Washington ? Americans went to war after the attacks of Sept. 11. But they did something else just as important and far more characteristic: They went to work. A dawning U.S. economic recovery testifies to that reflex, which will give new pause to this nation’s friends, its foes and everyone in between.

The U.S. economy quickly absorbed the shock and uncertainty that followed Sept. 11. It is on the road to its sixth-consecutive month of growth after weathering a recession, a steep stock market plunge and a massive national tragedy. America’s ability to apply technology not only to the art of war but also to wealth creation is becoming breathtakingly clear to all. It is also becoming threatening to some.

U.S. forces stunned the world with a fresh display of overwhelming military superiority  and a new touch of ruthlessness  in Afghanistan. Europe suddenly sees its plans to develop an autonomous military force on the cheap left in the dust. Russia and China spend their time trying to leverage American power for their goals rather than opposing its exercise. Japan remains despondent and mired in a decade-long economic and political slump.

New U.S. productivity numbers and unexpectedly strong manufacturing, construction and consumer spending data hold out the prospect of a 4 percent rate of growth for the first three months of 2002. That comes after a slightly more modest expansion in the fourth quarter of 2001. Overall growth of 3 percent this year is built into the (conservative) estimates of the Federal Reserve, but it could well be higher.

Enron and a continuing lag in employment levels notwithstanding, America’s entrepreneurs and workers bid to accomplish in the economic sphere what America’s pilots and soldiers are doing in the military arena: They are poised to extend the gap between their level of performance and that of Europe, Japan and the rest of the world to seemingly unbridgeable distances. It is not just precision weapons but also precision inventory-taking that supports American domination of the world as the 21st century begins.

Is there a cloud lurking in that big silver lining? You bet, and it is already apparent in the anguish and complaints voiced in European capitals about Washington treating its closest allies as “satellites” and going trigger-happy on Iraq. Anxiety and destructive infighting will intensify if and when the Europeans and Japanese conclude that America may have broken free from the post-World War II cycles that saw their economies rise as U.S. fortunes ebbed and vice versa.

It is this widening economic gap, and the resources it gives the United States to go on extending the military gap, that is the real destabilizing force in the trans-Atlantic relationship today. It must be faced squarely rather than submerged in meaningless complaints about “consultation.”

I cite these new positive U.S. economic trends not to rejoice in American unipolarity  a temporary and unreliable phenomenon at best  but to warn of the political dangers they spin off. The task for the United States today is to use its strength not to dominate the world, but to manage the world  ideally with creativity and a sense of common purpose. The easier it is to dominate, the more necessary it is to act as if the thought never occurred to you.

The Bush administration needs to work harder on that kind of alliance management. An air of ruthlessness is useful in dealing with enemies on a battlefield. It is counterproductive when dealing with allies on the environment, rules of trade or strategic stability.

There are a number of easy steps Washington can take to lessen the overdone sense of unilateralism that hangs over its foreign policy. The Bush administration should announce immediately its intention to rejoin UNESCO, for example. The new director-general, Koichiro Matsuura, has returned the Paris-based scientific and educational body to its original purposes and dealt with the corruption, bloated staffing and other problems that drove the United States to withdraw in 1984. Moreover, any serious effort to tamp down the religious extremism being spread through schools in the Middle East and Asia needs both the expertise and political cover of UNESCO.

New U.S. flexibility on Russia’s relations with NATO, on curbing U.S. energy use in the context of a successor document to the Kyoto protocol and on aid to the developing world would also show that Americans have not suddenly developed into a domineering elite determined to have its own way on everything. The more that domination seems possible, the more Washington needs to show others  and itself  that it is not desirable.