Russian President Vladimir Putin likes President Bush, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il leans toward Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe sees little to like in either U.S. presidential candidate.
They can’t vote Tuesday, but a surprisingly large number of world leaders have dropped the traditional stand of neutrality in another country’s affairs to state their preference in the U.S. vote.
And despite Mr. Kerry’s claim early in the campaign that many leaders abroad have told him they want him to win, the president holds his own in an informal survey of his peers.
“We hope and believe the next president will again be Bush,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch backer of the U.S.-led mission in Iraq, told reporters last week.
Mr. Putin sharply clashed with Mr. Bush over Iraq, but now says the defeat of the U.S. president would be a defeat for the global war against terrorism.
“International terrorists have set as their goal inflicting the maximum damage to Bush, to prevent his election to a second term,” Mr. Putin said during a summit in Tajikistan Oct. 18.
“If they succeed in doing that, they will celebrate a victory over America and over the entire anti-terror coalition,” he said.
Mr. Bush might even win a private poll of the leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations, with Mr. Berlusconi, Mr. Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi firmly in his camp and British Prime Minister Tony Blair — Mr. Bush’s closest ally in the Iraq war — declining to state publicly a preference.
Leaders of the other G-8 nations — France, Germany and Canada — have opposed major portions of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy, but none has gone so far as to endorse Mr. Kerry.
Mr. Koizumi, who defied Japanese public opinion to dispatch troops to Iraq, said this month, “I don’t want to interfere in an election in a foreign country, but I would like President Bush to hang in there, because he is a close friend.”
Foreign leaders typically stay out of the electoral affairs of other states, both as a matter of simple diplomacy and because they must work with whichever candidate wins. The number of outright endorsements in the closely followed U.S. vote this year is exceptional.
But many foreign leaders have run significant risks in supporting Mr. Bush, the war in Iraq or the global war on terror, often in the face of heavy domestic opposition. A Kerry win could thus leave them politically vulnerable.
A top diplomat for a major Muslim country told The Washington Times this summer that leaders of many Islamic countries, particularly in Central and South Asia, secretly hope Mr. Bush prevails.
“Ironically, when you talk privately with a lot of these leaders, you find many of them support President Bush, even after all that has happened,” the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Zafarullah Khan Jamali resigned as prime minister of Pakistan in June, but remains an adviser to President Pervez Musharraf. He told reporters this spring that Mr. Bush “is a much better bet as far as Pakistan-American relations are concerned.”
There have been far fewer explicit endorsements of Mr. Kerry.
Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, just days before winning office in March, said, “We’re aligning ourselves with Kerry.”
Mr. Zapatero upset the party of conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a close ally of Mr. Bush, in the election and promptly pulled Spain’s troops out of Iraq. But he has subsequently said he would reject any request by Mr. Kerry as president to return Spanish forces to Iraq.
And some, like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, give Mr. Kerry the nod solely on the grounds that he is not Mr. Bush.
“We do not prefer a certain candidate, but no president can be worse than Mr. Bush,” the populist Mr. Chavez said in an interview on the pan-Arabic Al Jazeera satellite-TV network.
Iran and North Korea, the two remaining members of Mr. Bush’s “axis of evil,” have sent mixed signals about their presidential preference.
Hasan Rowhani, who chairs Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on state television last week that “we do not desire to see Democrats take over.”
“We should not forget that during Bush’s era — despite his hard-line and baseless rhetoric — he didn’t take, in practical terms, any dangerous action against Iran,” Mr. Rowhani said.
North Korea’s enigmatic leader, Mr. Kim, also has stayed out of the U.S. race, although North Korea’s state press routinely denounces Mr. Bush in insulting and harshly personal terms.
But North Korea’s tightly controlled press also has broadcast speeches by Mr. Kerry denouncing the war in Iraq and Mr. Bush’s refusal to engage in one-on-one talks with Pyongyang.
Despite Mr. Kerry’s claim of broad international support, his campaign rejected endorsements such as the one from Malaysia’s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad.
Mr. Mahathir, accused by critics of taking anti-Semitic and anti-Western positions during his long tenure in power, urged Americans to “vote Bush out of office” as an act of Islamic devotion.
“John Kerry does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements,” Rand Beers, a top foreign-policy adviser to Mr. Kerry, said after Mr. Mahathir’s comment in March.
Echoing some American critics, a few foreign leaders say there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the candidates.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been ostracized diplomatically by Mr. Bush, but also has been the target of harsh Kerry criticism on the campaign trail.
“For me, it makes no difference” who wins, Mr. Arafat recently told British reporters.
Zimbabwe’s Mr. Mugabe, a target of strong U.S. criticism for his country’s record on human rights and democracy, also would not vote for either man.
“They are both hostile to us,” a Mugabe spokesman said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.