Four more years: both parties remain in thrall to the Bush Doctrine.

FIVE YEARS AFTER the invasion of Iraq--arguably the most momentous mistake in the history of American foreign policy--what have we learned? Maybe nothing. The current administration is still mired in the mindset that brought about this calamity, and for all their attempts to distance themselves from an unpopular president, have John McCain or Barack Obama really renounced the Bush Doctrine?

Issued in a series of speeches and documents during 2002, the Bush Doctrine was the most complex and coherent of the many presidential statements of its kind. Its grand design rested on the conviction that America's military primacy conferred a right to reorganize hostile or failed states into free-market democracies. The result promised to be an enduring world order of peace in freedom under American leadership. The doctrine legitimized the invasion of Iraq, but its goal was global dominion.

This bid for world hegemony rested on three propositions. First, the world can be divided into democracies and tyrannies, with the former being repositories of virtue and the latter home ...

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