Free riders.

Most of us would rather not think our way through the many-sided political and ethical quandary this country now confronts in Iraq. Its elements include, in one subset, large quantities of horrifying weapons under the control of a ruthless and defiant dictator who has held his civilian population hostage to international sanctions. Other components include a divided West, a United States largely alone (of all things) in backing the United Nations, and the unavoidable need for heavy doses of secrecy, ambiguity, and downright bluff in the desperate search for a diplomatic solution.

The task is made doubly hard by the free rider problem. Free riders are people who get the benefit of communal resources without having to pay - the company just beyond the city limits that benefits from the transportation system and schools it doesn't pay taxes to support, or the woman who sneaks on the bus without paying her fare. When free riders outnumber taxpayers or paying customers, any human enterprise is in danger of collapsing. Something like that seems to be confronting U.S. policy on Iraq.

There are, first, the political free riders: most of Iraq's neighbors who would be happy to be rid of the threat of Iraq's military regime, but who are unwilling to force the issue of the UN weapons inspections. Then there are nations like France and Russia, who look forward to a lucrative Iraqi trade, with or without biological and chemical weapons, with or without Saddam Hussein. Certainly all would be content to see the Iraqi problem disappear, but none want to bear the cost - especially politically. If the United States is ready and willing, what does any other nation have to lose? If we succeed, everyone benefits; if we fail, we alone are responsible for the consequences.

Then, second, there are the moral free riders who would lighten the burdens of conscience by avoiding responsibility for consequences that they leave to the future to repair. There are those who, following Saddam Hussein's deliberate humiliation of the UN arms inspectors, reflexively advocated bombing Iraq without explaining exactly what would be bombed and with what consequences. If attempting to wipe out Iraq's hidden arsenals or weapons-building programs could be justified, what of civilian casualties and damage to an already fragile infrastructure? To succeed, wouldn't air strikes have to be not only massive but repeated, conveying a counterproductive message of either futility or coldbloodedness? Even worse, what of the danger of success - the release of the very chemical and biological agents that the UN inspection teams are hoping to contain? Then there are those who advocate a land invasion and the ousting of Hussein, but without spelling out the future uncertainties or long-range commitments that such an action would produce. Thankfully, most of these proposals have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks, and there should be no reader of the nation's op-ed pages who still believes that solutions of this sort are either militarily or morally risk-free.

Moral free riding is not limited to one side of this debate, however. In 1991, there were many voices insisting that Saddam Hussein could be morally contained by economic sanctions rather than war. Yet the sanctions imposed in the wake of Iraq's defeat turned out to be "war by other means," as Kenneth R. Himes argued in an article (Commonweal, February 28, 1997) proposing criteria for taking their moral measure. When Saddam Hussein managed to turn the sanctions against the poor and the powerless rather than his military machine, it was understand able that some people would call for abandoning the sanctions. What is less understandable is that those protesters never reconsidered a military approach for which sanctions were a substitute. But neither would they candidly acknowledge that such a turn in policy is tantamount to abandoning the objective of containing Hussein and his weapons programs (which turned out, according to UN inspectors, to be more lethal than was suspected at the time of the Gulf War).

The problem has not gone away. Do those who object morally to any military action against Hussein's regime openly admit that they are kissing good-by to the future of United Nations peacemaking or arms-inspection efforts, which he has rendered a perfect joke? Do they remember how irrelevant the League of Nations became after Germany and Japan successfully defied it in the 1930s? Do they explain why the world should not anticipate, at the very least, a regional arms race with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel - and maybe Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Libya - preparing themselves with counter-arsenals of biological, chemical, and nuclear weaponry? Can they imagine that the conditions of the Iraqi people may actually get worse if Saddam is freed both of economic sanctions and the threat of armed response? Do they consider what the implications of this will be, in five to ten years, for peace, for America's understanding of its international role? Is it possible that, having failed to take a stand against Iraqi intransigence, the world will find itself facing not only a rearmed Iraqi military, but a plethora of thugs happy to call the bluff of all free riders?

Continuing the Conversation

What to do about the Middle East? We tried to answer that question in our December 5, 1997 editorial; and we try again this issue (page 5). There were several letters dissenting from our December editorial, among them was one from Arthur T. Downey. In fact, he sent a whole new agenda for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. We aren't sure how his plans could be carried out given the current crisis; still, they point to a framework larger than the narrow one that now shapes U.S. policy. Here is an edited version of Mr. Downey's proposal.

Recurring confrontations with Saddam Hussein have brought us again to the brink of hostilities. We tend to see the Iraq situation in simple terms, and in isolation from its regional context. It is as if we are sitting at the table with Iraq, and ignoring the two other elephants sitting there, namely Iran and Israel. The three are so tightly linked that it is unwise to consider our Iraq policy without taking the other two countries into account. I believe that the U.S. position with respect to all three needs to change.

Iraq Here are three ways in which we should change our approach.

* We should depersonalize our focus on Saddam because that simplifies and distorts a very complex situation. There is considerable uncertainty about the policies of a potential successor and so Saddam's departure may not end Iraq's totalitarian regime.

