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.