It's not only Americans who are bewitched, bothered and bewildered by this year's presidential campaign. Much of the world is paying attention, too, and there's no surprise in that since, as we keep assuring ourselves, we are the "indispensable" nation, the leader of the free world.

What happens in America doesn't stay in America. The communications revolution, which we started and continue to lead, ensures that people around the world follow what we say and do. This is not simply out of idle curiosity. We account for more than a quarter of global economic activity and are the world's biggest market, so people everywhere have a direct financial stake in American economic policy.

America's role in world security may be even more vital. After World War II, we recognized that our own security could no longer be separated from Europe's, so we embraced collective security. We and our allies in NATO (now up to 28 members) are committed to a common defense. An attack on one is an attack on all.

The same is true for Japan, Israel, Australia and our other allies around the world.

These friends and allies therefore have a legitimate interest in our election campaigns, and they can only be horrified at some of what they're seeing this time around. Consider, for example, Donald Trump's repeated declarations that we will employ waterboarding "and worse" to extract information from accused terrorists. He's talking about torture, of course, which is illegal. So apparently the rule of law, which we've championed as the basis for a stable world order, will not apply under a Trump administration. Our brave servicemen and women, who could someday find themselves in the hands of our enemies, might want to take note. Their families, too, since Trump has suggested the families of alleged terrorists are fair game.

Or take trade. Candidates in both parties have denounced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pending deal that would set the rule for economic exchanges among a dozen major Asian and Pacific countries, the U.S. included. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was part of an administration that negotiated this complex deal, but under pressure from her Democratic competitor, Bernie Sanders, she has now disowned it. Trump, for his part, rails against TPP as well as NAFTA, our quarter-century-old trade pact with Mexico and Canada; these are bad deals, made by "stupid people," he declares, assuring us that when he's in charge, America will be much better served.

It will come as news to diplomats from other countries that the U.S. has incompetent trade negotiators who have failed to fight for American interests in the past. One wonders how previous trade deals got through the U.S. Congress if they were not on balance considered beneficial for America. Also whether anyone believes a return to historic isolationism is possible or viable in a globalized world. We tried that after World War I, with the rejection of the League of Nations and adoption of the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act, and it helped lead to the Great Depression and World War II.

The Republican candidates also have pilloried the agreement with Iran to keep that country from acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia, China and our major European allies are parties to this deal, which they recognize as essential to reducing the possibility of nuclear proliferation in the vital and volatile Middle East.

Critics oppose the pact because it allows Iran to regain access to billions of its dollars (of its money) frozen in Western banks under economic sanctions adopted to bring Iran to the negotiating table. We seem unable to accept victory. Or to remember President John F. Kennedy's adage: "We should never negotiate out of fear. But neither should we fear to negotiate."

Indeed, it was JFK who, when the communist authorities of East Germany put up a wall to restrict people's freedom of movement, declared in solidarity "Ich bin ein Berliner." Trump's determination to construct a "huge" wall on our border with Mexico takes us a long way from the inspiring sentiment that so moved Berliners and the world.

Our friends around the world cringe at the primitive style of the current campaign, the insults, vulgarity, bigotry and inanities. They also worry about the substance, about what the choices we make will mean for America's future engagement with them.

In his poem, "To a Louse: On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church," Robert Burns wrote: "And would some Power give us the gift; to see ourselves as others see us; it would from many a blunder free us."

Dick Virden is a retired Foreign Service officer who represented the U.S. abroad for nearly four decades. He now lives in Plymouth.