With Election Day just over two weeks away, whether the next president can improve America's standing in the world remains a central campaign concern.

As the nation's economy continues spiraling down, for most voters that problem remains the primary worry. But these two issues are joined at the hip, because as the credit crisis spreads around the world, presidents and finance ministers are blaming the U.S.

In nation after nation, sea changes in leadership or policy have turned friendly or neutral nations into hostile or dangerous adversaries waiting to take on the next president.

In 2001, India remained a pariah because of its clandestine nuclear-weapons program. But then, three years ago, the Bush administration chose to leave all of that in the past. Washington offered to help India with its civilian nuclear program, while allowing it to retain nuclear weapons. That undeniably improved relations.

In many other countries, however, the record is not so reassuring. In this hemisphere, Nicaraguan voters rejected a pro-Washington incumbent party and elected as president Daniel Ortega, the former Sandinista leader who despises the United States. He allied himself with Venezuela and Iran.

In 2002, Washington endorsed a coup in Venezuela that briefly removed Hugo Chavez from office. Since then, relations have worsened and Chavez expelled the U.S. ambassador.

Washington's only obvious interest in Bolivia has been the U.S.-funded program to eradicate the state's coca crop — an effort that has angered the peasant majority. In 2005 Bolivians elected as president Evo Morales, head of a coca-growers' union. Today the coca crop is flourishing, and last month Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador.

Relations with Ecuador, whose president is a close Chavez ally, are teetering after several slights and affronts. High among them, while President Rafael Correa was changing planes in Miami, immigration authorities insisted on searching him as if he were an ordinary traveler. In August, he revoked basing rights for American drug-enforcement agents using an Ecuadoran air base.

Relations with Russia have been in a nose dive ever since President Bush began campaigning for a Europe-based missile-defense system only days after taking office. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is supposed to be a Russian specialist. Nonetheless, eight years later, Russia's invasion of Georgia has set off talk of a new cold war.

The administration's steadfast support for Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani dictator, until long after his popular support had vanished helped turn a nation disinclined to like America into a population filled with venomous hatred — ever more firmly allied with America's darkest enemies, the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The occupation of Iraq emboldened the hardliners in Iran and helped elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. One wonders whether, under other circumstances, Iran would be so stubbornly dedicated to developing nuclear weapons technology.

In Israel, the administration pushed to hold cure-all Palestinian elections, even as Middle East experts warned the Palestinians were not ready. That brought Hamas to power and created the unresolvable stalemate now blocking any effort to negotiate peace.

In Asia, the Clinton administration pushed during its final weeks in office to normalize relations with North Korea. But they could not complete the deal. The Bush administration had no interest in picking that up because Bush and his aides clung to the fantasy that if they ignored North Korea, the government would simply collapse. Cast aside, North Korea picked up work on nuclear weapons instead.

Bush cannot be blamed for every adverse turn of affairs. Still, his stewardship of foreign affairs has been a disaster without rival. Whoever wins the election, a world suffused with danger, hostility and hatred toward the United States will greet him just as soon as he takes office.

Joel Brinkley is a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University. He wrote this commentary for McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.