Armitage, speaking in Canberra, said he expected the Republican Party of President George W. Bush to lose control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in a mid-term election dominated by debate on the future of Iraq.
But regardless of whether the Democrats won control of one or both houses of Congress, Armitage said change in US foreign policy was inevitable due to the tighter oversight of the administration the vote would bring.
"I've got a feeling that we're going to be slowing down a bit, not in the use of hard power where we need to, but generally in our muscular approach to the world," he said.
Armitage, blunt-spoken deputy to Colin Powell from 2001 until 2005, said ordinary Americans were uneasy about falling international support for the United States since the September 11, 2001 airliner attacks in Washington and New York.
"The message I think from the electorate is that fear doesn't work. You've got to go back to what is traditionally ours, and we've got to go back to those things that made us important in the eyes of the world," he said in a lecture on US foreign policy.
New opinion polls show Republicans gaining Senate ground before this week's mid-terms, but Democrats are still positioned to make gains in the Senate and recapture control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994.
Armitage -- who Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf recently said had threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age if it refused to cooperate in the war on terrorism -- said the US had shown a "snarly and angry" face to the world since September 11.
"We were exporting our anger and our fear, hatred for what had happened," he said.
"I think it's understandable to a certain degree, but we're well past that now and it's time to turn another face to the world and get back to more traditional things, such as the export of hope and opportunity and inspiration."
Armitage said it was inexplicable why Washington had no current Middle East peace plan and why Israel had been permitted to bomb Hizbullah without pause in July and August.
Only when the administration stopped scandals such as the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail would it win back world affection, he said.

Copyright Reuters, 2006