THE US presidential campaign has been so long and so intense that it seems to operate in a cocoon oblivious to changes that should alter its premises. A striking example is the debate over withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

Conventional wisdom treated Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration as president of the Russian Federation as a continuation of President Vladimir Putin's two terms of Kremlin dominance and assertive foreign policy.

FOR the first time in history, a genuinely global economic system has come into being with prospects of heretofore unimagined well-being. At the same time — paradoxically — the process of globalisation tempts a nationalism that threatens its fulfilment.

THE long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distil a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe.

THE elections in Pakistan, far from calming the political crisis, have opened a new phase of it, and the world has a huge stake in the outcome. Pakistan is at the front line of the assault by Islamist radicalism on moderate elements within the Muslim world and on the institutions of the West.

THE extraordinary spectacle of President George W Bush's national security advisor obliged to defend the president's Iran policy against a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) raises two core issues: How are we now to judge the nuclear threat posed by Iran? How are we to judge the Intelligence community's relationship with the White House and the rest of the government?

SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice has clearly spelled out how the Bush administration expects the Palestinian peace process now under way to unfold. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are to hold preparatory meetings to define major elements of a settlement.

TWO realities define the range of a meaningful debate on Iraq policy: The war cannot be ended by military means alone. But neither is it possible to “end'' the war by ceding the battlefield. American decisions in the next few months will not be able to end the crises in Iraq and the Middle East before the change of American administrations. Even while the political cycle tempts a debate geared to focus groups, a bipartisan foreign policy is imperative.

THE debate about missile defence, nearly 50 years old, has been reignited by the plan to deploy elements of the American missile defence in the Czech Republic and Poland.

THE war in Iraq is approaching a kind of self-imposed climax. In September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, is to submit an interim report, the president is expected to announce his conclusions regarding future strategy.