But evidence is building that in the past decade, the United States has seriously misread the nature of the world and its role in it.

As the lone surviving superpower, it might have led through diplomacy, judiciously distributed foreign aid and the formation of coalitions among like-minded countries. Instead, it has resorted most of the time to bluster, military force and financial manipulation.

Throughout the world in the wake of the Cold War, official and unofficial U.S. representatives have acted, often in covert ways, to prop up repressive regimes or their militaries and police forces. Such policies are setting the stage for ``blowback'' -- CIA jargon for retaliation against the United States for its clandestine operations in other people's countries.

Every now and then, America's imperial policies come briefly into public view. One such moment occurred on July 17, 1998, in Rome, when, by a margin of 120 to 7, delegates from virtually all the nations of the world voted to establish an international criminal court to bring to justice soldiers and political leaders charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Differing from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which can only settle disputes only among nations, the new court will have jurisdiction over individuals. As a result, efforts like those to bring Bosnian and Rwandan war criminals to justice, which today requires specially constituted U.N. tribunals, will become far easier. The new court will try individuals who commit or order atrocities comparable to those of the Nazis during World War II, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Hutus in Rwanda, or military governments, most of them American-trained and endorsed, like those of El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, Burma and Indonesia in the 1980s and 1990s.

Leading democracies of the world, including Britain, Canada, Holland, France, Japan and Germany, all supported the treaty. Only Algeria, China, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen and the United States voted against it.

American officials claim that they must protect their 200,000 troops permanently deployed in 40 other countries from ``politically motivated charges.'' They maintain that, due to America's ``special global responsibilities,'' no proceedings can be permitted against its own soldiers or clandestine agents unless the United States itself agrees.

Evidently, American leaders believe that they are above the very concept of international law -- unless defined and controlled by them. They do not deal with the question of whether war-crimes charges against Americans might on some occasions be warranted, nor do they consider the possibility that if this country intervened less often in the affairs of other states, particularly where none of its vital interests were involved, it might avoid the possibility of even a capricious indictment.

Only seven months before the Rome vote, there was another moment when the nature of America's stealth imperialism stood revealed. In December 1997, in Ottawa, 123 nations pledged to ban the use, production or shipment of anti-personnel land mines. Retired American military leaders like Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the allied forces in the Gulf War, have endorsed the ban, arguing that these primitive but lethal weapons have no role in modern warfare. The Clinton administration, however, bowed to military vested interests desperate to retain land mines in the American arsenal. Among other things, it insisted that they were needed to protect South Korea against the ``North's overwhelming military advantage'' -- itself a myth, exposed by the June 2000 meeting of the leaders of North and South Korea in which they declared the threat of war on the Korean peninsula to be over. The holdouts against the land mine agreement were Afghanistan, China, Russia (which later reversed its position), Vietnam -- and the United States.

Jody Williams of Vermont went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in organizing the movement that resulted in the treaty. The Clinton administration was so embarrassed by its vote that in May 1998 it convened its own Conference on Global Humanitarian De-mining at the State Department in a public relations attempt to improve its image. Only 21 countries attended.

America's imperial role in East Asia today is as fragile as the former Soviet Union's was in 1989 in Eastern Europe, when East Germans unexpectedly tore down the Berlin Wall. Despite the fact that the leaders of South and North Korea met last June for the first time and pledged to end the division of their country, the U.S. military has responded in a surly manner. The Pentagon has said that it does not trust these agreements and intends to keep U.S. troops in Korea, even if it is reunited.

As a result of continuous U.S. scare propaganda about the threat of a North Korean missile, Japan has committed itself to supporting the United States' nonexistent ``theater missile defense'' and to building its own very expensive military reconnaissance satellites. But on July 8, the U.S. military's test of its so-called National Missile Defense system abjectly failed. The United States fired a missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, which released a mock nuclear warhead over the Pacific Ocean. Another missile launched from Meck Island in Kwajalein Atoll attempted -- and failed

--to shoot the warhead from the sky. A similar test in January 2000 also failed. Given the billions of dollars already wasted on it, the whole American star wars operation begins to look like one huge con game.

