NOBLE INTENT TOO FAR?

Glancing at the front-page headlines recently in a major national
newspaper, two above-the-fold stories in the newspaper the same day caught
my eye. One proclaimed, "U.S. calls Peruvian election invalid"; the second
read, "Anti-drug effort stalls in Colombia." These two stories seemed to
speak volumes about the American character and how it at once animates and
complicates our foreign policy.

It is not a question of whether Peru's election was fair or whether
anti-drug programs in Colombia are a good thing. Of course, rigged
elections should not be legitimized, and who can argue against stopping the
drug flow? But what does our reaction to those events say about us?

After all, our democracy - in which half eligible voters do not bother to
vote, and with a long history of local warlords like Mayor Richard Daley in
Chicago in the 1960s manipulating the political process - is hardly
perfect. And it defies basic laws of economics to emphasize drug supply as
the source of the problem rather than cutting demand (the United States
consumes more than half the cocaine used in the world). How do other
nations view our posturing while we fail to live up to our ideal?

Put aside the often-noted hypocrisy and double standards of U.S. policies
and attitudes. These two headlines illustrated the remarkable American
trait of appointing ourselves judge, jury, executioner - not to mention
savior - for the rest of the world. Think about it. We have annual report
cards on human rights in every country in the world. We have laws requiring
"certification" on anti-narcotics cooperation, strictures on proliferation
of nuclear weapons and sales of missiles, on terrorism, and even reports on
religious freedom in each country. And those are just the beginning.

Of course, most of the behaviors the United States opposes are harmful to
U.S. interests and/or policies. Or they offend our values. So with good
cause and noble intentions, we often impose sanctions against countries
deemed guilty of any of such offending imperfections. In the post-Cold War
world, sanctions seem to have become the policy instrument of first resort.
Over the past decade we have imposed sanctions against some two-thirds of
the world's population - friend and foe alike. We threaten sanctions
against France for its Iran policies; scold democratic allies like Germany
over its treatment of Scientologists (it's about religious freedom); and
even declare India a "rogue democracy" for a time after it tested nuclear
weapons in 1998.

This tendency to view ourselves as the shining city on the hill, one with a
missionary impulse to right the world's wrongs, is an enduring trait in
American foreign policy. It is difficult to envision any U.S. foreign
policy that ignores American values obtaining adequate public support. This
is what makes America exceptional. It is the source of our so-called "soft
power" - the appeal of the U.S. example. Defending these values against the
"Evil Empire" was, after all, what the Cold War was all about. But back
then, it was also a matter of survival.

In the era of America as Single Superpower - when the values of free
markets and political pluralism have triumphed, when there is no competing
power or ideology - American idealism seems a tad confused. There seems an
impatience with a messy world, one that is less predictable, and nastier,
but with smaller consequences. So we sanction the Perus, the Burmas, the
Afghanistans, those on the periphery of the zone of globalization for
violating our sensibilities. At the same time, we offer advice to those
major states like Russia, China or India transitioning into the zone, while
we continue to chide, cajole and occasionally sanction them.

Sometimes it seems we feel we have to spoon-feed the world our values,
almost as if we somehow doubt they really do have the sort of universal
appeal many claim. When our allies in Europe respond to demands to take on
more responsibility by creating their own defense capabilities, we then
complain they may be too independent and harm NATO.

But too often, we seem to forget that the raw power of the American
economic, technological and military colossus enables us to wag that
finger. But power must be harnessed for a purpose. This is where our
foreign policy has stumbled, perhaps leaving a cumulative price to pay as
global power gradually becomes more diffuse over the next quarter-century.

As China emerges as a major power, will the lesson it learns from dealing
with Washington be that great powers must be the steward of global norms?
Or will it be that they simply have to wait 40 to 50 years and they can
capriciously use their power as well? A generation hence, as Europe,
Russia, China, India and Japan become more consequential poles in a
multipolar world, will heavyhanded or gratuitous behavior come back to
haunt Washington and make it that much more difficult to safeguard American
interests? And will the flipside of the American impulse to remake the
world in our image - the desire to withdraw from it when we do not succeed
(a la the 1920s) - resurface?

Confusing the prerogatives of power for ideals or norms can be
counterproductive and have costly long-term effects. Defining America's
role in the still-unnamed era we have entered presents the challenge of
balancing hard economic and strategic interests on the one side with soft
values on the other.

Enlightened self-interest would suggest global trends are broadly going in
the American direction. Can the United States have the confidence in the
universal appeal of its values to have the patience to let history unfold
at its own pace rather than trying to fast-forward it? Or, is instant
gratification also part of the American character?

Robert A. Manning, a former State Department policy adviser, is a senior
fellow and director of Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.