Despite a heartfelt fear of boring you, my precious readers, with yet another political rant before the presidential race, my conscious compels me to try, with this column, to do just a bit of good. I know that both of the major candidates are emotional freaks and it’s impossible to truly like either of them, but please, bear with me, it will all be over soon.

Surely, voter cynicism is understandable. Just the other day I listened to a wonderfully candid interview with a Washington pundit on Australian radio.

The interviewee was asked if, in all truthfulness, electing either Bush or Gore would really make a significant difference in the big picture. The pundit said the short answer is “No”— the election is so close that both candidates have been driven to extreme moderation.

However, he did amend his statement to make an exception for the case of foreign affairs.

Here the candidates take some widely disparate stances on the issues and the eventual winner’s conduct and policies will make a major difference to millions around the globe.

After all, the American president is the leader of the free world, not just the United States. Just ask Yugoslavians, the free world’s newest citizens, if they care about the outcome of the presidential election.

Gore would continue the presence of U.S. peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, while Bush would pull them out as soon as possible.

In fact, Bush supports this sort of drawing away from the rest of the world quite broadly, while Gore favors a more active use of U.S. troops and resources to promote democracy, peace, environmental responsibility and human rights abroad.

Unlike Gore, Bush opposes paying U.N. dues, signing the Kyoto global warming treaty and signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. All of these actions would represent a withdrawal of U.S. leadership and support from the international community.

Even more disturbing is Bush’s feverish support for an extensive system of national missile defense (NMD). The NMD system that Bush would deploy as president would be dangerous, costly and most likely wouldn’t work. The three $100 million test runs carried out in the past year, of which only one has been a success, have called into doubt its short-term feasibility.

At the same time, foreign affairs experts and leaders of nations all over the globe, including most of our closest allies, have voiced serious concerns about such a defense system’s effects on arms proliferation and the stability of world peace.

China, naturally, is furious that NMD could eliminate its nuclear deterrent and would doubtlessly be forced to respond with a vigorous expansion of its own nuclear arsenal.

China’s increasing nuclear armament would then trigger a chain-reaction of arms races in numerous other nations.

Russia would also be upset, not in a small part because Bush’s NMD would clearly violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has been the foundation of international strategic stability since.

I think that the next time the United States signs a treaty it should be required that a Native American be on hand to provide mocking laughter for ambiance.

Russia has indicated that with the undermining of this treaty, all bets are off on nuclear missile control.

U.S. allies too have responded with opposition to the prospect of Bush’s NMD. France and Germany, along with nearly all the rest of Europe have condemned the system vehemently, suggesting that it would put strain on Atlantic alliances. Even the U.K., in which new U.S. radar bases would need to be built, is sharply critical, saying that NMD would have a “profound effect” on international relations and strategic stability.

In perfect irony, NMD would most likely have a detrimental affect on the security of even the nation it is supposed to protect.

A group of 50 American Nobel Laureates and the American Intelligence Estimate, a federal study designed to evaluate the consequences of NMD, have both echoed many of the worst suspicions about the system.

Namely, that the destructive effect it would have on U.S. reputation and support abroad, the undermining of nuclear treaties, and the danger of precipitating a vast chain-reaction increase in nuclear weapons spending world-wide would far outweigh the benefits of any protection from the so-called rogue nations it is intended to protect us from.

Finally, it seems worth mentioning that NMD isn’t just dangerous, it’s also ungodly expensive. The cost is particularly high for the United States if it is forced to keep missile defense effective against the expanding ballistic missile capabilities of competitors.

A former senior defense official warns that “we are at the wrong end of the technological lever arm. It’s easier for [America’s enemies] to build lots of ballistic missiles than for [the U.S.] to build lots of missile defenses.” The initial stages alone of Bush’s NMD alone are estimated to cost $60 billion—more than the entire GDP of “rogue nations” North Korea, Libya or Iraq.

All right, I hope that wasn’t too painful. Now go vote, and for heaven’s sake, vote right.