Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/122192/1221640.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 125 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 82

Sometimes, Right Makes Might


By Walter Isaacson


    Throughout history, going back at least to the
Peloponnesian War, nations have ascribed idealistic purposes to
their military struggles. But as with Sparta's classic
balance-of-power contest with Athens, discernible national
interests have always been at stake. What makes America's
intervention into Somalia seem so inspiring -- and also so
dangerously slippery -- is that it may be the first time since
the Crusades an invasion has been launched for a purely moral
rationale.

    A logical place to look for a modern precedent would be
the days of Woodrow Wilson, that professor of Presbyterian
rectitude who draped foreign policy with a mantle of idealism.
His amphibious forays into Latin America were designed, he said,
to foster "constitutional liberty." And his rationale for
bringing the U.S. into World War I was that "the world must be
made safe for democracy." Criticized for being too Wilsonian,
he replied, "Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that
is the way I know I'm an American. America is the only
idealistic nation in the world."

    Wilson's interventions were in fact not purely idealistic;
they involved realistic appraisals of his nation's economic and
strategic interests. But he was correct in claiming that
Americans prefer such assertions of national interest to be
accompanied by moral ideals, each helping to cloak the other.
From the Monroe Doctrine to Manifest Destiny, idealism and
realism were the warp and woof of U.S. foreign policy. In a
nation that views its economic and political system as
righteous, the distinction between interests and ideals tends
to blur.

    This was especially true during the cold war, which was
both a moral crusade and a strategic balance-of-power struggle.
This combination justified a procession of interventions, from
Korea to Vietnam to Grenada. Having triumphed in its global
struggle with the Soviets, the U.S. gained the opportunity to
put more emphasis on its ideals than on its interests. But so
far, it has mainly focused on the latter. American troops went
into Panama to stem the flow of drugs and into Kuwait to
protect the flow of oil -- vital national interests indeed. In
both cases, President Bush stressed America's moral
motivations. But James Baker made the gaffe (defined as a
politician's accidentally telling the truth) of admitting that
the reason for going into the Persian Gulf was "jobs, jobs,
jobs."

    The closest that the U.S. came to giving primacy to moral
concerns was the postscript to the Persian Gulf War, when Saddam
Hussein was prevented from slaughtering the Kurds. Two decades
earlier, after secretly encouraging the Kurds to rebel, the U.S.
had callously cut them off when they no longer served its
interests; in explaining this decision to a closed hearing,
Kissinger gave a classic exposition of realpolitik: "Covert
action should not be confused with missionary work." Given
America's moral streak, such an approach tends to require
secrecy. Bush did not have that option: a barrage of pictures
of suffering Kurds finally compelled him to step in.

    Therein lies a dilemma. In a democracy, policy (unless
pursued in secret) must reflect public sentiment. But sentiment
can ooze into sentimentality, especially in the age of global
information, when networks and newsmagazines can sear the vision
of a suffering Somalian child or Bosnian orphan into the soft
hearts of millions. Random bursts of compassion provoked by
compelling pictures may be a suitable basis for Christmas
charity drives, but are they the proper foundation for a foreign
policy? Will the world end up rescuing Somalia while ignoring
the Sudan mainly because the former proves more photogenic?

    In a world beset by ceaseless woes, donning the mantle of
global cavalryman can become like installing a 911 number
equipped with call waiting. The United Nations can serve as a
screen. A crusade that can garner multilateral support is not
necessarily worthy and wise, but that's not a bad litmus test.
Requiring some international consensus can also serve as a
safety check: idealistic crusaders make dangerous statesmen when
the morality they seek to impose is self-defined.

    America cannot right every wrong in the world. But that
does not logically imply that it should refrain from righting
any of them. Colin Powell and Dick Cheney have devised a simple
first principle for choosing which to undertake: do only the
doable. We don't do hills. To that can be added the
common-sense standard intuitively applied to street-corner
muggings: some are easy to break up, others are too dangerous,
and intervening in the former does not necessarily create a
slippery slope that leads to intervention in the latter. Any set
of guidelines that produces the conclusion that involvement in
Somalia also requires the U.S. to apply the same moral
principles in Bosnia or Liberia is missing this important
distinction.

    The practicality principle, however, must be balanced
against the nature of the outrage. Certain situations, no matter
how abhorrent, are primarily local or internal matters. Others
involve "ethnic cleansings," genocidal murders or mass
starvation, and thus rise to the level of a crime against all
humanity. The case for intervening in Bosnia requires showing
that it has edged into the second category.

    Like any nation in history, America derives its influence
in the world largely from its capacity and willingness to
defend its national interests. But another source of its global
influence is the perception, at least during certain eras, that
its foreign policy is also based on moral values. By taking the
unprecedented step of embarking on a military operation for
altruistic reasons, the U.S. may once again show how idealism
can go hand in hand with realism.