Bill Clinton interviewed by The Guardian’s Oliver Burkeman

Hear the interview here. Bill Clinton, in London to promote his new book Giving: How each of Us Can Change the World, gives some of his thoughts on the global standing of the USA. Note that there is an acute difference between the public perception of the United States – overwhelmingly negative in much of Europe – and the views within diplomatic circles. I don’t, however, mean to suggest that the diplomatic view – within the British Foreign Office for example – is overwhelmingly positive. Rather, I simply try always to highlight that there are a number of relationships working at once and not always pulling in the same direction or concerned with the same values. The Anglo-American relationship is an aggregate concept. To return to the interview:

Burkeman suggests a ‘connection between how well you’re received around the planet and how good your wife’s chances are looking at the moment, and how much American’s dislike the incumbent’.

Clinton replies that ‘there is a connection I think between how well she’s doing at the moment and the concern Americans have for the standing [which] our country has lost in the world because of our excessive unilateralism. And its not just Iraq’. He goes on to express concern at the withdrawal from  the Kyoto agreement, loss of interest in non-proliferation, and the refusal to recognise the International criminal court.

While Iraq dominates the media and (partly as a consequence) public feeling towards the United States there are numerous diplomatic headaches within the upper echelons of diplomacy. More broadly, Clinton laments the loss of goodwill towards the US, which after the 9/11 attacks was at an unprecedented high. Whether or not you consider the motives for, and execution of, President Bush’s post 9/11 strategies good or bad there is no doubt that this goodwill has drained away. With this has gone a once-in-a-political-generation opportunity for a renewal of US ties to the outside world. Instead the Anglo-American relationship has been reforged in the heat of an increasingly unpopular war and its current form is frequently maligned as a result.