In November 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for president, he articulated a foreign policy that few who have lived through the past five years would recognize.

Unless a president sets his own priorities, his priorities will be set by others -- by adversaries, or the crisis of the moment, live on CNN. American policy can become random and reactive -- untethered to the interests of our country, Bush said at the time. America must be involved in the world. But that does not mean our military is the answer to every difficult foreign policy situation -- a substitute for strategy. American internationalism should not mean action without vision, activity without priority, and missions without end -- an approach that squanders American will and drains American energy.

Events since then, most notably the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people, have seen a 180-degree change in U.S. foreign policy under Bush. Critics and supporters agree the president has moved from the policy he outlined five years ago. With the U.S. presidential election around the corner, a debate is again under way on what sort of policy Bush will adopt should he be elected to a second term in office.

The issue has dominated the election cycle, with an October Time magazine poll showing 42 percent of voters listed the war on terrorism or Iraq as issue they care most about, well above traditional election issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and the economy.

Experts are divided about the approach Bush will take in a second term. Although the major foreign policy concerns -- Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs, continuing instability in Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, the proliferation of nuclear technology and global terrorism -- remain the same, questions of how Bush will deal with them persist.

In his first term Bush appeared to pay more attention to the advice offered by the Pentagon, shunting aside the U.S. State Department, which has traditionally executed U.S. foreign policy. Some experts say Bush may, in a second term, pursue the Bob Novak theory, named for the syndicated columnist who first advocated it, and pursue a more traditional Republican foreign policy such as the one practiced by his father, President George H.W. Bush. According to this school of thought, Bush is disillusioned with the neoconservative advisers who made pre-emption the center of their approach, which led to the war on Iraq. This approach would see a significant step away from the doctrine of pre-emption, which all U.S. presidents have supported, and the administration's plan to spread reform and democracy in the Middle East.

Others say Bush and his advisers could take his re-election as a vindication of their policies and pursue a more intense and aggressive version of them. This, they say, would lead to military conflicts with Iran and Syria and possibly even North Korea.

I hope Novak is right, said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. But I think he is wrong.

For now, Bush says he would prefer to use diplomacy to deal with the threats posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions and Iran's refusal to freeze its uranium-enrichment program, which could be used to make nuclear weapons. The administration has insisted, however, that it has taken no option off the table in dealing with the crises.

Then there is the broader Middle East, which Bush early in this term made the centerpiece of global democratic reform under the Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Region of the Broader Middle East and North Africa. That plan, which was softened because of Arab opposition to insist all reform should come from within, emphasizes the need to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict through financial incentives and dialogue with both governments and civil society.

The plan has a strong strain of conservative internationalism, which states morality is the focus of U.S. foreign policy.

The spread of democracy is the best way to ensure that the U.S. remains secure, said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, in a speech at Xavier University in Cincinnati last month.

That idea has been the centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy speeches during the run-up to the 2004 election. In rallies to his supporters, the president has reiterated the message that he is the right man to lead the United States in the war on terrorism and to handle other global crises.

The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror, he said last week. And in this war, there is no place for confusion and no substitute for victory.

Although his supporters know that victory is his ultimate goal, how Bush will take them there will become clearer should he be re-elected president.

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