IT IS time for the glee at the dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld and the electoral disaster George W Bush has visited upon his party to be parked. The new world crisis brought about by the lack of strategic foreign policy thinking in the US since 2001 will get worse unless Washington uses its historic strengths instead of believing the myths of its military superiority.

The US did not destroy the German army in the Second World War -- the Soviet Union did. Chinese peasants fought America to a standstill in Korea and Third World Vietnam defeated America two decades later. Polish workers sapped Soviet imperialism's will to rule, not threats of Star Wars. America withdrew from Lebanon in the 1980s and Somalia in the 1990s at the first whiff of murderous violence.Rumsfeld is no exception to the rule that when America does war, it often does it badly. But it has defeated fascism, communism and will defeat jihadi terrorism by using the unstoppable power of its democratic, multi-faith, multi-race, rule-of-law, open-market ideology to make a better offer than any other ideology.

America now has to find the confidence and strength to try 'jaw-jaw' instead of 'war-war'. Nowhere is this more needed than in the region which has robbed Dick Cheney and the Republicans of control of both houses of Congress. Under Bush, America gave up diplomacy and international politics and surrendered foreign policy-making to the Pentagon. So far this century, America has forgotten the old maxim that peace works by talking with your enemies.It is not just America. To be sure, the US won't talk to Iran. But France won't talk to Syria. And Syria won't recognise Lebanon as an independent nation. Most Arab states won't normalise relations with Israel. In turn, Israel won't talk to elected leaders of the Palestinians. No surprise that the alternative is war.

The defeat of the Rumsfeld-Cheney world view -- that only the military does democracy or shapes nations -- opens the door to more effective US leadership. Postwar history suggests that it is usually in the last two years of a presidency that serious foreign policy breakthroughs are possible. Despite nightmare domestic politics, Nixon made a breakthrough in recognising China. Today's equivalent would be Bush offering Iran a return to normal diplomatic status.

As Ford faded, Henry Kissinger set up the OSCE, the East-West link that forced communist regimes to accept human-rights politics. Reagan's last year saw the US getting tough with South Africa, and Clinton redeemed his impeachment process by defeating Milosevic in Kosovo and pushing Israel and the Palestinians the closest they have ever been to a deal.

Can Bush imitate his predecessors? One man who has enough credit to tell the President to use his last two years in office to positive foreign policy ends is Tony Blair. He should urge the US to recognise Iran and tell France to talk to Syria. Britain should support last week's biblical appeal of the great Israeli writer David Grossman, urging Israeli leaders to talk to Palestinians.

There are two responses to the electoral earthquake in America. To gloat or to work with Washington to shape a new engagement in the Middle East and defeat terrorism by using American democracy's strengths rather than its hubristic military weaknesses.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service