* We should continue to ease the economic sanctions that have caused hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. They are seen, not only in the Arab world, as causing human suffering that would be deemed totally unacceptable if they were imposed on people in America or Europe. There is simply no moral basis for these economic sanctions as they have been applied. The recent "humanitarian" exception from the ban on oil sales should be dramatically expanded: substantial Iraqi oil sales should be permitted under UN auspices with airtight controls to assure that the funds go to alleviate hunger and disease and not to build Saddam's military. Such narrowly targeted economic sanctions with little "collateral damage" to the civilian population would have a sustainable and solid moral basis.

* In other respects, we should get tougher on the Iraqi regime. First, we should call for an international war crimes tribunal to charge Saddam and his leadership with crimes arising from the invasion of Kuwait. Second, while continuing to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, we should insist on substantial cuts in Iraq's huge military force. Instead of 2,000 tanks, for example, Iraq should have 500; similar reductions should be required in aircraft, artillery, and other verifiable military hardware. This would not only make Iraq's neighbors (especially Iran and Kuwait) more secure, it might induce the Iraqi military to force a change at the top.

Iran Except perhaps for Cuba, no other nation represents such a hot button for Americans. The 1979 Embassy hostage disaster remains a vivid memory. But in 1995 mutual hostility was kicked into a higher orbit when the United States imposed a total economic embargo on Iran, and the following year legislated a secondary boycott against countries that disagreed with our policy. This jingoism distracted our attention from Iraq and produced one-sided information about Iran. For example, few Americans know that last year Iran ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention - this is a major step toward assuring that Iran will not develop chemical weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran.

Iran is the central state in a vast and vital region encompassing both the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea as well as the newly independent nations of Central Asia. Whether or not sharp hostility persists between the United States and Iran, Iran will continue to hold that central role. An end to the U.S.-Iran hostility makes great sense on its own, including the resulting improvement in the security of Israel. A move toward normalization would scare the daylights out of Iraq, which genuinely fears Iran. Here are three suggested changes in our Iran policy.

* We should take up President Khatami's suggestion and encourage as much interchange with Iran - media, scholars, commerce, and diplomatic - as Iran will allow. That probably will not be much, because its distrust of the United States reaches back to the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the Mossadegh government. We need direct and accurate information about Iran, and we must deal with our side of the mutual demonology that has characterized U.S.-Iran relations for so long.

* A key step in the long normalization process would be to drop our trade embargo as well as the secondary embargo against countries that invest in Iran's petroleum sector. They have not been effective. Dropping them would be in the U.S. national interest.

* Rather than trying to retard Iran's future economic development, we should be working harder to prevent its acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. We must deal more effectively with the irresponsible actions of potential suppliers, such as China and Russia. If Iraq's conventional military threat to Iran were dramatically reduced as I proposed above, and if U.S. hostility abated, Iran's perceived need to build up its own military might also decline.

Israel Of all of America's "special" relationships, none is more special than that with Israel. However, it has gotten far out of balance, has become unhealthy for both countries, and has had a corrosive effect on a wide range of U.S. foreign policy interests. Arab countries and our European allies will never believe that the United States acts even-handedly when it comes to Israel in relation to others in the region (for example, we look the other way when Israel ignores UN resolutions, acquires an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and forces out long-time Palestinian residents of Jerusalem). It is a fact that America's ties to Israel are too deep to produce anything but a positive bias toward Israel. There is nothing wrong with that.

But, the time has come to take modest steps toward making that relationship more rational and healthy while retaining its special character. A more balanced approach stands on its own merits but it would have the ancillary benefit of advancing our national interests, including in the Iraq and Iran situations. Here are three suggestions for change:

* The United States should renew in some dramatic fashion its basic commitment to the fundamental security of Israel-but only within its original borders, not Arab lands under Israeli military occupation.

* The U.S. should become relatively less attentive to the "peace process" to which we have given disproportionate attention. We also should be less responsive to Israel's desires with respect to Iran, aside from ensuring that Iran knows that the United States will not tolerate genuine threats to Israel's security, specifically including any Iranian role in Hezbollah's activity in southern Lebanon.

* Ideally, U.S. aid to Arab refugee camps, impoverished countries in Africa and South Asia, and elsewhere, should be moved upwards to the approximate per capita level of our annual aid to Israel ($500). Admittedly, that "equality upwards" approach is unrealistic, since it would break the bank - or cause collective heart failure in Congress. We should, however, reduce the flow of taxpayers' money to Israel and redeploy the funds to genuinely needy countries. This has its own merits and moral basis, but it would have the additional benefit of gaining respect for the United States in the Arab world and beyond.

We should step back from our episodic attention to the crisis du jour in the Middle East - Saddam's latest move in Iraq, Iran's role in Islamic fundamentalism, or the latest volley of mutual charges in the "peace process" - and look at the key U.S. national interests in the region. If we adjust our policies toward Iraq, Iran, and Israel, U.S. interests in the region as a whole will be strengthened. In addition, some of the rebalancing steps suggested above will also move American policies from morally questionable ground onto more solid foundations.

Arthur T. Downey, an attorney, served on the staff of the National Security Council (1969-72), in the State Department (1964-69), and taught international law at Georgetown School of Law (1978-90).