Richard Haas, a high State Department official in Republican governments observes in his recent book, “The Opportunity”, that the time has never been better for an organization of great powers to bring peace and stability to the world. For the first time in several hundred years the major nations are not engaged in a struggle for dominance. “It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this development”, he writes.

This could also have been written at the end of the tenure of President G.W. Bush and the onset of the presidency of Bill Clinton. But Clinton lacked initiative and let the ball drop. George W. Bush, who had even less experience, picked the ball up but kicked it all over the field. Now fortune perhaps smiles for second time. A Barack Obama presidency could do what should have been done seventeen years ago at the end of Cold War and secure a grand peace on major issues between the major — and not so major — powers.

America has its problems of self-identity. Richard Hofstater summed it up: “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.” As Rabbit Angstrom, the main character in many John Updike novels, said, “Without the Cold War, what’s the point of being American?” America, committed to its principles of liberty, democracy, individualism and private property, has the weakness of seeming to need an “evil empire” out there to feel fulfilled.

George Bush felt this viscerally and 9/11 gave him his cause — Islamic militancy, which, by sleight of hand, he also turned into a war on Iraq.

Fortunately there has always been a good 40 percent of Americans who don’t think like Rabbit and never have. Now, I would guess, another 20 percent, having experienced the depredations of Clinton and Bush, are ready for a different read of what Gunnar Myrdal called the “American Creed”. Instead of being motivated to be involved in the outside world by security threats it is time to be involved because of moral challenge.

This is certainly not the time to be isolationist and everything indicates that if Obama becomes president he will not want to be, although clearly a first item of business will be to withdraw from Iraq and reconfigure the Western involvement in Afghanistan.

There will be an end to the rhetoric of “the global war on terrorism”. There will be a shift from dealing with Al-Qaeda by military might to one that depends more on intelligence and police work (as with the latest Spanish arrests of a terrorist cell).

There will be an almighty push to secure a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian dispute even though it will mean profoundly upsetting the Israel lobby in Washington (though probably not most rank and file American Jews). There will be an end to unnecessary confrontation with Iran.

There will be more of an effort to persuade the European Union to stop Turkey feeling like an outcast and having no choice but to become more Islamic. Nuclear disarmament between the US and Russia which has gathered dust during the Clinton/Bush years will be renewed, partly as a way of decreasing growing tension between the West and Russia, partly to eradicate the chance of an accidental launch, partly to demonstrate to the world that if a country is no longer an enemy then there is no reason to point rockets at it and, not least, to honor past promises made in the signing on the Non-Proliferation Treaty to show consistency with the pursuit of persuading other countries not to develop nuclear arms.

With China, links will grow and paranoia about its growing military strength will subside.

The push for human rights observance will be more consistent. No one will be allowed off the hook because they are a “useful” ally. The turn around in African economic fortunes will continue be supported, as it has usefully been by Bush. In Kenya, his father’s land, Obama will personally bang the leaders’ heads together.

An agenda like this will certainly compel the world to rethink its present scornful attitude toward America. It may not decide to love America but it will make it respect it.