to the "axis of evil" hit list - the official and the bootleg. Bush II will attack what it defines as "state terrorism" - Iran, Syria - instead of the global jihadi network. It will continue to rely on Pakistan to "decapitate" the odd "high-value al-Qaeda". It won't engage in diplomacy to address the political causes of terrorism. It won't engage in a cultural and ideological effort to try to counteract the global jihad - especially now that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have changed the rules of the asymmetrical game from a religious clash to a political struggle against imperialism.

Total concentration of right-wing power - legitimized by the popular vote: this is the new neo-conservative dream turned reality. So the road ahead is to flatten the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq, bomb Iran because of its supposed nuclear aspirations, depose President Hafez Assad in Syria, crush the Palestinian resistance, and remodel the Middle East by "precision strike" democracy.

There will be serious blowback. A new pan-Islamic nationalism, for example, featuring Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Shi'ite masses allied with the Sunni triangle to kick out the Americans from Iraq, eventually supported by both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iraq crisscrossed by guerrillas and Iran penetrated by US intelligence, both leading - plus Shi'ite eastern Saudi Arabia, where the oil is - to a new, catastrophic oil shock.

And then the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) - which virtually took over the US government - will create a major confrontation with China. Asia, beware.

The faith-based, apocalyptic evangelicals have won this battle against the "reality community". Bush won despite Tora Bora, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib. The crusade continues. In God we trust - and also in Osama bin Laden. He got exactly what he wanted.
-Pepe Escobar

Moscow Mosnews (online daily), Nov. 3: Putin Says Bush Win Means US Not Scared of Terror Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that a victory for George W. Bush in the U.S. presidential race means the United States has not allowed itself to be cowed by terrorists, the Interfax news agency reports.

“I can only feel joy that the American people did not allow itself to be intimidated, and made the most sensible decision,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying.

Two weeks ahead of the election date Putin openly voiced his support of George W. Bush by saying that armed attacks in Iraq were staged by “international terrorism” out to block Bush’s re-election.

“The attacks of international terrorism in Iraq are directed not only at international coalition forces but at President Bush personally. International terrorism has given itself the goal of causing maximum damage to Bush in the election battle, the goal of blocking the re-election of Bush for a second presidential term,” Putin told a news conference.

Last June, Putin made clear for the first time he would like to see Bush back in the White House, accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy for attacking the U.S. leader on Iraq, saying the Clinton administration had been responsible for the 1999 air attacks on Yugoslavia.

Paris Le Monde (liberal), Nov.5: America has changed. This was the paradoxical view expressed by the French political class upon the announcement of George Bush’s reelection to the presidency of the United States. While many politicians have wished to see the 2000 victory of the republican candidate as simply an accident in history, this new term forces them to revise their analysis.

Coming to terms with the consequences of this fact, Jacques Chirac congratulated his American counterpart in a letter where he expressed his “wish that this second term will be an occasion for strengthening the French-American friendship,” after the first one became the stage for a deep deterioration of the relations between France and the US over the war against Iraq.

Chirac enumerated a long list of values that should help bring the two countries closer. “In the spirit of dialogue, mutual regard and respect we should continue to develop our cooperation, our common struggle against terrorism, and our common actions to promote freedom and democracy,” he stated.

Many French political figures, however, doubt that the dialogue can be reestablished easily. François Bayrou, president of the UDF (Union for French Democracy), believes that “in two and a half centuries we have never been so far from understanding the US”. “America has become more determined, harder’, he states.

Some believe it is possible to build the relations between the US and France on a basis of trust and cooperation. Hervé Novelli of the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), for example, thinks that “it’s time to rebuild the alliance between the US and France. The values that Bush puts forward, peace and democracy, bring us closer. His reelection calls for pragmatism and a return to political realism on our part.”

More numerous are the ones, who, faced with the new American situation, think that it is necessary to speed up the creation of a European counterweight. Hervé Morin (UDF) is convinced that “the widening gap between the American society and the European society” calls for the “strengthening of the European Union to serve as a counterweight to the American model.”

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Michel Barnier, explained on Wednesday morning on RTL that “the Americans cannot expect to build, manage and lead the world alone.” “Our world needs several powers: they are the first one. We are in the process of acquiring the necessary parts and the will to be another great power,” pointed out Barnier. “There are also the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians: that’s what we call a multipolar world.”

A demand for a stronger Europe was also expressed within the Socialist Party, where disappointment with George Bush’s reelection was widespread. But the supporters and opponents to the draft European Constitutions, who are currently confronting each other within this party, drew opposing conclusions by the victory of the American conservatives. François Hollande, first secretary of the PS, saw in the reelection of George Bush the necessity for a “strong Europe” that “doesn’t hesitate anymore.”

An opponent to the treaty, Laurent Fabius of the PS, declared on Thursday, November 4th, on RFI that “the election of Bush - but this would have been true if Kerry had won- means that Europe needs to be strong and for Europe to be strong we need a Constitution that is different from the one offered today.”

Similarly, the responses by the Communist Party and the Greens stayed on European ground. The former claimed that “this situation should lead the EU to double its vigilance and its determination to defend the UN and a world order based on law and peaceful conflict resolution.” The latter, as expressed by one of their spokesmen, Yann Wehrling, demanded that “political Europe should strengthen itself and propose a different model.”
-Christophe Jakubyszyn and Isabelle Mandraud
Translation by Zornitsa Stoyanova-Yerburgh