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The pretentiousness of the language—especially, perhaps, the grating use of the imperial “we”—all but cries out for a deflating rebuttal. Yet to sneer is to miss the importance of Albright’s claims. That she herself was speaking in deadly earnest is certain. Equally certain is that she was expressing sentiments widely shared across the foreign policy elite.

That American leadership is indispensable, that Americans possess a unique grasp of history’s purpose, that these factors should empower the United States to act: As far as Washington is concerned, these remain unimpeachable truths. Conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, President George H. W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, the editors of the right-leaning National Review and those of the left-leaning New Republic, not to mention the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the titans of Wall Street, all fervently subscribed to Albright’s belief that the United States is unique, irreplaceable, and able to see things that other more ordinary (or evil) nations are unable to discern.

There might be disagreement on just when to pull the trigger or just how big a gun to use, but on the fundamentals, broad agreement existed. Albright’s contribution was to describe and affirm that agreement in no uncertain terms.

Albright’s third remark went further still in explaining the proper role of military power. On this occasion, her subject was a proposed intervention in the Balkans. The ultranationalist Serb dictator Slobodan Miloševi was threatening to overrun the region. Seeing Miloševi as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, Albright wanted him stopped. In this instance, however, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by Gen. Colin Powell, counseled caution. Undeterred, Albright pressed for action. In his memoirs, Powell quoted her memorable challenge: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”41

Again, however intemperate her language, Albright was expressing a view that was then gaining considerable traction. An inverted Vietnam syndrome was taking Washington by storm: The idea was to be bold, take some risks, and employ American arms as a force for good, confident that victory was a foregone conclusion. This implied easing restraints on the use of violence, at least when wielded by the United States. Who, after all, could possibly prevent the United States military from achieving its noble purposes? In 1993, when Albright’s confrontation with Powell occurred, the answer seemed self-evident: no one.

Finally, there is this: During a 1996 television interview, a journalist invited Albright to respond to a report that sanctions imposed on the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1990, and kept in place at U.S. insistence ever since, had resulted in the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. Rather than disputing the charge, she implicitly affirmed it. “It’s a hard choice,” she responded, “but I think, we, think, it’s worth it.”42

Albright’s response once again expressed a perspective that enjoyed wide currency and that still remains central to the Washington consensus. American purposes are by definition enlightened. (“I’ve never seen America as an imperialist or colonialist or meddling country,” Albright remarked on another occasion.)43 The pursuit of exalted ends empowers the United States to employ whatever means it deems necessary. If U.S.-enforced sanctions had indeed caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, at least those children had died in a worthy cause. This was not cynicism or hypocrisy on Albright’s part. It was conviction encased in an implacable sense of righteousness.

It was also an instance of life imitating art. Albright’s judgment recalls the attitude of the fictional CIA operative Alden Pyle in Graham Greene’s famous 1955 novel The Quiet American, set in Indochina during the early days of U.S. involvement there. A plot organized by Pyle in Saigon has gone awry, killing or maiming innocent Vietnamese bystanders. Contemplating the results of his handiwork, Pyle reassures