In July, Japan hosted the annual summit meeting of the leaders of the seven major democratic nations plus Russia (G8). The late Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi decided to hold it in Okinawa, an island prefecture of Japan that is also the site of 39 American military bases. Anti-American revolt has been endemic there ever since Okinawa's reversion to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, which produced no change in the American presence.

The Okinawans blame both the Americans and the Japanese. They are continuously exposed to the rape of Okinawan women and teenagers by American Marines and sailors, environmental pollution, noise pollution and the Pentagon's arrogant presumption that people it has colonized and victimized for the past 55 years welcome its presence. They blame the Japanese for collaborating with the Americans to keep these troops on their small island.

On the eve of the summit, the U.S. military in Okinawa once again demonstrated that it simply cannot control its own men. Early in the morning of July 3, a drunken Marine broke into a private home and groped a 14-year-old girl as she was sleeping. Only a few days earlier a group of drunken Marines got into a fight with a taxi driver as a ploy to help one of their mates avoid paying him. And on July 10, a drunken airman ran a red light, hit an Okinawan pedestrian and sped from the scene.

To mark President Clinton's arrival, 25,000 Okinawans joined hands to form a human chain around the United States' Kadena Air Force Base. On signal, they all held up red cards, the final sanction in soccer. When a soccer referee holds up a red card, it means that a player has so violated the spirit of the game he must get off the field at once. That's what the Okinawans want the Americans to do -- get their bases out now.

What I fear is that when it comes to issues like land mines or troop deployments, a civilian president -- even one with better military credentials than Clinton's -- can no longer tell his military leaders what to do (or not to do). George Washington's Farewell Address, in which he counseled Americans to ``avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican liberty,'' now reads more like a diagnosis than a warning. Both American political parties enthusiastically endorse the United States' ``overgrown military establishment'' and are deaf to criticism of America's imperial role. History suggests that this country is riding for a big fall.

Most Americans would deem their country's role in the world to be honorable, yet the United States' voting record on international human rights accords challenges that view. American leaders apparently believe the United States is above the concept of international law. Every leading democracy has recognized international treaties to protect the rights of women and children and to try those suspected of genocide and war crimes, except for the United States.

TREATY OR CONVENTION

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects the economic, social and civil rights of children

NOT RATIFIED

United States and Somalia (which has no functioning government).

MOST RECENT ACTION

In July, President Clinton signed two protocols to the convention, to protect children from sexual exploitation and from being used as soldiers.

WHY NOT RATIFIED

U.S. critics continue to insist the treaty would undermine the American family.

TREATY OR CONVENTION

The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

NOT RATIFIED

The United States, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and Principe are the only countries that have signed but not ratified

MOST RECENT ACTION

In March 2000, Sen. Jesse Helms introduced a resolution that specifically requires the United States never to ratify the treaty.

WHY NOT RATIFIED

Opponents of the treaty have argued that it would require the United States to abolish Mother's Day.

TREATY OR CONVENTION

The 1998 International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, which would create a court to try people suspected of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

NOT RATIFIED

The United States, China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen voted against

Legislation introduced in Congress would bar U.S. military assistance for countries ratifying the treaty.

The Pentagon argues that U.S. citizens should not be subject to potential prosecution by an international court.

The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which would outlaw anti-personnel land mines

The United States and Turkey are the only NATO countries that haven't signed

The United States has promised to sign the treaty by 2006, but only if it can find acceptable alternatives to the mines it uses now.

The leading alternatives under consideration at the Pentagon would still violate the treaty.

The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which contains a provision banning the execution of those under 18

The United States has signed the treaty, but exempted itself from that provision.

The United States, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are the only countries that still execute juveniles. China abolished the practice in 1997. Pakistan, which is ruled by a military dictatorship, abolished it in July.

Twenty-five U.S. states retain the death penalty for juveniles. Critics don't want an international treaty to supersede state laws.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Chalmers Johnson's latest book is ``Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire'' (Metropolitan Books, 2000).

©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

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