Bush's vision had obvious echoes and resonance from the speeches of Ronald Reagan, who repeatedly presented the United States to the world as a shining city on a hill, an example of liberty for others to follow. But ironically, in the substance of its foreign policy strategy, it owed far more to two Democratic presidents: Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy.

"We are led by events and common sense to one conclusion," Bush ringingly declared. "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

Those statements drew loud cheers and applause. But while they have often been true in history, they certainly have not invariably been so.

Britain and France were both democracies when they ruled over and additionally conquered more than 30 percent of the land surface of the planet in the 19th century. Both countries were genuine democracies when their populations joyfully embraced total war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. And it is now forgotten that those two Central Powers had freedom of the press, an independent judiciary and free democratic elections at that time too.

The United States itself was its most aggressive in terms of territorial expansion in its very first era of popular democracy in the 30-plus years starting from the election to the presidency of Andrew Jackson in 1828.

President Bush rightly declared, "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal, instead, is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

However, from Russia to China to Iran, the United States, especially following its intervention in Kosovo and its lightning fast campaign to occupy Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein last year, is widely seen and feared -- not just by elite government circles, but according to polls and opinion surveys, by vast elements of the general populations - as being determined to use the rhetoric of liberty simply as a mask and excuse to impose on countries the governments that Washington insists upon.

The president is certainly right that the past few years -- and even the past few weeks -- have seen tremendous, genuine and moving triumphs of democratic values -- almost always in non-violent ways -- in countries great and small across the globe. Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation in the world and the most populous Muslim one, went through a profound transition in 1998-2000 to full democracy after 32 years of tough, centralized military dictatorship under President Suharto. Only last year, defeated President Megawati Sukarnoputri peacefully, gracefully and smoothly handed over power to her freely elected successor, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In November 2003, President Mikhail Sakaashvili came to power in former Soviet Georgia's moving "Revolution of Roses." In the past two months, the Ukrainian people peacefully forced a free and open re-run of an intensely controversial and apparently fraudulent vote count in the second round of their own presidential election, leading to the victory Dec. 26 of President-elect Viktor Yushchenko, who will take the oath of office this Sunday.

In the Palestinian-Authority-ruled territories, the death of Yasser Arafat was followed by the clear and decisive democratic victory of Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen as his successor.

However, two disturbing trends counterbalance this encouraging picture. First, the very nature and definition of democratic liberty for different nations means they are free to choose whatever course they will. And there is no guarantee, to put it mildly, that every democratically elected government will choose to support the policies of the United States.

Only last March, the Spanish people voted out of office a strongly pro-American government and replaced it with the current Socialist one whose first action was to pull Spanish forces out of Iraq where they had been serving alongside the United States.

Department of Defense planners in particular appear to be underestimating the massive popular nationalistic feelings in Iran, where support for the country's drive to develop a nuclear weapons potential appears immensely popular across the board, including in the very circles who want increased secularization and who have protested at some of the more domestically repressive policies of the Islamic Republic.

Secondly, fear of growing U.S. global power and the widespread belief that democratic rhetoric is being used as an excuse and justification to spread it further, is feeding massive reactions in the major Eurasian nations of Russia, China and Iran,

This means that Bush's rhetoric threatens to isolate the United States from some of its most crucial allies in the war on terror. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has given crucial support to the U.S. military operation to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Russian, Saudi Arabian and Syrian security services have all given the United States crucial intelligence in the global struggle against al-Qaida. But a broad U.S. policy seen as seeking to undermine and destabilize these governments would certainly end this cooperation.

Also, Bush's expressed policy in his inaugural flies in the face of the cautious, realpolitik policies of every previous Republican president of the past half a century.

President Dwight D, Eisenhower authorized CIA intervention to help organize military coups against democratically elected and popular governments in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s. President Richard Nixon supported militarily-ruled Pakistan against democratic India for the same reason. President Ronald Reagan authorized extremely important U.S. military and intelligence aid to Saddam Hussein himself after the Iraqi dictator had invaded Iran in 1980. Reagan also supported ruthless military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala to prevent the spread of communism in the region.

Any literal and blanket application of the new Bush doctrine would prevent the United States from supporting such regimes ever again. It also rejects the doctrine of former Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick that the United States should make a distinction between authoritarian regimes and totalitarian ones around the world, and that it should feel no compunction in supporting authoritarian ones.

The policy also flies in the face of that followed by one of Bush's greatest heroes the great British statesman Winston Churchill, whom the neo-conservatives dominating foreign policy making in the current administration have embraced as their saint.

Churchill enthusiastically embraced Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, the greatest killer in modern history, as Britain's strategic ally against Nazi Germany in World War II. He had earlier advocated making common cause with Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Italy in order to contain the far greater menace of Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. For that matter, Nixon did the same thing with Mao Zedong, the founding father of Communist China, in order to counter-balance the growing military power of the Soviet Union in 1972.

Bush's speech Thursday was as powerful, as sincere and as stirring as John Kennedy's pledge 44 years ago to bear any burden, and fight any foe in defense of liberty around the world. Within five years, that policy sincerely applied for the most idealistic of reasons, had led half a million American soldiers deep into the bloody rice paddies of Vietnam.

It remains to be seen if Bush's vision will lead to a happier outcome, or a worse one.

Martin Sieff is a Senior News Analyst at United Press International. This article was originally published by UPI on January 20, 2005.