The first foreign policy steps taken by the new Administration, while not surprising or brilliant, do offer some indication of the shape of things to come. On the one hand, General Powell warns that U.S. reliance on international sanctions, long a mainstay of foreign policy, will be reviewed; on the other, President Bush announces that Federal funding for international groups that promote abortion as a means of population control in the third world will be withdrawn. Yup. The Republicans are back.

The sanctions issue is a difficult one, but the weight of international opinion has been increasingly negative. It is widely believed that international sanctions against South Africa were instrumental in bringing down apartheid there, and the moral case for punishing a regime you disapprove of is clear enough. But sanctions against Iraq and Yugoslavia have been ineffective or downright disastrous, depending on who you listen to.

There is, however, one clear result of economic sanctions: lost business for U.S. corporations. Colin Powell is looking at the big picture, and many would agree that sanctions serve no useful purpose these days. But the button he is pushing in Washington is the pro-business one. The return of the "pro-life" policy is certainly no surprise in American terms: it revives the position of Reagan and Bush I. But the rest of the world has no idea what to make of this. The idea that the most powerful nation in the world -- perhaps in the whole history of the world -- should decide its international policy so as to pander to the views of a fundamentalist Christian element at home which also, we understand, refuses to accept Darwin, seems frankly incredible. But there it is, and there is nothing we can do about it. While Ronald Reagan claimed to have won the Cold War, Clinton, Albright and Holbrooke seemed determined to solve all the problems that were left over. Clinton went out still trying to fix the Middle East, the UN had been tamed, and in the Balkans the world had been shown what America could achieve if it reached out a finger.

Where did this activist agenda come from, though? Certainly not from the electorate, who simply had no interest in global participation or domination. Not from the Democratic Party, either, which in Al Gore demonstrated its dull, bureaucratic reflexes all over again. It was a personal thing. Bill Clinton was allowed to develop an interventionist foreign policy as a kind of hobby. There are no signs that Bush II has any ambitions in that direction -- though Secretary Powell (should we call him "Mr. General Secretary" now?) may have some surprises up his sleeve. Clinton was not elected as a foreign policy President. He did rather well in foreign policy, despite a mixed result in the Balkans. But there was nothing in his election campaigns or in Federal politics generally that pushed him in that direction. It was more as if the economic boom of the 90s gave him the extra luxury of being able to develop his own ideas for how U.S. foreign policy should look. Following the same logic through, the stumbling economy of today will dictate a different kind of foreign policy for the Republicans. George W. will have to get on with the job in hand -- enriching the voters -- and foreign policy adventures will get short shrift. We have still to hear what will happen to U.S. troops in the Balkans, but even if they stay for a while, the attempt to stomp in and impose truth, justice and the American Way seems to be over. In fact, there is probably no foreign policy vision at all animating the new team.

We all hear what a great job Condoleezza Rice has been doing in co-ordinating all these important, dynamic players, and indeed it looks as if she, more than anyone else, is going to get a shot at running the rest of the world now. But what real goals has she or anyone else articulated? What, in fact, is the big idea? Adjusting foreign policy so it harmonizes with the voting and funding constituencies of the Republican Party is reasonable enough in its way. Inevitable, anyway. Gen. Powell announcing that he will remove some barriers to business and President Bush announcing the abortion policy both have this logic. But this type of shift will not provide enough of an ideology or doctrine to manage an effective U.S. foreign policy. Africa is in chaos, the Middle East is on the edge, Russia needs expert treatment and of course there is global warming and the whole international environmentalist agenda, which is not going to go away. There are real foreign policy issues out there, and they demand a real foreign policy.

The new team seems determined to get by with recycled Reagan-era militarism, the reason being that the same logic of promoting corporate profit is the only basis for policy that is available. They can get Condi Rice to jazz it up a bit with some fast talking for the time being, but in the end the vacuum in real policy thinking will make itself felt. America cannot simply decide to rule the world without taking some kind of responsibility for what happens there.

Christopher Lord is the editor in chief of Perspectives - The Central European Review of International Affairs, published by the Institute of International Relations in Prague. His recent books include "Politics" (1999) and "Family Values" (2000), a collection of fiction published in the United States.