Lone Wolf Policy.

• Position: Presidential campaign on weapons

George Bush is not content with the United States being the top dog. He wants it to be the lone wolf. His snarling at one international accord after another besmirches the United States and makes the world a more dangerous place.

When Bush snipped at the ABM treaty, the comprehensive test ban treaty, the biological weapons protocol, and the small-arms convention, he sent an unmistakable signal that the United States doesn't care about arms control. This will only encourage other nations to bolster their own arsenals, and the arms race will accelerate on every track.

And when Bush led the United States out of the Kyoto accord on global warming, he turned Washington into a laughingstock, with 178 nations on one side and the United States on the other. By not requiring U.S. companies, which produce a huge chunk of the world's carbon dioxide, to curb their emissions, Bush showed a reckless disregard for the environmental health of the planet.

Several unfortunate attitudes underlie this wolfishness.

The first is old-fashioned know-nothingism, a studied ignorance of the outside world that is a peculiar strain of the American culture. Bush plays this to the hilt: fuzzy math meets smoggy air. Global warming, what global warming?

The second is a severe and pronounced superiority complex. Like many know-nothings, he believes the United States is better than any other country. They're foreigners; what do they know? So what if 178 nations disagree with us? We've got the Holy Grail. We're so different from all these other nations that our interests can't possibly coincide with theirs. Bush has the swagger that is symptomatic of this complex. After returning from Europe on his first trip, he bragged to Peggy Noonan, his dad's speechwriter, that he stood down more than twenty leaders (no matter they were our allies) so he could stand up for America. Bush may not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he admires the role.

Bush seems to feel the resentment that afflicts many an emperor. He views other countries as his subjects, and when they won't do what he wants them to do, he says to hell with them. If they won't trim the Kyoto agreement according to our specifications, we'll take our globe and go home.

Bush also has Kissinger's phobia: the morbid fear that other countries will drag U.S. soldiers or statesmen to The Hague or elsewhere for prosecution. Belgium is already trying to get its hands on Kissinger, and Bush wants to make sure that Americans elude...