U.S. President George W. Bush has injected potentially destabilizing dynamics into the domestic political arenas of many nations by pressuring all countries essentially to swear loyalty oaths to the United States and to work with him in going "after terrorism wherever we find it in the world . . . getting it by its branch and root."
Russia, China, Tunisia and even North Korea, in addition to nearly every other nation in the world, have signed on to the president's campaign and are remaking their own moral profiles and the world's geopolitical landscape in the process. Some in the White House know that this collaboration is unsustainable without an American commitment to replace the anger with which it has created this new order with other incentives.
While many Americans erupt in rage when anyone ties the need to change U.S. behavior to the circumstances that led to the unthinkable Sept. 11 terrorist assault, most non-Americans believe that future stability depends on the U.S. and G7 nations winning the affections of the silent majorities in developing nations, particularly Islamic countries.