The uses of American power; or why the isolationists and the interventionists are both wrong.

Or: Why the isolationists and the interventionists are both wrong

THE IRAQI invasion of Kuwait has touched off a much-needed debate about the uses of American power. NATIONAL REVIEW has supported the President vigorously; in fact, we've supported the President a lot more vigorously than the President has acted.

Good friends such as Pat Buchanan, Neal Freeman, and our own Joe Sobran have wondered aloud about our position. I've wondered myself at some of the proposals that have appeared in our pages (even as I support the positions we've taken in our editorials). But that's all to the good; it means we can turn this debate to beneficial effect by using it to establish some rough guidelines for the appropriate application of American military force in the post-cold-war era.

But first it might be useful to look at the objections conservative critics have raised to the Mideast operation.

The smallest group-well, actually, I can find only one, my colleague Joe Sobran-seems to have reached the conclusion that force should be used only to meet a direct invasion. I won't say he has succumbed to a new pacifism, but he seems to have gone further than, for instance, Pat Buchanan, who himself argues that the build-up of American military might after the Second World War was justified only by the threat of Communism, and that its diminution should bring a corresponding withdrawal to our own shores.

Others, like Tom Bethell and Tom Fleming, are reflexively hostile to the President's call for a "new world order," seeing in the phrase an unwelcome pretext for Wilsonian interventionism. And still others are troubled by the idea that America, far from acting as world leader, is actually being treated as world patsy, risking its blood and treasure for the protection of allies, such as Japan and Germany, who are making economic hay while the sun shines.

Buchanan's "America First" neo-isolationism has rhetorical appeal (what American doesn't want to put America first?), even when colored by neo pacifism. And Bethell is right: liberal interventionism "to make the world safe for democracy" has cost us lives for little or no gain. (Vietnam, for example, was a Wilsonian adventure right out of the history textbooks. Conservatives supported the war for anti-Communist reasons, but we should not be blind to its liberal ontogeny.)

Like It or Not UT THE fact is that a new world order is struggling to be born. Unless the Buchanans and Bethells believe history has ended, and human nature has suddenly and miraculously changed, the construction of this new world order is a matter in which they should want the United States to have an assertive role. Otherwise, America could find itself at best at an economic disadvantage and at worst again under threat from an as-yet-unknown military adversary. (Barry Goldwater believes it was the American isolationism of the Twenties and Thirties that, more than the Treaty of Versailles, provoked World War II.)

Since the affairs of nations at their root depend on the military capacity to compel compliance, the U.S. today (with the collapse of the Soviet Union) holds an unchallenged leadership position which should be exploited to the maximum while it lasts.

But it can be a short step from recognizing American pre-eminence to putting America in the role of world policeman. My colleague John O'Sullivan seemed to take that step two issues back when he proposed that an international force ensure domestic tranquillity among the various factions in South Africa, and that the U.S. contribute troops to it. The problem with such a suggestion is simple: Policemen get shot at.

This is not to say that intervention is necessarily wrong. In the last month, as an international force sweltered in the Saudi desert, two other international forces have actually seen combat: a five-nation force of centralAfrican states in Liberia and a three-nation force (France, Belgium, and Zaire) in Rwanda. Neither of these forces is imperialistic in purpose; their goals are to restore order, end any threat of disruption to their borders or their nationals, and allow the resumption of normal commerce. These are "police actions" in the full meaning of the phrase. Our invasion of Panama falls under the same rubric. Nations have the right to maintain order when violence may threaten their own borders; great powers reserve the right to intervene-whatever the United Nations says-in their immediate spheres of influence, e.g., the US. in the Caribbean, France in Africa.

The question remains: Outside of interventions in our own hemisphere, how are we to judge when it is prudent to apply American force? How do we avoid the quagmires into which Wilsonian adventures inevitably lead?

One rule should guide us. Each newly inaugurated American President should be handed a sealed envelope with a slip of paper inside on which is written: Never go to war merely for a noble purpose.

The U.S. should use military force outside our hemisphere only when the national security, the national commonweal, or American lives are directly threatened.

This is certainly the case in the Persian Gulf. We have a direct national interest in preventing a natural resource on which the world economy depends (and ours depends too much) from becoming subject to blackmail. Our commonweal is threatened, and in the event Iraq develops a nuclear capability, our security may be.

Of course, in this instance we have a secondary interest in thwarting the takeover of a smaller peaceful country by a larger militaristic one; the world reaction so ably orchestrated by the President may give second thoughts to Third World dictators idly contemplating their neighbors' territory.

But I would argue that this interest, while morally uplifting, is entirely secondary. It will merely be the pleasant consequence of a coldly self-serving action.

On the understanding that good causes make bad law, it may be useful to take a look at a relevant but historically removed incident: Mrs. Thatcher's decision to send British force and expend British lives in the Falklands. While the U.S.-led Saudi intervention is the first major international action in the post-coldwar period, the British-Argentine conflict was outside the cold war, and thus can serve as a model for the period we are entering. When Mrs. Thatcher committed the British Navy to taking back the Falklands, it was not to teach a dictatorship a lesson. She no doubt didn't mind giving the Argentine generals a whack on the back of the hand, but she didn't go to war for that. She went to war to protect the lives, property, and rights of the Falkland Islanders, who are British wards.

Under this model, the U.S. would never have sent troops to die in Lebanon, and it will not send troops to die in South Africa. But neither will we sit back and hope that the world will turn out to be a better place than it has hitherto proved to be. Avoid Good Causes

IT IS TRUE that a limited definition of the use of American power falls short of a grand design. I leave such work to John O'Sullivan, whose masterly updating of James Burnham in our last issue argues cogently for an Atlantic Common Market which would, by its very dominance of the world economy, result in a pax Americana. This is a compelling vision and, I think, a practical goal. It is precisely the kind of thinking the end of the cold war gives us a chance to indulge in: the working out of economic systems that will stimulate growth while removing incentives for the use of force.

I cannot follow where my colleague leads, however, when he goes on to say the U.S. might be persuaded "to go beyond a narrow interpretation of its national interest by the support of its allies and by the UN's blessing" and use its military power "to maintain stability." Nothing is more likely to send Americans back into their preWorld War 11 isolationist shell.

Our intervention in the Persian Gulf should not be an encouragement either for new schemes for the application of American force or for sounding the retreat from international affairs. Rather it is an occasion for a sober reflection on the price in treasure and lives each generation is required to pay to defend American liberty. The irony is double-edged: isolationism emboldens those who would threaten us; frequent interventions encourage isolationism. Let us look to ourselves, avoid good causes, and keep a wary eye on the world-and a strong right arm.