The age of restraint.

The Cold War is over, but the threat and use of force are pervasive in the world today. That is the conclusion one could draw, with the vivid images to support it, from a survey of the summer's news. From the heart of Europe to the Horn of Africa the use of force is pursued with primitive methods but devastating consequences for the civilian population. From the Korean peninsula to South Asia and former Soviet republics the threat of nuclear proliferation provides a striking contrast to the low-tech warfare pursued within states. The cold war forced policymakers to think in terms of a single massive threat with cosmic consequences if deterrence failed. The post-cold war world has generated a multiplicity of threats, which defy a single strategy and promise not catastrophic damage, but chaos within nations which can spill over to international conflict.

Inevitably, given its role in world politics, the United States is confronted with choices of engagement, passivity, or mediation in most of the situations of contemporary conflict. The post-cold war era does offer new opportunities to plan for and to move toward international cooperation, but it also requires sustained thought and disciplined policy regarding the use of force. The purpose is not to multiply ideas for using U.S. muscle, but to draw clear lines regarding the extreme cases when force may be the only way to avoid aggression and to determine how it may be used with the greatest restraint.

The emphasis on restraint is doubly needed today, because the discipline imposed on both super powers by the threat of total war--a discipline which yielded restraint often if not all the time--is now gone. Four examples of U. S. policy choices this summer illustrate that identifying the moral and political logic of restraint requires more effort and attention. When restraint is not imposed from outside, the policy choices become more complicated, politically and ethically.

The first case which illustrates the point was the bombing of Iraq in response to an intelligence finding that Saddam Hussein sought to assassinate former President George Bush. The Clinton administration conducted a scrupulous review of the accusation that Iraqi intelligence agents were implicated in the plot; the president resisted calls to take action--including political accusations that he was too timid to use force--before finally deciding to bomb Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. When he ordered the attack, using twenty-three Tomahawk missiles, Mr. Clinton was supported by Democrats and Republicans and by the general public, as expressed in polling data. Washington columnist Jim Hoagland expressed the prevailing opinion when he endorsed the attack, and noted that the targeting of the intelligence headquarters--a home for both torture and treachery--was particularly appropriate and proportionate (eight civilians were killed in the neighborhood).

In spite of the near universal support, the methodical decision making, and the high-tech precision of the Tomahawks, my argument here is that the attack failed the criterion of restraint on both just-cause and just-means grounds. On the face of it, just cause would seem to be present: The Iraqi plan to kill Bush sustains the justified reputation of Saddam Hussein as an international criminal, indicted both on human-rights grounds at home and by policies of aggression abroad. There are clearly multiple "just causes" for coordinated international action against the Iraqi regime; but just cause for military attack must be determined in light of what Professor James Childress has called the "original question" about the use of force. Since this question is whether any use of force can ever be justified, it yields the presumption against all use of force as the starting point for thinking about invoking military means. Every resort to force must not only identify a just cause, but one which can surmount the presumption against force as the way to resolve political conflict. This column was used to support retaliation by the United States against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Resisting aggression across internationally recognized borders meets the test of overriding the presumption against the use of force. The attempt on Bush's life--heinous as it was--is not the same kind of threat to international peace and order. It constituted just cause for multiple forms of response, but not enough to rebut the presumption against military action.

Moreover, in contrast to Mr. Hoagland, I find the intelligence headquarters the wrong target for the attack, not because any case could be made for the immunity of the Iraqi agents, but because of the urban location of the building. Admittedly, eight civilian lives are low "collateral damage," but an air strike whose purpose was to hurt and deter Iraqi policymakers, could have struck valuable military targets outside Baghdad. Precision guided weapons should not be used as reasons to risk civilian casualties unless a target is absolutely necessary. Even if one agreed with the just-cause grounds for the attack on Iraq, no particular target had such high priority that civilian centers should have been put in danger. Those who justify (ethically) some use of force, need to be scrupulously restrictive in preventing most uses of force. Attacking Iraq this time failed the tests of restraint.

Second, President Clinton's declaratory policy regarding North Korea this summer also failed the canon of restraint. Here again, there is much to admire in the Clinton administration's focus on preventing proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. Counter-proliferation policy is a fundamental requirement for the post-cold war world. Hence, there was a need for a strong statement of U.S. intent to deter the North Korean determination to cross the nuclear threshold. The problem was not the fact that the president threatened the Koreans, but how he did it. The press quoted Mr. Clinton seeking to dissuade North Korean efforts to build nuclear weapons by saying "if they ever use them it would be the end of their country." The threat has no limits. One factor in the discipline of deterrence which the cold war imposed was the strenuous effort to mount a credible deterrent which also could meet the test of not attacking civilian populations as a target. The Clinton threat to North Korea lacks the distinction which all moralists and many strategists sought to impose on nuclear deterrence from the 1950s through the 1980s. Today, deterrence is both less cosmic and more complex than the task of deterring a Soviet attack on the United States. Successful deterrence of proliferation requires a strategy designed for more discreet threats but for a multiplicity of actors. The challenge today is to redesign deterrence; in doing so we should not forget the lessons of distinction and restraint learned over forty years. Mr. Clinton's rhetoric in Korea sounded as if key principles were forgotten.

The third instance of U.S. policy which the dynamics of a post-cold war world calls into question is conventional arms sales. Here again, restraint is not a distinguishing characteristic. A Congressional Research Service study in July indicated that the U.S. share of the conventional arms market increased from 49 percent in 1991 to 57 percent in 1992. In the high politics of the cold war, with the nuclear issues looming dominant, little attention was paid to conventional arms sales. But they are preeminently an issue today. The cold-war rationale for arms sales was always less than satisfying, but it supplied a certain strategic rationale for at least some of the sales. Today the strategic rationale has been stripped away from most of the policy. The policy today is driven, as the study notes, by "the U.S. arms industry's need to find new overseas markets in an era of shrinking defense budgets." Some arms sales may still have a political-moral rationale; but most of the 57 percent the U.S. generates do not fit that rationale. A U.S. policy which seeks to counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction cannot credibly coexist with a policy pushing conventional arms for purely economic purposes. Restraint, again, must be self-imposed. Thus far it has not been.

The fourth case of post-cold war politics is, of course, Bosnia. In the face of three complaints about lack of restraint, does U.S. policy in Bosnia fail because of too much restraint? Just cause here is certified; the presumption against force is easily overridden on cause grounds. Legitimate authority is readily identifiable (UN, EC, even NATO with UN authorization). The tough calls have always been proportionality and possibility of success. Neither can be reasonably assured; both have kept me and others from urging the use of force. The paradox of September 1993 is that it seems absolutely clear that only force will restrain the Serbs and Croatians, particularly if one seeks to reclaim Muslim territories. Serbian policy has been so blatantly contemptuous of international norms and opinion, and so wantonly aggressive that I would support a "lift and strike" policy by NATO (lift the arms embargo and strike Serbian forces around Sarajevo) if any kind of European consensus would sustain the policy. Short of that, successful prosecution of the policy will fall victim to European criticism and consequent lack of U.S. domestic support. In retrospect, many of us in the United States may well be accused of too much restraint. In September of 1993, however, I don't see a viable policy of using force effectively.