Interesting, I took it to mean that this journalist is like most others, in that he starts from the assumption that the U.S owns the world and has the right to rule it as such.
As an aside, if you were right: Unpalatable as the sentiment may be, there is still something to the notion that the USA does have a lot of influence over major parts of the world. I think we can all generally agree that as a nation they do have an unusual degree of possibilities to set examples and fashions, and I like it much better when the administration feels like championing human rights or restrictions on certain kinds of particularly nasty weapons than when it's bent on exporting new justifications for steps towards totalitarianism or more cost-effective ways to slaughter people.
So if people in general indeed seem to think that the USA has both possibility and some kind of obligation to do things like try to curtail a rise in drone warfare, I actually feel kind of pleased at that. To the extent that it's real, I think it's welcome, and to the extent that it's conceit, maybe it's at least a constructive one.