In recent days, Secretary of State John Kerry has been flying from Washington to Kiev and Paris, tweeting, threatening, organizing, cajoling and making surprising statements about Russia�s invasion of...

In recent days, Secretary of State John Kerry has been flying from Washington to Kiev and Paris, tweeting, threatening, organizing, cajoling and making surprising statements about Russia�s invasion of the Crimea being a 19th century affair.

This frenetic activity strives to make up for something: the blunder with Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin�s sudden move, maybe? The familiar scenario of unrest, government aggression, outrage, collapse was proceeding; but then something backfired.

Secretary Kerry can�t foresee all unexpected events, but keeping on top of the situation is the job of his subordinates � in particular, the top person overseeing the scene, Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs. But how could Kerry be alerted to the unexpected when the person in charge of monitoring it ignored the key players? As she said in a leaked phone conversation, �[f-word] the E.U.� That was her modus operandi.

State Department blunders are not the result of miscalculation but rather the lack of calculation. They are the result of a self-inflicted blindness, the conviction that unilateralism and hegemony are the ways to conduct business.

Ms. Nuland�s rude but blunt formulation summarizes what her husband, Robert Kagan, cofounder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), has been arguing for years. This doctrine seems to dominate the thinking of the State Department, no matter who is in power: Republicans, Democrats, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Mr. Kagan�s view of world affairs can be found in his assertion that U.S. dominance is benevolent and nonthreatening: �Even the Russians knew they could surrender after the Cold War without being subjected to occupation.�

As someone who goes to Russia frequently, teaching Brown�s summer program in St. Petersburg or conducting research, I have witnessed a drastic change of Russian attitudes toward the States: from early admiration to anger and fear. Nuland graduated from Brown, her husband from Yale, the institutions where the nuanced approach to politics is the norm. Did they learn anything at these schools?

Granted that some of the PNAC�s rhetoric might be sensible (the importance of American values or the need for a strong military, for example), the crux of the doctrine is about something else: unilateralism and hegemony. In the words of former PNAC director Gary Schmitt: �Our view has been adopted. Even during the Clinton administration we had an effect, with Madeleine Albright . . . saying that the United States was �the indispensable nation.� �

But doesn�t the concept of �indispensable nation� imply that other nations are �dispensable�? That�s what �[bleep] the E.U.� means, after all. Whatever Ms. Nuland failed to learn at Brown, at least she learned how to translate from diplomatique into plain English.

It is hard to believe that a sophisticated country like the U.S. would embrace this doctrine of unilateralism, but how else does one explain recent foreign policy? Why talk to Russia, or Iran, or other regional powers if they don�t share our values, are weak militarily, and have nothing to contribute? They are dispensable.

As the world marks the centennial of World War I, we are reminded that it started after Austria attacked Serbia, as if Russia and its close ties with Serbia were irrelevant. The consequences of such attitude are well known. Yet, by the end of the 20th century (1999), with the drunkard Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin, and the top Russian brass happily selling their military equipment, Russia didn�t respond to the bombing of its historical ally. These events must have played a foundational role for the PNAC thinkers: There are no regional powers; it is the American Century, stupid.

But aren�t the presence of Russian soldiers in Crimea or Iran�s meddling in other countries� affairs two obvious attempts to assert relevance denied by U.S. policy? We might not like these countries� leaders, or the way they deal with dissidents or gays, but they are there, and they have interests as we do.

Seeing the festering wound in Ukraine, Secretary Kerry should have been there negotiating with Russia, trying to find the solution that would keep Ukraine independent and prosperous, and Russia�s fears dissuaded. But he didn�t bother. Until President Putin came up with the Russian equivalent of Ms. Nuland�s immortal phrase: He took over Crimea.

The attempts to prove one�s relevance will continue. To deal with them properly, we need to discard the doctrine of unilateralism. It is Nuland and her ilk who should be fired as �irrelevant,� while their theoretical backers might be sent back to their fish tanks � sorry, think tanks � where they can safely �hatch vain empires,� in the manner of Milton�s devils.

Can Secretary Kerry, a person who proved his courage and honor on many an occasion, carry out this plan and show the world that the great American values of respect, fair deal and common sense are still alive?

Vladimir Golstein is an associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Brown University.