No one can accuse George W. Bush of obfuscating about foreign policy. The president's pitch for re-election had a single, straightforward promise: threats to America's security would be met with, and sometimes anticipated by, swift and violent action. Allies were a nice-to-have, but fixed alliances and international treaties an encumbrance. The US would allow no other nation to challenge its global primacy.

That was the platform on which the president sought and received a mandate for his second term. In making its choice this week, the US has transformed the world's strategic geography. For Americans and Europeans alike, every familiar point on the geopolitical map of the past 50 years has been erased.