US Presidential Elections - The Rest Of The World Have Voted

The US Presidential elections is followed not just by Americans but much to the surprise of most Americans, the rest of the world as well. I had plenty of discussions during my conference in New York on that topic. It was a great bunch of people more than half of the 24 in my group were Americans and the rest from all over the world. When discussions went to Obama and McCain, I posed a fact to them, whether they knew that the rest of the world have actually voted on the US elections already. They were surprised.

To me, I am very confident that the rest of the world has voted Obama in by a massive landslide. The ROW is always in a predicament, we value the US as the sheriff for the democratic world, we even like American culture and their people, but darn it, we absolutely hate their foreign policies. While I may be making generalisations here, the gist of my arguments stand.

The ROW wants Obama, firstly because he is not Republican. We want a discontinuation of the Bush-Bush-Cheney regime. We want the US to have a new face, a new policy maker to MEND ties all around the world. We need new engagement with countries like North Korea and Russia. We need more fairness in dealing with Israel, not always Israel first, Israel at all cost kind of policy. We need the silly war to end properly and swiftly. We need new faces to engage Iran and Iraq. There are plenty of frayed nerves with respect to dealing with Islamic extremism. We need to engage more neutral Islamic countries to deal with that.

On trade, we need the US to lessen substantially their farm subsidies. We want a US that makes shrinking their deficit a priority. We want a US that takes the lead in emissions and environemntal issues. We want Al Gore to be appointed as lead negotiator in that. We need tough medicine to solve US social security and healthcare. We need a deliberate scaledown in US military budget, do it via more deliberate engagement with "troubling" nations.

Yes, the ROW has already voted in Obama in their hearts and minds. I hope America makes the right choice as well.

p/s photos: Tomoka Kurotani