A Superpower Goes Its Own Way, at Its Peril
By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
… At this astonishing juncture in history, when the United States has demonstrated overwhelming military might and the ability to act as it pleases, Clyde Prestowitz steps back to try to view his country in perspective. Now president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a research group in Washington, he has had a long and varied career, partly spent outside America, which gives him an advantage most of his compatriots lack. His theme in "Rogue Nation" is American unilateralism, not only in the mainstream of foreign policy but also in various tributuaries. Mr. Prestowitz recites a familar and gloomy litany ? small-arms control, global warming and Kyoto, the International Criminal Court and plenty of other areas where Washington has thwarted international consensus.

There is nothing new about national egoism, after all; great powers have always pursued their own interests. Yet even when they didn't do so in a decorous way, or with what high-minded earlier Americans called a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, older powers necessarily had some regard for the views and interests of other countries. Even at the apogee of British might 100 years ago, when their neighbors often saw the English as perfidious and hypocritical, Britain pretended to pay some attention to those neighbors and tried to retain some of their good will.

The United States, under the Bush administration, Mr. Prestowitz suggests, is quite different, with a disrespect for the opinion of mankind that verges on the indecent. If its attitude toward its foes is Accius' "Oderint dum metuant" ? "Let them hate us so long as they fear us" ? the administration's attitude toward its friends is borrowed from the 19th-century statesman Prince Schwarzenberg: They will be astonished by the magnitude of our ingratitude.

As Mr. Prestowitz perceives, the real trouble with current American policy is not so much that it is unilateral and highhanded as that it doesn't even understand the cynical, older notion of enlightened self-interest. Washington acts on the principle that "they need us more than we need them," a belief that has been encouraged by some of the more simple-minded exponents of globalization as the latest version of the American way. Quite apart from being a little ill mannered, this isn't even true.