It’s become a truism that America’s standing in the world is falling fast. During the 1990s, the perception that globalization was conflated with American imperialism sent the international community’s views of the US tumbling. The unilateralism of the Bush administration on issues ranging from war in Iraq to pollution to international justice sent those numbers plunging toward an abyss — particularly in the Muslim world.

As the Iraq war morphs into an awkward and dangerous reconstruction effort, assessing its effect on views of America abroad seems crucial. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press did just that in May of this year, and the results — discussed at a forum at the New America Foundation on June 6 — offered much to ponder.

The new study built on a 2002 study of 44 nations that took the global temperature on issues ranging from globalization and political changes to views of America and its institutions. The present study trimmed the number to 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority in order to gauge how the Iraq war and its immediate aftermath had altered world opinion.

The good news is that Europe’s opinion of the US — which had plunged to new lows in the lead-up to the war in Iraq — has improved. Between March and May 2003, favorable opinion of the US in Great Britain rose from 48 percent to 70 percent, in Italy from 34 percent to 60 percent, and in France from 31 percent to 43 percent.

The bad news? In key nations whose help is critical to the US war on terrorism, support has dropped precipitously. In Jordan, support for the war on terror has dipped from 13 percent in 2002 to two percent today. Pakistani support has fallen from 20 percent to 16 percent. In Indonesia and Turkey, support has fallen from 31 and 30 percent, respectively, to 23 and 22 percent.

According to researcher Bruce Stokes, a National Journal columnist and member of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, such figures show that discontent with US policy is spreading dangerously from a concentration in the Middle East to the wider Muslim world. The trend extended to another question, one in which the Pew Center asked respondents whether certain world figures could be counted on " to do the right thing in world affairs. " Incredibly, the positive numbers for Osama bin Laden ranged from a high of 71 percent in the Palestinian Authority to 58 percent in Indonesia to just under 50 percent in Morocco (49 percent), Pakistan (45 percent), and Nigeria (44 percent).

The United States (with its war on terror) was not the only one that took a hit. The United Nations also suffered what researcher Mary McIntosh described as " collateral damage " from the Iraq imbroglio. The opinion of the UN as a " good influence " in Nigeria dropped from 83 percent in the 2002 survey to 63 percent in the new poll. In France, that number dipped from 75 percent to 47 percent. The plunge in the US was just as steep — from 72 percent to 43 percent. No poll is perfect — and much of the question-and-answer session at the June 6 forum was devoted to breaking down the methodology of the Pew survey and how its questions were phrased. The overall message, however, seems crystal clear: many around the world would happily dispense with the leadership of what former secretary of state Madeleine Albright called " the indispensable nation. "