Most in Europe are instinctively America's friends and, after the unilateralism of the Bush years, they want to have something to love about America again.
He is frankly partisan, a multilateralist who sees the unilateralism of Mr Bush's presidency as a sorry interruption in history's inexorable progress towards a more consensual world in which going it alone can no longer answer pressing problems such as nuclear proliferation and climate change.
Some may defend the policy as an instance of robust unilateralism, but the failure of the administration's multilateral and regional initiatives was not a price that had to be paid to defend America's interests: on the contrary, those failures directly harm the American economy.
As his second term ticks down, even Mr Bush has begun to see the limits of unilateralism.
But even while he was still a Republican Senator, Hagel exhibited a sort of ecumenical internationalism that favored coalition warfare and collective security over the kind of unilateralism embraced by some neo-conservatives.
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The administration's unilateralism will have a profound effect on future presidents, argues Goldsmith.
And asked which man would better handle relations with other countries, Bush -- charged by his critics with alienating the world community through unilateralism -- beat his Democratic challenger by a 52 percent to 44 percent margin.
The deconstruction of the Bush Doctrine began by reasonably criticizing its unilateralism in not reaching out to other partners in the international arena.
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This does not appear to be the sort of abrupt American unilateralism that many people fear.
Nevertheless, Labour modernisation continued apace, with the party making peace with the UK's membership of the European Union, the market economy, ditching unilateralism and moving away from firm commitments on re-nationalisation.
The other feature of this week's announcements is their curious mixture of unilateralism and co-operation.
ECONOMIST: Rock-solid allies? No. But certainly enemies no longer
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