Despite its attempt to soften criticism of the war, there is no evidence the Bush administration is capable of self-correction.

That came home to me the other day while listening to a senior administration official deliver an off-the-record tour d'horizon of American foreign policy. He is among the best minds in this administration, counted among the ranks of the realists, rather than the neoconservatives.

The United States stands alone as the most powerful nation in the world, the official began. In no previous moment of human history has a single state enjoyed such a dominant position.

When it comes to managing its relations with other would-be powers -- Europe, China, Japan and India -- the United States has done "extraordinarily well,'' he said.

The tensions generated by the war in Iraq have eased, the senior foreign policy official confidently asserted. The Europeans are content to gaze intently inward, he observed, while America strides the globe.

Japan is embracing the United States in a very close relationship that shows no sign of unraveling. Meanwhile the Bush administration has forged a growing partnership with India.

When it comes to China, the administration has chosen the path of accommodation and integration rather than containment of the rising power. He expressed confidence that American power and the prospect of democracy in China will secure the peace.

The only remaining challenge for the United States is to combat the threat of a radical Islamist movement that seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction. For that, there is the promotion of democracy and American values around the world. After all, the official said with not even a nod to humility, "the U.S. is the most successful country that has ever existed.''

A year or two ago, the American people embraced this vision of a confident colossus, a Gulliver among the Lilliputians. That was before they watched the giant tied down in its attempt to export those American values by force of arms in Iraq.

The arrogance of this administration would be barely tolerable if it were not paired with a stunning incompetence, on display from Kabul to Katrina. That deadly combination has weakened American strength in the world. It has emboldened far more serious challengers in Iran and North Korea, who see the United States as too bogged down in Iraq to credibly threaten them with the use of force.

The war rated barely a mention in the sweeping view offered by the senior administration official, except indirectly. He offered a realist defense of the administration's democracy crusade.

World War II was fought with democratic goals, the official pointed out. And the Cold War -- the model for the current struggle against Islamic extremism -- was not just about balancing the power of the Soviet Union. The wars in Korea and Vietnam were really about determining which system those countries chose, he argued.

Those are curious examples to cite as a defense of the decision to go to war in Iraq. The United States shored up authoritarian regimes in Korea and Vietnam to counter the communist threat. Vietnam was a strategic mistake that took decades to overcome. And democracy came to Korea more than 35 years later, after a long period of economic development.

President Bush cited the democratic transformation of Korea -- along with Taiwan and Japan -- in a recent speech during his trip to Asia. But these are examples of the "conventional story in which you become rich and then you become democrats,'' as the senior official put it so well.

The administration proposes however to skip this long, but necessary, path to democratic capitalism when it comes to the Middle East. The policies of security and stability have failed there and a quicker route to democratic change is called for. But there is no historical evidence to suggest that this is any more than another manifestation of a blind belief in American power.

Democratic values have always been essential to American foreign policy. In practice, however, American administrations have often made painful choices between stability and the promotion of democracy. We saw that too often during the Cold War -- in Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 or Tibet in 1959.

The administration might do well to recall the words of candidate Bush, uttered Oct. 11, 2000.

"It really depends on how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we're an arrogant nation they'll resent us,'' Bush said. "But if we are a humble nation, they'll respect us.''

This week President Bush will seek to focus the nation's attention on border security and immigration reform. But the president's proposals won't protect Americans from our gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon.

The Bush administration maintains that it has a smart strategy to reduce this risk. A new 24-Hour Rule requires that importers report the contents of their containers to customs inspectors one day before the boxes are loaded on ships bound for the United States. The Department of Homeland Security's National Targeting Center then reviews the data, checking against other intelligence to determine which boxes may pose a threat. Although the containers deemed high risk are inspected at cooperating foreign ports or when they enter the United States, the rest--more than 90 percent--land here without any perusal.

We have two concerns about this strategy. First, it presumes that the United States government has good enough intelligence about Al Qaeda to reliably discern which containers are suspicious and which are not. But our inability to thwart the attacks in Iraq demonstrates that we lack such specific tactical intelligence. And supporting customs inspectors, who must make the first assessment of risk, is not a priority for the intelligence agencies. Inspectors must rely on their experience in spotting anomalies--a company that claims to be exporting pineapples from Iceland, for example.

Second, determined terrorists can easily take advantage of the knowledge that customs inspectors routinely designate certain shipments as low risk. A container frequently makes 10 or more stops between its factory of origin and the vessel carrying it to American shores. Many of the way stations are in poorly policed parts of the world. Because name-brand companies like Wal-Mart and General Motors are widely known to be considered low-risk, terrorists need only to stake out their shipment routes and exploit the weakest points to introduce a weapon of mass destruction. A terrorist cell posing as a legal shipping company for more than two years, or a terrorist truck driver hauling goods from a well-known shipper, can also be confident of being perceived as low risk.

So what needs to be done? A pilot project under way in Hong Kong, the world's largest container port along with Singapore, offers one piece of a potential solution. At an estimated cost of $7 per container, new technology can photograph the box's exterior, screen for radioactive material, and collect a gamma-ray image of a box's contents while the truck on which it is carried moves at 10 miles per hour.

Terrorists can defeat radiation sensors by shielding a dirty bomb with dense materials like lead. But by combining those sensors with gamma ray images, the Hong Kong system allows inspectors to sound the alarm on suspiciously dense objects. Inspectors would need to analyze enough of the scans--perhaps 20 percent to 30 percent--to convince terrorists that there is a good chance that an indistinct image will lead a container's contents to be sent for more reliable X-ray or manual examinations. Images of container contents would then be reviewed remotely by inspectors inside the United States who are trained to spot possible nuclear weapons.

If terrorists were to succeed in shipping a dirty bomb, for example, the database of these images could serve as a kind of black box--an invaluable forensic tool in the effort to identify how and where security was breached. That information could help prevent politicians from reacting spasmodically and freezing the entire container system after an attack.

Such a program could significantly reduce the likelihood that terrorists will smuggle plutonium or a dirty bomb through American ports. But it still would not stop a terrorist from importing highly enriched uranium, which can be used to construct a nuclear weapon. Lengthening the time that a container is screened for radiation would help, and this could be done without increasing waiting times if additional monitors were added to the Hong Kong system near the gate where the trucks must already stop for driver identification checks. Better still would be for the Department of Homeland Security to make the development of new technology that can recognize the unique signature of highly enriched uranium an urgent priority.

Finally, we must find ways to ensure that terrorists do not breach containers before shipments arrive at loading ports. Sensors should be installed inside containers in order to track their movements, detect any infiltration and discern the presence of radioactive material. Where boxes are loaded, certified independent inspectors should verify that companies have followed adequate protocols to ensure that legitimate and authorized goods are being shipped.

Taken together, these recommendations will require new investments and an extraordinary degree of international cooperation. But increased container security will not only help the United States prevent terrorism, it will also help all countries reduce theft, stop the smuggling of drugs and humans, crack down on tariff evasion and improve export controls. What's more, such a program would require an investment of just one one-hundredth of the capital that could be lost if we shut down the global container shipping system after an attack.

Container security is a complex problem with enormous stakes. American officials insist that existing programs have matters well in hand. But we cannot afford to take these perky reassurances at face value while the same officials fail to embrace promising initiatives like the Hong Kong pilot project.