Rhetoric has replaced America's key values

When President George W Bush made tracking down terrorists the single main issue of US foreign policy, he discarded 20 years of U.S. foreign global policy values. He was instead following a century of tradition by which American presidents seek a righteous mission upon which to base their foreign affairs.

A mixture of worthy issues, like human rights and encouraging free trade, had become the world's main agenda, until the attacks on September 11, 2001, led the United States to make "fighting terror" its main intent.

Since the United States is the world's sole surviving superpower, with the ability to project military forces at will, the rest of the world had to follow along with this switch, willingly or otherwise.

The moral purpose

But United States' return to having a mission for the world restored the sense of moral purpose that it had always been happier with as the foundation for its actions.

Americans perceive their country as based on fundamental human values of individual liberty and democracy, which was first made clear in foreign policy when President Woodrow Wilson went to the 1919 Versailles Conference and refused to help the European Powers re-establish the pre-war world order based on the balance of great powers.

He insisted on the new concepts of the right of self-determination and collective security as being the right way to run foreign affairs. This came as a shock to the Europeans, who had focused on balancing power rather than morality as the reason for their foreign adventures.

Between the world wars, isolationism meant that the United States was happy to ignore much of the outside world, but the attack on Pearl Harbour jolted it into the Second World War, which was vital for the allies' eventual victory. After the end of the Second World War, the United States' next 40 years were dominated by the struggle to contain and resist communism.

The victorious war against the Nazis and America's crucial role in saving Europe from Fascism, followed by the long struggle with Communism, allowed the United States to simplify its foreign policy into missions to beat its enemies. All its energies were focused on the defeat, or at very least containment, of enemies which the government and the American people agreed were evil.

But the issue of defeating an enemy was only part of the equation. It is too simplistic to say that the United States needs an enemy. Instead, the United States finds strength in its foreign affairs when they are justified by a strong moral purpose, which was much easier to do in the days when Communism offered an alternative to democracy and capitalism.

After the Berlin Wall came down and Communism imploded, this moral purpose evaporated. In the confusion after the collapse of Communism, the United States tried to find a cause out of the humanitarian issues which it had started to use in the later years of its fight against Communism. Stopping abuse of human rights was used against the USSR from the Helsinki Declaration onwards.

Taking up this issue during the 1990s, the United States spoke out on many cases, such as criticising China's treatment of its dissidents, Russia's tactics in repressing the Chechens, and many other smaller countries.

The United States also developed the cause of free trade as a main issue, seeing it as a way to encourage wealth, and so develop richer world population which would be more willing to challenge restrictions and move to the values the United States espouses.

However, this collection of issues did not add up to the same kind of moral justification that the country had been happy with for most of the century. Therefore, when the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon had been identified as coming from a terrorist source, the Bush administration was very quick to adopt the new mission of defeating terrorism, making it the central purpose of U.S. foreign affairs.

New-found advantages

This 'battle against terror' had huge advantages over the previous array of issues, which were designed to broadly improve the general lot of mankind. Firstly, fighting terror satisfied the United States' need for vengeance, and secondly, terror was a cause which all of America could agree was wrong, should be resisted, and could unite behind.

In addition, through the 1990s the United States had become more willing to use force against those it disagreed with. Actions in former Yugoslavia and the liberation of Kuwait had restored its faith in its armed forces after the debacles of Vietnam and the Horn of Africa. This new found military confidence encouraged the Bush administration in its determination to track down Al Qaida, and to depose the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

The success in these missions led the administration to look further and to plan the removal of Saddam Hussain from office. At this point, many of the United States' partners in the action in Afghanistan started to have second thoughts, and to disassociate themselves from the possibly endless search for enemies.

The danger is that there is no balanced world debate over accepting the United States' narrow concerns as the whole world's focus. No country is strong enough to impose its doubts on the United States.

China is a power, but does not have an agenda for the world. It reacts rather than leads. Russia is involved with its gigantic internal reforms. The European Union lacks the political will to develop a serious foreign policy outside its aid programmes. The Muslim world has not been able to muster a significant united voice to engage in the dialogue.

Reactionary policy

What worries many of the United States' friends (never mind its opponents) is that they see the values that they associate with the American perception of the world as having changed a lot more than has been admitted.

President Woodrow Wilson's moral force, which carried on through most of the 1900s, was based on faith in the values of democracy, self-determination, and capitalism. The Bush administration during the last year has focused on the sole question of whether a particular state is with the United States in its fight against those it declares to be terrorists, or is against it.

The fight against terror cannot be made into a long-term foreign policy. It is by nature a reaction to an event, and a search for justice (at best) or revenge (at worst), which many countries in the world sympathised with in relation to Al Qaida, but this sympathy was not a blank cheque for all future American actions.

A war against terror is not a set of values. To reduce foreign policy to this reaction begs the question of what happens when the war is won. What will happen then? This long-term lack of vision is a serious problem for America's friends to buy into.

Regardless, it is clear that George W Bush will not be able to win the next presidential elections if Saddam Hussain is still in power. The American people's need for vengeance, combined with a sense that there is still unfinished business left over from the liberation of Kuwait, will drive that war through to a conclusion.

What is more worrying is the loose nature of the United States' actions. Since American foreign policy has parted company with its base values, it has become no more than a search for "terrorist" enemies. This means that the capacity for mischief has become infinitely greater, since there are well-organised groups within the American system who push their causes, and seek common cause with those who can give them extra weight.

One serious outcome of the new search for action is