The high and the mighty: Bush's national-security strategy and the new American hubris.

EVERY NATION SEES ITSELF AS BEING IN SOME WAY exceptional. Only the United States, though, has tried to develop foreign policies that reflect its exceptionalism. While other countries are content--or obliged--to practice a balance-of-power politics in the world, from the beginning most American leaders have argued that the United States, by dint of its unique geography and the superiority--indeed, the universality--of its democratic values, can and should pursue a loftier policy.

This sense of special mission has always left ample room for contradiction. It never, for ...