The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday June 28 2008
The article below was referring to, not endorsing, the position taken by others when it used the term "apostate Muslim" in relation to Barack Obama. Obama has never been a Muslim.
American presidential elections are reliable occasions for political futurology. This year's has yielded at least one prediction on which Democrats and Republicans can concur and which European liberals anticipate is true: Bush will soon be gone and change is the order of the day.
Merely to entertain a doubt might seem perverse in the face of Bush's plummeting approval ratings and the seemingly universal conviction that the nation is on the wrong track. But while no candidate ever ran on a platform of "elect me and nothing will change", the 2008 contest may be historic in an unanticipated way. Rather than ending the Bush era, it could represent the end of the beginning of what historian Philip Bobbitt recently dubbed the "wars on terror". In short, 2008 may more resemble 1952 - an election that consolidated the cold war era - than 1992, the first post-cold war election; 2008 will consolidate, not repudiate, the war on terror.
"Change" will of course occur - in the next president's personnel, style and personality, the toxic Texan will be no more. Merely by being the "un-Bush", Barack Obama or John McCain will enjoy a honeymoon at home and abroad. On climate change, Guantánamo and torture, Obama and McCain have committed the next administration to departures from the Bush precedents. But in terms of overall substance, there are three good reasons to expect more continuity in United States foreign policy than change under the next president.
The most pressing is the continuity in the structure of the international system and the severity of the threats therein. China, India and others may be "rising" but the US remains the primary global actor. Moreover, precisely because of their extended presence, the US and the UK are the most high value and still vulnerable targets in terms of al-Qaida and its Islamist allies. No amount of soaring rhetoric will alter this brute reality. In turn, then, the menu of available instruments to deal with this threat will be the same as under Bush. While the more effective diplomacy that both Obama and McCain promise may be welcome, even if it is feasible, it remains the case that diplomacy is an instrument, not a policy.
In far more favourable conditions, Bill Clinton was unable to secure a rapprochement with Iran or an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. A series of US-led wars on behalf of Muslim populations in the 1990s - Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo - hardly won Islamist approbation, as 9/11 demonstrated.
Whether it goes unmentioned or re-branded, the war on terror will not end. The substantive differences between McCain and Obama, thus far, are not about whether to continue the war, but how to prosecute it better.
True, an Obama presidency would probably see more troops withdrawn more rapidly from Iraq. True, also, Obama evidently places more faith in negotiations with America's enemies without preconditions. But his avowed purpose in an Iraq withdrawal is to redeploy those forces - outside Iraq, in Afghanistan and to wage war on al-Qaida in Pakistan's borders if Islamabad refuses so to do. Even if it represents a shrewdly cynical campaign ploy rather than a genuine strategic commitment to "hard power", Obama's liberal credentials are nonetheless married to a refusal to be "soft" on terror.
Moreover, in office, realities are likely to temper Obama's more "citizen of the world" credentials, as they ultimately did with fellow Democrats Carter and Clinton. Most obviously, for all his apparent sincerity in speaking face to face with the likes of Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is not yet apparent what more he believes the US can offer them. Obama seems to imagine that these regional arsonists can be talked into becoming firefighters. But the regimes in Damascus and Tehran keep power by fomenting instability and violence. Before sitting down to tea in Tehran, at least one precondition Obama might consider is establishing whether the mullahs believe that apostate Muslims, such as himself, along with the rest of us infidels, should be killed.
While British people of all parties, according to recent surveys, heavily favour Obama over McCain, an element of buyer's remorse may yet come to pass. Certainly, both have committed themselves to preserving the "special relationship", regardless of who is in No 10. We should not anticipate major changes since the UK remains physically and metaphorically between the US and Europe. Linked militarily to the former and economically to both, British-US relations will continue to transcend leaders. But an Obama administration would probably be more attentive to protectionist pressures from an enhanced Democratic Congress.
In its commitment to a more effective multilateralism, an Obama White House would be likely to exert more pressure on Nato to increase its presence in states such as Afghanistan and Iraq. A President Obama may, likewise, increase the pressure on the EU to admit Turkey. And his administration may be unsympathetic to British refusals to extradite suspected or confirmed terrorist suspects. In sum, the theme of this election will continue to be change; the theme of the next administration, however, is likely to be continuity.
· Timothy Lynch and Robert Singh are the authors of After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy