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 G-7 nations winning the affections of the silent majorities in developing nations, particularly Islamic countries.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani refused a $10 million donation from Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal when he suggested that America needed to resolve the Mideast standoff and help secure the establishment of a Palestinian state to stave off many of the violent tensions emanating from this region.

Bin Laden deserves no legitimacy, but the point that Alwaleed makes was vital for America to have comprehended and to have taken action on before this terrorist tragedy. Even America's closest allies in Germany, Japan, France and Britain are quietly lobbying for America to demonstrate less unilateral arrogance by embracing such popular international issues as curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and prohibiting use of land mines.

But the greatest challenge that the Bush team is mulling over is how to capture the world's imagination about a better, fairer, stronger system of international governance that is inclusive and respectful of developing nations.

Some in the administration believe that the best way to move forward is incrementally and routinely and do not want to recast American environmental or trade strategies in any new ways.

Other U.S. officials, particularly in the State Department, feel compelled to reinforce the fragile threads of cooperation with gestures on international environmental, labor and general trade policy and want the perception of America's heavy-handed presence in world affairs to be replaced by collaboration.

The problems with the sensitive route are many. First, the administration is populated more by unilateralists and neoconservatives who sneer at institutional encumbrances like the United Nations than by diplomatic consensus builders like Secretary of State Colin Powell. Also, when it comes to designing alternative schemes of world order, much of the developed world has little trust in unconstrained U.S. leadership.

In this regard, other potential lead nations are in short supply. Japan is economically stagnant and internationally immature. Britain has forfeited its potential role as the nouveau John Maynard Keynes redrawing important global institutions of the 21st century and has instead resurrected the spirit of Churchill in the form of Prime Minister Tony Blair -- leading spear-carrier for the American empire. Germany seems tied in knots about the subject of military deployments and is neglecting the questions of what sort of software operating system the world needs to run on now.

Strangely, France -- with experience in empire and a well-known independence of the U.S. -- may be the very nation that America needs to strike the call for a new, more compassionate global order. Given the French elections next May, either President Jacques Chirac or Prime Minister Lionel Jospin have a lot to gain by constructing the platform on which the world's greatest political and economic thinkers could replace or adjust the Bretton Woods institutions. Their goal could be a new grand bargain between developing and developed nations that mixes regulation and markets to achieve a more humane strain of globalization. While America cannot overtly lead this charge, it could enthusiastically cooperate.

Since Oct. 29, nations have been discussing in Marrakesh the next steps for implementing greenhouse gas reduction strategies and ratification progress of the Kyoto Protocol. America has been present -- but thus far has not suggested a credible alternative course of action, as it promised it would do when it withdrew its support for the Kyoto agreement.

On Nov. 9, member nations of the World Trade Organization are scheduled to meet in Doha, Qatar. Here the U.S. is petitioning for a new round of trade talks to include agriculture, services and potentially nontrade subjects such as investment and the environment.

In both cases, America has played hardball with other nations -- refusing many concessions to developing countries that have called for greater flexibility in implementing agreed trade rules that often produce severe economic hardships and political consequences.

The U.S. and other G-7 nations have an important opportunity to use Marrakesh and a WTO round as the starting points of a grander, positive vision for the world. Given the stakes involved today, the world needs to believe that America will lend a hand to those in need -- as it once so heroically did at the end of World War II -- and will temper its considerable power with compassion.

Americans will never forego the belief in leadership and in the calculus that sometimes calls for independent action when no others will act. But in trade, in environmental matters, in making the World Bank and IMF work for today's world rather than for a world 50 years ago -- America and its key partners have the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with the citizenries of nations that have been alienated and left behind as the developed world has raced ahead.