Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labelled and defined in a speech at Georgetown University last month what the Bush administration is currently calling its foreign policy. Ms. Rice's term du jour is "transformational diplomacy."

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

Paging back to Mr. Bush's 2005 second inaugural speech, Ms. Rice quoted him as saying, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." She then went on to describe a very activist American diplomacy that, if put into effect, would have U.S. diplomats not only reporting about the world as it is, but also seeking to change it drastically. Our diplomats would "work on the front lines of domestic reform as well as in the back rooms of foreign ministries," said Ms. Rice.

There are at least two problems with this approach, a zealous American effort to install democratic movements and institutions -- presumably like ours -- across the world.

The first issue is one of fundamental principle. Americans since before the beginning of the history of this country as an independent entity have insisted on our own right to self-determination, the right to decide for ourselves both the form and content of how we are governed.

How in the blazes do we now give ourselves the right to tell the people of other countries how they are supposed to govern themselves? There is a decent argument that says that democracy is the best form of government. There is also a decent argument that says that the Ten Commandments provide a workable prescription for how people could live together in comity. But none of us have the right to prescribe either of those approaches to people of other cultures, themselves the modern product of different histories, as the way they should go, abandoning whatever course they have been pursuing until now.

The other major problem is the question of what perspective the people who are leading this administration actually have on the subject of how other people should be governed. The unfortunate truth is that none of them -- President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- has ever had the experience of actually living in another country under another government's authority. For that reason, it is quite possible that they cannot even imagine that it is possible for a country to be governed with different methods and according to different principles than America's.

It is one thing to read about such things, or to have someone describe them to you, or even to visit another country. It is something else again to actually live in another country and see for yourself that it functions, even though things may be very different from what they are in the United States.

Now, there is absolutely nothing that is new about America's taking its own passion for democracy as a form of government and trying to export it to foreign climes. In 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration decided that the problems of Africa could be solved by democratization. At the time I was U.S. ambassador to the Central African Republic, a country that had never had democratic elections and had been governed for the 30 years since its independence by a series of presidents, generals and even one emperor.

I took my instructions literally and worked hard for three years to bring about democratic elections in the C.A.R. The country finally elected a president in 1993. He turned out to be not exactly firmly rooted in reality and was ousted in 2003 by a general, who rules there now. As U.S. ambassador and special envoy to Somalia, I strove mightily to get the Somalis to put in place a government by democratic means. There I failed miserably, running out of time and resources in the face of a Somali nation that would rather fight than eat.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, I spent a good part of the late '90s trying to nudge the Congolese firmly toward democracy and elections which, this time, the Clinton administration believed was the sine qua non to health, wealth and fame. The Congo, too, had not had free, democratic elections since before independence in 1960.

The first president I had to work on in that domain was the inimitable Mobutu Sese Seko. Unlike the president of the C.A.R., Mobutu didn't believe me when I told him he should go ahead and have elections because he would surely win and look good in the process. He was subsequently overthrown, to be replaced by a former bar owner and illegal gold mine owner, Laurent Kabila. When I pitched him for democratic elections, he gave me a sort of "You've got to be kidding" look and said he was thinking of holding elections -- sometime.

Somalia is still chaotic, government-wise. The Congo is staggering toward eventual, possible democratic elections, maybe this spring. I would have a hard time keeping a straight face if I tried to maintain that democracy was the answer for any of these three countries, all of which I lived in and am familiar with.

Now, please do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that democracy, the highest form of government, is appropriate only for America and that the rest of these places should just muddle along with whatever they get. What I am saying, however, is that each country's government is somehow a product of its own history and culture and should be respected.

These are the thoughts that I would ask the Bush administration's foreign policy officials to keep in mind as they try to devise something for Iraq, are tempted to try to upturn Hamas' victory in democratic Palestinian elections and seek regime change in Iran.

A wonderful Cole Porter song said it well: "But I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion." Thus, probably, correctly, to democracy, a fickle goddess if there ever was one.