By US Bureau Chief Simon Marks

If 2001 was dominated by the events of September 11 that year, then this year was dominated by the first anniversary of the attacks on America, which were marked at a ceremony at Ground Zero in New York.

It is now even more clear than it was 12 months ago that the destruction at the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, where reconstruction work is now almost complete, have marked an enormous turning point in US history and US policy towards the rest of the world.

President George Bush, had this to say on September 11 2002, "This nation has defeated tyrants and liberated death camps, raised this lamp of liberty to every captive land. We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power".

Despite the President's attempts to define his actions through the prism of
history, George Bush spent much of this past year steering America onto a
different path.

This year, the "war against terror" overcame the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and saw it replaced with a new, US-backed government led by President Hamid
Karzai.

He now has American bodyguards protecting him, following a string of attempts on his life.

But the year also saw President Bush expand his concept of the "war on terror".

In his State of the Union Address in January he shocked many around the world by grouping Iraq, Iran and North Korea and targeting them for tough criticism.

President George Bush said on January 29 2002, "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic".

It was a move that, as Channel News Asia reported at the time, marked a new direction in US foreign policy.

Channel NewsAsia's Washington Correspondent, Catherine Drew reported on January 29, 2002, "The President asserted that evil could be overcome with greater good. And that the US would try to help countries, especially those in the Islamic world achieve their potential, without imposing american culture".

The "Bush Doctrine" the White House calls it, a viewpoint enshrined in a
policy document, that was submitted to the US Congress earlier this year.

It forsees a United States that can never be threatened militarily by any of its
opponents, advances a "strike-first, ask-questions-later" approach to terrorism, and articulates a policy of pre-emption aimed at dealing with threats even
before they materialize.

President George Bush said on October 7 2002, "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists".

It is Iraq that has stolen the headlines in the second half of the year, much as
Afghanistan did during the first half.

But President Saddam Hussein has been in the Bush administration's gunsights
even before the administration took office.

Many Republicans believe that the President's father made an enormous
historic mistake leaving the Iraqi leader in power at the end of the Gulf War, and they hope today's President Bush will finish the job.

With the possibility of military conflict looming, Washington saw some of the
biggest anti-war protests since the 1960s, but polls show the vast majority of
Americans favor taking a tough line towards Iraq provided the USA maintains United Nations support.

And so, the US turned to the United Nations, seeking and winning unanimous
support for a new Security Council resolution aimed at disarming Iraq.

Many analysts argue it was Secretary of State Colin Powell who persuaded the
President to work with the United Nations, despite the advice he was receiving
from more hawkish advisers to go it alone.

President Bush said on September 12 2002, "The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

The notion of the world's most powerful President questioning the relevance of
the world's most inclusive organization led to a strain in the relationship between the US and the UN Secretary-General.

United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan said, "For any one state - large or small - choosing to follow or reject the multilateral path must not be a simple matter of political convenience. It has consequences far beyond the immediate context."

But for now, with weapons inspectors back in Iraq working under the terms of a
new Security Council mandate, international unity on the need for Iraqi
disarmament remains, even if there is still debate about the consequences of any Iraqi obfuscation.

The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, is one world leader who insists he
won't support any military action against Saddam Hussein.

For six months this year, President Bush did not speak to him as a result, and
as we reported from Germany in October, the rift indicates an underlying tension over America's new global outlook.

Simon Marks, reported from Berlin on October 14, 2002 that a string of German officials told Channel NewsAsia that the country has absolutely no intention of abandoning its opposition to military action against Baghdad.

Indeed, they see Iraq as a litmus test for relations with a White House that they accuse of abandoning some of the central tenets of global diplomacy, to which the White House responds that the threat to global peace is so serious, that all nations must pick which side they are on.

The year has seen a long line of foreign leaders, including China's Jiang Zemin, and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, journey to the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Despite enormous complications in many of America's bilateral relationships, a
trip to the ranch invariably seems to end with tensions eased, and problems
papered over if not overcome.

And that may be due to the fact that America's mid-term election which took place in November, and saw President Bush score the most notable victory enjoyed by any first term President since 1934.

The Republicans maintained control of the House of Representatives, seized control of the US Senate, and a President accused of "stealing" an election in the year 2000 convincingly won one just two years later.

President George Bush, said on November 8 2002, "If there is a mandate in any election is that people want something to get done, they want people to work together in Washington DC to pass meaningful legislation that will improve their lives. The best way to win an election is to earn the trust of the voters, and that's what happened in state after state after state".

For the Democrats, the mid-term elections represented a stark rejection of a
party that remains heavily controlled by former President Bill Clinton, his wife, now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and many of their close associates.

But no matter how Terry McAuliffe of the Democratic National Committee tried to
spin the elections, Al Gore and the other front-runners for the party's Presidential nomination in 2004, face an uphill struggle defeating a President whose approval ratings today are over 60 percent.

For President Bush, the elections had another important implication.

Channel NewsAsia's Washington correspondent Malcolm Brown reported on- November 7, 2002 that the Bush administration hopes that the election results send a message to UN members that Americans are behind their President.

President Bush, travelling in Europe shortly after the mid-term elections to
inaugurate an expanded NATO, took with him a new sense of authority.

But after it emerged that a senior Canadian official told reporters the US
leader is a "moron", a remark later disowned by the Canadian Prime Minister, it became clear that the George Bush still has his work cut out for him proving his ability to the global audience.

In the United States, attention on occasion drifted away from politics.

Two alleged snipers gunned down 10 Washington area residents in October before a three week killing spree was brought to a close.

Former President Jimmy Carter was given, at long last, the Nobel Peace
Prize, even as the region that he worked so hard to pacify remained teetering on the abyss.

President Bush visited China and he is due to travel to Africa early next year.

And African American actors made headlines at the start of this year with Halle Berry becoming the first black woman to win the award for best actress in the ceremony's 74-year history.

Singaporeans made news in the United States this past 12 months.

Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan toured the country making plans to expand higher education in Singapore, while Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited Washington to herald the completion of negotiations on the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement.

And the Senior Minister was a visitor at the White House for wide-ranging
regional talks with President Bush.

When history is written, one of the most significant events in the USA this year
may turn out to have been one that most Americans simply didn't notice: the
visit to the country by Hu Jin Tao, the new General Secretary of the Chinese
Communist Party, who paid a visit to Washington earlier in the year to introduce himself a wide array of policy makers.

He is viewed here as a man of the future, and the US President assumes that at the end of a year in which his popularity at home has at least maintained, the Bush White House might be charting America's future course for a good long while as well.