If you're wondering what American will be like after George W. Bush leaves office, or if you're interested in what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (among others) would like to tell Washington, we have a magazine for that. For the last nine years, NEWSWEEK, together with the World Economic Forum, has produced a special edition focusing on key global issues and debates. The topic for the 2008 edition--America's standing around the world--attracted contributions from a wide range of writers eager to offer the United States advice. Many of these contributors are attending Davos, where their suggestions to Washington are sure to be scrutinized and discussed. Join the debate by reading what they have to say, and participate in the dialogue via our comments boards.

By Fareed Zakaria

Photo: Abid Katib/Getty Images

For the past few years, America has been alienated from the world. We have all read the yearly polls with the same damning numbers. But on one issue, the United States and the world agree: majorities everywhere expect things to improve markedly after George W. Bush. Whether it's in Europe or Asia, the refrain from politicians, businessmen and intellectuals is the same. "We don't hate America," one of them told me recently. "We hate Bush. When he's gone, it will be a new day."

But will it? The question will be put to the test in a year, when a new president enters the White House.

There's little doubt that the style and substance of U.S. foreign policy over the past seven years has provoked enormous international opposition. What is less clear is that the style and substance were unique products of the Bush administration. Some part of the global response was surely the product of longstanding unease with U.S. dominance. After all, France's foreign minister coined the term "hyperpuissance" to describe America under Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush.

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By Timothy Garton Ash 

Illustration by Thomas Fuchs

Where Europe is concerned, the next U.S. president will have one immense advantage: not being George W. Bush. But that's about the only advantage he or she will enjoy, for the new administration will take office facing one of the biggest gulfs in transatlantic relations since 1945. Never in recent history—not during the massive row over deploying U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe in the 1980s, nor even during the worst days of the Vietnam War—has U.S. leadership been so little respected and trusted there.

Even in the most traditionally pro-American countries, surveys show a precipitous decline in U.S. standing. In Britain, according to a Pew poll, favorable opinion of the United States dropped from 83 percent in 2000 to 56 percent last year, and in Germany, the figure slid from 78 to just 37. Trust in Washington has also hit a record low. According to a survey for the German Marshall Fund, only 36 percent of Europeans now see U.S. leadership as desirable at all. In 2002, that figure was still 64 percent. Asked to name the main reasons for the decline, 34 percent said President Bush himself and 38 percent blamed the war in Iraq.

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By Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful: the international community has moved away from peace, security and justice due to the mismanagement of some of its actors. Yet the expectation of a world marked by security and tranquillity endures.

After the end of the cold war and the regional confrontations emanating from bipolar competition, many hoped there would be a beautiful spring in international relations, as a multilateral system emerged that offered equal opportunities to all members of the international community. It was hoped that the new world would enable all nations, in light of universally accepted humane norms and mutual respect, to advance together, eradicate poverty and injustice, and set aside bitter memories of the past that were nothing but war, bloodshed, violence and tension.

Those hopes were dashed by the United States and its leaders, who adopted a new and aggressive approach. Their assertion of unchallenged global leadership—and the inability of the international community and the United Nations to challenge it—frustrated hopes for a stable and peaceful world. Instead, once again we witness the re-emergence of a system that produced nothing but tension and insecurity.

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By Bernard Kouchner 

 
Meeting of Minds: Roosevelt and Cassin in Geneva in 1947
Photo: Bettmann-Corbis

President Sarkozy and I are deeply committed to renewing and strengthening the dialogue between the United States and France.

The whole world is watching as the United States prepares to elect its next president. This man or woman will be chosen by Americans, but his or her choices will affect billions. Let us not take the tree for the forest, however. The current U.S. administration has certainly polarized emotions, but it would be a mistake to think that everything will change on Jan. 20, 2009.

For all their differences, and for all the tensions these differences create, the simple fact is that neither the United States nor Europe has another partner with the capability and the political will to act to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow.

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By David Miliband 

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine called on his fellow colonists to forge a new society where power was dispersed among the citizens. "Let the crown … be demolished," he urged, "and scattered among the people whose right it is."

Today Paine's world is finally coming into view. The growth of India and China and the shift of power from states to citizens have huge potential for good. But the United States remains the world's defining power; its decisions create the framework for everyone else. It must therefore take the lead in redefining the global game—addressing the threats that divide us, from nuclear proliferation to religious extremism, but also preserving the goods we share, from climate stability to the international finance system. Doing so will require observing several new rules of the road.

RULE 1: National sovereignty comes with responsibilities. At the U.N. World Summit in 2005, the international community declared that it has a "responsibility to protect" citizens of all states from genocide. This marked a vital new stage in the debate about human rights and national power. States, it was affirmed, must protect their own populations, and if they fail, the international community has now accepted a duty to step in. That said, more needs to be done. Take Darfur, where 2 million people have been displaced and 4 million are on food aid. The United Nations has agreed to set up a new peacekeeping force with the African Union. But the troops have yet to arrive. Without a stronger international consensus on when and how to intervene, multilateral action will continue to lag.

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By J. Frank Brown 

American business leaders are very parochial in an increasingly global world. They prefer to keep young executives close to home, rarely encouraging them to seek global experience. I see some very adventurous Americans joining our M.B.A. program at INSEAD, but they are the exception. So are the big American companies like IBM that are moving top staff to the largest developing nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China. These four countries will soon make up nearly 40 percent of the world's population, with a combined GDP of $15.435 trillion, yet many senior U.S. executives still don't seem to get it. Their successors will need to understand how to exploit these new markets.

This is increasingly risky because corporations from other nations already do put global markets first. The big emerging markets are starting to create world-beating companies of their own and are already exporting top-quality managers to divisions throughout the world. Europe is full of companies like Schlumberger, the energy-services firm with joint headquarters in the United States and France, where the path to the top includes a trip around the world. At Schlumberger, rising executives move to a new country every two or three years, and after multiple moves they are ready to become truly global leaders.

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Exactly one century ago, in January 1908, the rigorously sensitive English novelist E. M. Forster, who would go on to write "Howards End" and "A Passage to India," learned that a heavier-than-air machine had flown successfully around a one-kilometer circuit in just 90 seconds. The event gave him a glimpse of the future that left him despondent. In the high-speed world he saw coming, he wrote in his diary, "Man may get a new and perhaps a greater soul for the new condition. But such a soul as mine will be crushed out."

In a lingering moment of foreboding, Forster sat down to write a story that reads today as one of the most prescient and disturbing works of science fantasy I know. Largely forgotten or ignored by literati, "The Machine Stops" has been embraced in recent years by the technology-minded crowd as a sinister vision of a completely wired and globalized society. In it, all the people on earth live their lives through an omniscient-seeming mechanism that handles their communications over bluish screens and, indeed, addresses the needs of all their senses. The potential the Machine offers for experience is vast, but all of it is derivative. "There will come a generation that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions," one of the Machine's impassioned apologists tells a vast videoconference call, "a generation absolutely colorless, 'seraphically free/From taint of personality'."

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