As the post-Iraq-war era sets in, the Bush administration is approaching the world with a little less swagger and a little more open arms. The shift, for a White House characterized in the eyes of much of the world as the lone cowboy, can be seen in two key areas of concern: Iraq's reconstruction and North Korea's nuclear program.

In both cases, the change from going it alone to bringing in the world appears to be as much a wakeup to reality on the ground as a profound change of heart. President Bush "is exercising much more multilateral diplomacy than in the past, but I see that as a change that has been forced upon him by circumstances," says Jeswald Salacuse, a conflict-resolution expert at Tufts University's Fletcher School. "I'm not sure that had he had his preferences, he would have gone in this direction."

Still, indications of a new assessment of the international community's role in these issues are growing. First in Iraq: The US is expected to announce at a donors' conference on Iraq this week its acceptance of a new international assistance agency that will channel much of the world's financial aid into Iraq's reconstruction. The change from full US control of reconstruction monies suggests both how much other countries were reluctant to appear to be financing the US occupation of another country, but also how much the US needs international monetary assistance in Iraq.

Second, on North Korea: As he meets with Asian-Pacific leaders this week, President Bush now says he would agree to offer security assurances to North Korea in exchange for an end to its nuclear program - as long as the agreement was made among the neighboring countries now involved with the US in talks with Pyongyang.

Addressing the president's openness to a security accord with the North, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Bangkok Monday: "We want to discuss this with our partners. We are not going to go in, all guns blazing, say 'take it or leave it, this is it.' " She said the recently established six-country talks are "an opportunity to address with the North Koreans their security concerns, but most important, to address what the rest of the ... members of the six-party framework are concerned about."

On both issues, the Bush administration appears to be bumping into problems on the ground that don't fit its initial notions of how it would address world issues. While that kind of adjustment hits every presidency, experts say, it's more striking in the case of George Bush because he had appeared more willing to buck the world - even at the expense of mounting global disdain.

The Bush administration "appears to have been ideologically driven, and the more ideologically driven you are, the more likely you are to run into realities that require you to adjust, tack, and trim your sails," says Jim Walsh, an expert on international security at Harvard University's Kennedy School School of Government.

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