When America votes, the world's problems go on hold, according to conventional wisdom. The onset of the US presidential election campaign every four years, so the theory goes, creates a diplomatic vacuum in which rogues and rebels thrive. The lights may be on in Washington, but there's nobody home.
That adage may be less true in 2004, when national security and foreign policy are playing a bigger role than in any campaign since the Vietnam War.
President George W. Bush's hopes of re-election, and Democratic candidate John Kerry's chances of ousting him, may be sealed in the streets of Baghdad rather than the farms of Idaho.
"To some extent things are frozen for the moment, except for Iraq," said Rafael Bardaji, a conservative Spanish analyst who advised former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
On some international security problems, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran, US policy appears to be on the back-burner until after November 2, and possibly for much longer.
But Bush's fate may hinge on the ability of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to begin stabilising the turbulent country and building a functioning state, said John Chipman, director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"The Bush administration is running on its record of fighting a continuous war on terror. So rogues and rebels are being dealt with, but diplomatic traffic started slowing down much earlier than normal," Chipman said.
GO-SLOW: Whatever the outcome of the election, new US policy initiatives are likely to take time after November, he argued.
A second Bush administration would likely have new faces in key foreign policy posts and take time to settle in and agree on policies. If Kerry wins, it could take until June just to get assistant secretaries of state confirmed by Congress.
Washington's allies are contributing to the international diplomatic go-slow, according to Bardaji.
"The reality is that the Europeans are also putting everything on hold until after November, whether they are hoping for change or just waiting to see who is elected," he said.
Take Nato, for example. The 26-nation military alliance agreed in principle at an Istanbul summit in June to provide training for the interim Iraqi government's security forces.
But France is blocking a decision to establish a Nato training presence the country, arguing it would be "dangerous, counter-productive and badly accepted by the Iraqi population", in the words of President Jacques Chirac.
Diplomats say Chirac is determined to do nothing that could help Bush's re-election after their bitter rift last year over the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein.
"Obviously Chirac would have a problem if Bush is elected because he's done so much to burn bridges," Chipman said.
FREE HAND? In the Middle East, Palestinians fret that the US campaign is deepening Washington's disengagement from peace efforts, enabling Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to create more facts on the ground by extending a disputed security barrier and installing more Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat said US distraction would "give the Israeli government a free hand to continue building the wall, to continue aggression and building of settlements".
Ali al-Jarbawi, a Palestinian political analyst, said the US campaign also gave the Palestinians reasons to postpone reforming their administration and security services.
"They will not reap the benefits of their reform in Washington until March, so why to do something for free?"
Israeli analyst Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University said it was erroneous to think that American-Israeli relations were significantly affected by US elections.
"The mythology that the US plays a significant role in fundamental decision-making on security issues in Israel is wrong," he said.
While the United States remains vocally concerned about Iran's nuclear programme and keen to raise pressure on Tehran to abandon what Washington suspects is a covert drive for the bomb, diplomats say little change is likely before the election.
The three big European Union countries - Britain, France and Germany - are pursuing dialogue with Iran in a so far unsuccessful drive to persuade it to halt its uranium enrichment programme and come totally clean on its activities.
EU diplomats expect the Bush administration may turn up the rhetoric against Iran in September but they don't expect dramatic military or diplomatic action. Nor do Iran's dominant Islamic conservatives.
"Both the candidates, Bush and Kerry, are linked to the Zionists," Iran Daily newspaper quoted conservative strategist Amir Mohebian, editor of Resalat, as telling a gathering of ultra-hard-line Ansar-e-Hizbollah militants.
"American strategists are opposing the use of force against Iran to prevent its peaceful nuclear activities. They believe Iran would continue to seek nuclear technology, stressing that the process is irreversible and there is nothing the US government can do about it."
North Korea, the other country bracketed by Bush in an "Axis of Evil" seeking nuclear weapons, appears to be hoping to see off the Republican president.
"It seems to be stepping up the attack on the United States on all fronts, in part aimed at the South (Korea). The all-out attack will likely continue straight up to the US presidential election," said Hong Kwan-Hee, analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
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