Downsizing our dominance

If that turns out to be the case, the next president might (like Bush) try to rally an anti-Iran coalition of Sunni leaders in the Middle East. But those leaders will need some enticements from the United States to take the necessary risks. What deal would the next president offer to, say, the Persian Gulf states near Iran to encourage them to join the enterprise? Bush's eleventh-hour realization that coalitions don't come cost-free is what, in large measure, led him to start talking about an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord -- a precondition, in the eyes of many Arab leaders, to open cooperation with the U.S.

The reality is that the United States can no longer take obeisance for granted. A new face in the White House will be cause for relief and rejoicing among our traditional allies, but it won't be enough. On Jan. 20, 2009, especially if the new president is a Democrat, many world leaders will exclaim, "Bush is gone!" But their next words will be, "Now what?" It will be impossible for anyone to pretend it's 2000 and that the alliances can resume where they left off.

It was always a wrongheaded notion that the West's victory in the Cold War marked "the end of history." In reality, history has returned and flowed forth with a vengeance.

The United States has emerged from the tectonic shift as something more like an ordinary country -- a world power but not a superpower. This is unfamiliar territory for Americans. For half a century, we had been a superpower in a world that was tightly structured. Now we're upper-middle management in a world without big bosses -- a world that's either becoming multipolar or teetering toward anarchy.

Bush must have felt some of this strangeness during his Middle East voyage. He cajoled and kowtowed but came away with nothing. Part of his failure was because of his lame-duck status (why should anyone start haggling with an unpopular president in his final year in office?). But the next president, and the one after that, will face similar frustrations if they continue to believe, as Bush apparently does deep down, that the U.S. controls the agenda. The next presidents will have to get down in the dirt, strike deals and trade favors.

It's no longer morning in America, but it's not quite twilight either. The next president's big challenge will be to revive America's influence and stature while facing up to the limits of its power in a newly fractured world. And one of the bigger political challenges of that task will be to acknowledge, openly, that our power does have limits.