The year 2000 was marked with flamboyant, highly symbolic peace accords. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea; U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Vietnam. Most symbolically of all, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington, D.C., only to see their tentative, media-cheered steps toward peace end in a tragic, violent stalemate.

In fact, the Jerusalem stalemate is symbolic of the international efforts of the Clinton administration since its inception. During the Cold War, Americans always seemed to understand that their future depended on their interactions with the other powerful nations of the world, particularly the Soviet Union, Japan and the nations of Western Europe.

During the past eight years, however, U.S. attention has shifted away from these fundamental relationships and focused on "trouble spots" where a little bit of American intervention would seem at first glance to go a long way: Northern Ireland, Haiti, the Middle East, Yugoslavia, East Timor and North Korea. A half-dozen Nobel Peace Prize laureates have come to light in these highly visible trouble spots, often with a news-bite-worthy symbolic statement of reconciliation to offer the press. And the impression has grown, as a result, that Pax Americana is stable and that large-scale wars will be a thing of the past.