Much has been said lately about the perceived transformation of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar pondered in their Time exposé if current U.S. multilateral and conciliatory policies meant an end to the "cowboy diplomacy" of the first term. Many of the so-called hardliners that served in the Pentagon left after the 2004 reelection to pursue careers in the private sector. Advocates of Mr. Bush at the National Review look on at current State Department-dominated diplomatic dogma with great suspicion. Thomas P.M. Barnett calls this the "post-presidency," declaring in a sense Bush's lame-duck status already. Staunch supporter Victor Davis Hanson wonders if Bush, or the world itself, has changed.

These perceptions are somewhat real and concrete, mostly embroidered and inflated. But in the sense that they are genuine, it is important to review where the divergences have occurred and what results they have led to. We are finding that the caricatures habitually employed by observers often change time and time again. For a moment recall the antiwar consensus during the prewar period: U.S. forces would, in bully-like fashion, cripple the Iraqi state and replace it with a subservient, oil-pumping puppet regime. Yet in the postbellum, as oil prices soar and religious parties are elected, we are damned for misdirected idealism and allowing an Iraqi parliament to form that includes blocs not all that favorable to our interests.

Whereas we were implored not to intervene due to a seemingly competent and deadly Iraqi army, with devastating arsenals of unconventional weaponry, we are now reminded of the abject whopping Hussein's helpless military was given, with no WMD to utilize against us infidel aggressors, even as we are described as hopeless against the insurrection.

According to opponents of this foreign policy, we've been promised that an invasion of neighboring Syria and Iran -- perhaps even dropping a nuke or two or twenty -- is imminent because Bush and his loony neocons are, well, lunatics. But then on the opposite end of the spectrum, to deride the Iraq escapade as messier than expected, we're promised no such adventurism against Assad or Khamenei can occur because we're "bogged down," and so on and so forth.

Which is it? Are we self-serving or naïve at our own expense? Bullies or incompetents? Belligerent to a fault or stymied and therefore impotent?

Pyongyang feels immune to intercontinental missile tests, however rudimentary they are. Iran is pushing proxy wars in the Bekaa Valley and Gaza Strip. Both the Russians and Chinese seem relatively unconcerned about the possible nuclearization of the Islamist theocracy in Tehran. Unlawful enemy combatants -- whose Geneva Convention protections are specifically excluded by international law -- are granted not only the status of legitimate prisoners of war (and therefore cannot be interrogated beyond the proverbial "name, rank, and serial number") but foreign al Qaidists are granted American constitutional jurisprudence.

Mr. Bush, with approval ratings dipping to Trumanesque lows, now speaks more of patience, multilateral talks, diplomacy, and global consensus than he does of preemption, a right to act alone, and doing "whatever it takes." Rumsfeld, once a primetime media darling and lighting rod of criticism, having survived yet another round of calls for his resignation, is completely nonexistent, apparently taking cues from Cheney's frequent periods of absence during the first term. Their braggadocio is replaced by Condi Rice, whose sub-par vocal support for an Israel at war -- "Restrain," "Constraint," etc. -- and Iranian resistance movements, renders her more of an elementary school principal lecturing delinquents, applying moral equivalence to bully and victim alike, than the leading U.S. diplomat.

Elsewhere, the world turns: seven are arrested in Miami plotting to take down the Sears Tower; the Lebanese government assists U.S. officials in thwarting an attack on New York tunnels even as it allows Hezbollah to run rampant; seventeen are detained in Canada plotting to blow up the government and behead the prime minister; 200 killed in India; another 150 killed in Iraq; British Muslim groups romanticize the attackers of British citizens last July; Syria continues to house Khaled Meshal; genocide unabated in Darfur; Islamist advances in Somalia, and so forth.

The administration, seemingly temperate in their reaction to the assassination of Abu al Zarqawi last month, now seems unenthusiastic about the death of the world's most sadistic child-killer Shamil Basayev, also saying relatively nothing special of the mutilation of captive U.S. servicemen. Rather than the stern warnings to tyrants and autocrats that brought about the alliance with Pakistan, the capitulation of Libya, the end of Saddamist Ba'athism, and reverberations in far away places like Liberia, we are instead exposed to an introspective administration, where President Bush himself wonders out loud if "Dead or alive" and "Bring 'em on" were too antagonistic, attempting to assuage European grievances with his Texan twang.

Has this presidency lost its mojo? One of the things that separated the lenses through which Washington and Europe viewed the world was on the issue of processes and results; Americans preferring the latter, postmodernist Old Europe opting for the former. In a sense, the West was divided between classical liberals and liberals themselves -- where everything from enforcing international law, to what terrorists constitute as when imprisoned, to the right of preemptive self-defense, to the definition of sovereignty, to international criminal courts, to Arab liberalization was up for deliberation. Europeans often see proverbial "talks" and whatever "peace process" as an end in and of itself -- even if that means disregarding Serbian ethnic cleansing a few miles from Paris, Berlin, and Rome -- whereas us less patient Americans see such routines as means to an end.

But one of the ironies is that many of the Bush policies initially pursued unilaterally have become adopted within the national discourse and international realm. Unlike the 2004 election, if Iraq is still as big of a topic as it is today, 2008 candidates will speak of training Iraqi security forces -- indigenous security always being a Bush pillar for withdrawal -- and not U.N., NATO, international peacekeepers, or "more allies," (read France and Germany) as Senator Kerry was urging during his campaign. Hezbollah and Hamas have rightly been defined by the European Union as terrorist organizations, and not quasi-freedom fighting theocratic saboteurs.

Intolerance of Islamofascist intolerance in Europe is running high after Madrid, London, Theo van Gogh's fate, the hysteria over the Danish cartoons, cars aflame on Parisian streets, and unassimilated European slums attempting to impose shari'a on themselves. Most parliamentarians across the pond will acknowledge that diplomacy with Iran, led by the EU-3, failed, and that only U.S. and British initiative, and not multilateral consensus or agreement, brought an end to Libyan nuclear commerce in turkey farms and Dr. Khan's black market proliferation conundrum.

So the question is indeed has the world or the administration itself changed? While it may be a welcome detraction from the past to see more harmony amongst the world's most influential powers, underneath the seemingly placid waters is an active volcano ready to erupt causing a tsunami that can shatter all the goodwill, benevolence, and photo-op handshakes between State Department officials and their counterparts. Marxist populism is a rising Latin American phenomenon; Chinese protective igloos shield creepy thugs in Sudan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Iran, and Burma; Moscow roles back reform, meddles with democratic advances in its former sphere of influence, and supports the autocrats in Damascus; supposed allied sheikdoms pump oil for $5 a barrel and sell it for twelve-fold, then subsequently tell their populations we're stealing it. And on and on…