How the USA lost its unquestioned place as defender of world peace

The Bush Administration accepts only the multinational institutions that it sees going its way - the World Trade Organisation is in, but the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol on climatic change and treaties on landmines and even on biological weapons are out.

This is not just a passing tiff. There are many shoot-from-the-lip conclusions by media commentators that NATO, once the cornerstone of the Cold War peace, is "dead". An exaggeration, perhaps. But trawling the thoughts of "serious observers", Philip Gordon, a foreign policy scholar at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, is struck by an emerging consensus that significant damage is being done.

He quotes Jeffrey Gedmin, the director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin: "The old alliance holds little promise of figuring prominently in US global strategic thinking." And the influential Robert Kagan in Brussels: "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world."

And Gordon himself concludes: "If the differences are mishandled, the result could be a trans-Atlantic divide deeper than any seen in more than 50 years."

Finding blame on both sides, he says: "Acting on the false premise that Washington does not need allies - or that it will find more reliable or more important ones elsewhere - could ultimately cost the US the support and co-operation of those most likely to be useful to it in an increasingly dangerous world."

US analysts trace Woodrow Wilson's doctrine of the "common interest of mankind" and Great Power co-operation through various World War II and Cold War presidencies - Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Reagan.

But marking the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, foreign affairs scholar Michael Hirsh notes in the journal Foreign Affairs:

"Many of the institutions that the Bush hardliners have so little use for were conceived as part of a [Wilsonian] new vision to correct the weakness of Western democratic capitalism in the face of opportunist threats like Fascism and Marxism-Leninism.

"The yearly round of talks at [these] institutions is the social glue of global civilisation. But Bush, to judge by his actions, appears to believe in a kind of unilateral civilisation. NATO gets short shrift, the United Nations is an afterthought, treaties are not considered binding and the Administration brazenly sponsors protectionist measures at home, such as new steel tariffs and farm subsidies.

"Any compromise of Washington's freedom to act is treated as a hostile act."

All of this is not the fault of the US. Europe has a population of almost 400 million and GDP exceeding $US8 trillion ($13.5 trillion). During and after the Cold War, it was able to focus on dialogue and diplomacy in the knowledge that US military power was always on call. But there is little for the US in Europe today, so Europe can't expect to be babysat, no more than the US can expect to bully.

What is the issue - is it about how the US leads? Or about how the rest of the world is led? What change would be required in the style and substance of US leadership to win an enthusiastic embrace rather than sullen acquiescence from the rest of the world?