My mother, an American, was always amused, after coming to live in Britain, by the euphemism of “helping police with inquiries” for those who had just been arrested. “What helpful suggestions could you make?” she would say. “Have you thought of looking in the river?”

It seems just as presumptuous to advise a superpower on how to repair its world image and restore its influence abroad when it doesn't recognise the conversation. Bush Administration officials, and many of its citizens, have often made clear that they don't give a damn what others think.

All the same, I have offered suggestions for change, which would improve the predicament in which America finds itself after Iraq and President George W. Bush. There are practical steps it could take to improve relations with countries which should be its allies and people who should be its natural supporters.

The changes would help retrieve the United States' authority in advocating its values of liberal democracy and its belief in a world governed by the rule of law and international treaties, which many people and governments are now challenging, or rejecting altogether. The list may also be a balm for the self-laceration with which some Americans have tormented themselves during Iraq and the Bush years. There is a line beyond which the US should not go in accommodating a planet-full of critics.

There are some actions for which it should apologise, but there is a limit beyond which it should concede nothing. It should not apologise for its central values, or for its essential difference from those who dislike its choices.

Give a nod to co-operation

The Bush Administration, in its closing months, has tried to make some correction itself and become a partial convert to the notion of civility. It called together the Annapolis summit on the Middle East in November 2007, and tried hard not to wreck the international talks on climate change in Bali shortly afterwards. It began working energetically within the UN system it had derided ahead of the Iraq invasion to secure tighter sanctions on Iran and a joint approach on Darfur. But fully repairing the Bush Administration's relations with the world was a lost cause by mid-2007.

A mere change of tone from the abrasion of the Bush Administration will not solve America's problems abroad, but it would be a start. It is not going to dissolve entrenched opposition within a UN whose instincts are often profoundly anti-American, nor is it going to erase the differences that run deep between America and Europe over the Middle East and the War on Terror. But it would be a first defence against the charge that America is indifferent to the principle of a world governed by laws, unless they suit its own interests.

Stop demonising China

Trade is America's best chance to pull China further within the laws and institutions of the developed world. It would help to tone down the fear-mongering about China, an area where Congress presents a more extreme face to the world than do America's presidents (although European governments are now outstripping it). But the sabre-rattling and antagonism helps America in nothing: not in enforcing trade rules, nor in racing to buy up energy supplies, nor in heading off the threat of proliferation in Iran, North Korea or the Middle East.

That is not to say that China is entirely benign. But America would get further by pointing out to China that engagement in these problems is in its own interest, and that its traditional distaste for involving itself in diplomacy is unsustainable.

Stay engaged in Iraq and the region

America will be judged across the world by its handling of the Iraq debacle after Bush. It can pull out troops, but it cannot cut and run from the problem overall, out of responsibility to Iraqis, and out of its own self-interest.

Part of that solution will be continuing to work to unblock the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock, to which the Bush Administration gave only sporadic attention. “Engagement” is an overused word, but it means, at the least, recognition that the United States is the only party that can put pressure on Israel to make the concessions which will be a central part of any deal. It also means persistence, even when a deal seems impossible, as now.

Consider talking to Iran

Iran's apparent determination to put itself within reach of its own nuclear weapons is one of America's most difficult foreign problems. Bombing Iran's suspected nuclear sites - and there might be hundreds - was never attractive, and is not now. But the unfortunately phrased conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate, published at the end of 2007, allowed Iran to claim the high ground.

No option is attractive, but it is at least easier for Bush's successor, not having branded it part of an “axis of evil”, to consider talking to Iran about mutual interests for security in the region.

The policy of withholding mere contact with the United States as punishment, which was a core tactic of the Bush Administration, has manifestly not worked.

Drop the phrase “War on Terror” and shut Guantanamo

Giving up the language of war may be hard for any American president to do; anything that sounds like faltering in the face of the United States' enemies will carry a political price. But keeping it carries a cost, too. It alienates those in Europe who tend to find the term an unhelpful conflation of different local threats and who believe it invests terrorists with heroic grandeur, when they should be regarded as criminals.

It has also led the US into the entirely unnecessary mess of Guantanamo Bay, compromising its own claim to be defending principles of freedom and justice, and being condemned around the world for the sake of a few hundred captives, most of whom it does not have evidence to charge. It should try the captives in its own conventional courts, or let them go, and shut the camp - surely an irresistibly easy gesture for Bush's successor to make.

A warning to Europe

Any successor of George W. Bush will want to seem different. But Europe is going to be disappointed if it expects all the things it has disliked about Bush to fall away at the same time. That won't happen - and shouldn't. Europe will no doubt get something of what it wants in a president who sounds keener on working with other countries - but that could bring Europe itself new discomfort. It would produce demands - for military spending, for trade concessions which Europe, in turn, might not want to meet.

It would be an insidious trap for Europe to set: to pretend that Bush was in every respect uniquely offensive; to set hopes for his successor so high, to ignore the real differences of interest, and then, to condemn America once again for failing to fall in line with unrealistic expectations which deny that its own interests are different from those of Europe.

© Bronwen Maddox 2008. Extracted from In Defence of America, to be published by Duckworth Overlook on September 11 at £12.99. Buy it for £11.69, p&p free, from Booksfirst:

0870 160 8080 or www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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