The violent reaction to the Koran-burning perhaps involves another distinction that shaped Santorum’s view on apologies even though he did not express his position in these terms. A lethal reaction, including cold-blooded murder, to the burning of a religious book—whether the burning was accidental or not—is inexcusable and vastly out of proportion to any purported offense. It is deplorable that anyone should consider ignition of a book to be a rationale to kill. If that’s how Santorum views last month’s situation, I agree with him. But evidently many Afghans—denizens of a land where long and costly jihads have been fought—see things differently from either Santorum or me.

That gets to another principle about when apologies are in order. The obligation to apologize stems from the effect on the offended party, as seen from the offended party’s point of view. If I accidentally spill part of my beverage on your clothing, an apology, and perhaps an offer to pay a dry cleaning bill, is in order because of the effect on you, not because of any inherent badness in what I have done. The foreign policy equivalent of failing to recognize the principle involved is found all too often in policy preferences—which Santorum espouses as much as anyone—that are unilateral, exceptionalist, and based on an assertive form of nationalism that is insufficiently sensitive to the perceptions and preferences of foreign states and their populations. The need to maintain such sensitivity does not just have a moral base, and it definitely is not a matter of subjugating our values to anyone else’s. It is instead a matter of realizing how much foreigners over whose interests and values we have ridden roughshod can react in ways that will harm our own interests. It is thus in our interest to maintain and implement policies that give due regard to foreign interests and values—and to apologize when we inadvertently fail to do so.