As we approach mid 2008, governments all over the world are becoming more conscious of the change of administration in the United States that will take place at the beginning of next year. The intensity of the Democratic nomination race cannot but reinforce that coming event in our minds, and force world leaders, including those in the Caribbean, and indeed ordinary non-American citizens, to ponder the future policies of the United States over the next five years.
In doing so our minds will be thrown back to the new promises of American policy as President Bill Clinton demitted office, and the George Bush administration took is place. At the level of generality, Bush had campaigned against an excessive American interventionism abroad, a commitment to concentrate on the continued strengthening of the American economy and on a more precise assessment of its external obligations. President Clinton was leaving an American economy in what appeared to be relatively good shape, riding the waves of globalization with its technological supremacy. But on the other hand, Americans had begun to become conscious of the pitfalls of international overstretch, an assessment typified by a forced American withdrawal from Somalia.
