by

Andrew Bard Schmookler

There is a point in North America where, as you head west, if you pour out a cup of water it will flow back toward the Atlantic, but if you take one step further it will flow to the Pacific. Our handling of the crisis in the Persian Gulf could represent just such a historic watershed. The present moment is unprecedented in human history but we are in danger of squandering our opportunity by persisting in old ways of thinking. Narrow calculation of national interest is one sign of old thinking-- who gets how much oil at what price, and who should pay what to protect their supply? The conception of regional security in terms of balance of power is another indication of the fateful assumption that the future can only be more of the past-- what array of Arab forces, augmented by what kind of American commitment, can block Iraqi aggression in years to come? What is missing from such approaches is a vision of the emerging possibility of a secure and just world order. Never in history has the opportunity been so great: the world has become small enough and, as the cold war ends --unlike with the end of the two hot versions of world war-- the great powers are in considerable alignment. We are told by the "realists" that the recurrent dream of a just world order is only a utopian fantasy. But this same realism told us a scant five years ago that superpower cooperation of the kind we now see regularly could never be. Because this is a moment of extraordinary historic fluidity, the way the world deals with Saddam Hussein is of momentous importance. It will create a template into which future international relations will be cast. If we continue in the self-fulfilling expectation that the future will be like the past, the definitive nature of this moment will remain obscure to us, for nothing will have changed. It is only if we envision a new kind of world that we have a chance to change the pattern of history. That so much is at stake --more than oil, more than the security of a particular region-- has several policy implications. 1) The collective nature of the response is essential. 2) Iraq must not only surrender what it has gained, but also must be left with less than the status quo ante. 3) The permanent members of the Security Council must credibly underscore that the rescue effort mounted in behalf of Kuwait will henceforth be made not just for oil-rich countries but for any member of the international community. 1) In the early weeks of the crisis, President Bush was brilliant in forging an international response. This campaign should not now degenerate into a passing of the hat. Rather, the same skillful diplomacy should press forward until the Security Council, with general world support, authorizes a "police action" to forcibly expel the Iraqis from Kuwait. If the UN authorizes an international use of force, perhaps the financial burden for the operation can be apportioned not by "United Way" voluntary donation but by the usual formula for UN support. 2) The tougher the world's handling of Saddam Hussein the better. A new order is not defined by ambiguous outcomes; new lessons are not ingrained by namby-pamby dealings. No deals: no pieces of Kuwait, no saving of face. Iraq must be made an example, made to regret its outlawry. The status quo ante is not good enough. A nation that has twice in a decade launched unprovoked invasions against its neighbors must forfeit a substantial part of its military machine, just as we don't let a convicted felon pack a gun. Whether or not Saddam Hussein is toppled, the world's demands for a resolution of the crisis must include the dismantling of Iraq's threat of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, as well as the imposition of reasonable limits on the numbers of Iraq's troops and tanks. This requirement must be put on the table soon (perhaps as soon as the women and children hostages are out), and efforts should begin promptly to get a Security Council resolution passed stipulating that the "defanging" of Iraq is required. Some may object that Iraq. which still resists even the demand that it leave Kuwait, will hardly consent to being disarmed. Probably not, but war is far from the worst outcome in this situation. Believers in world order habitually prefer negotiation to war. But a decisive war of the international order against an international outlaw would do a good deal more to establish world order than a prolonged stalemate followed by a deal that leaves a potential nuclear blackmailer menacing his neighbors. Any future regional bully, contemplating the fate of Saddam Hussein, should see on his neighbors' borders the equivalent of those signs that say "Don't Even Think of Parking Here." 3) The United States and the other great powers should emphatically declare to all the vulnerable small countries in the world their commitment to rescue any of them, too, if they are ever in Kuwait's position. It seems clear the world would never have mobilized so effectively had the vital interests of great powers not been tied to the region's oil; but henceforth the security of any nation, it should be established, will be treated as every nation's vital interest. All humankind does indeed have a vital stake in ending the Hobbesean "war of all against all" that has always characterized the intersocietal system. To underscore this transformation of the international order, renewed effort is needed in the realm of arms control. The recurrent nightmare --"What if Saddam Hussein already had a nuclear arsenal?"-- should cause us to redouble our efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The great powers, too, are obliged to make progress, through arms reduction treaties, toward their own demilitarization. Eventually it must be established that no nation is "above the law." The world community might strengthen also its already-growing role in non-violent conflict resolution. Perhaps the momentum toward world order could bring into arbitration the parties involved in some of the world's chronic conflicts-- in places like Cyprus, or like Kashmir, where events in recent weeks have reminded us that peace between the superpowers does not remove from the earth the danger of nuclear war. In a world where the rule of law has become reliable, even the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict might in time become possible, if Israel could prudently believe that its security was guaranteed by a dependable global order. In such a world, we would not need to arrange for the security of the Persian Gulf by engineering countervailing blocks of powers among the regional actors as the British for centuries endeavored to do in the European microcosm. Our situation might be illuminated by a new branch of mathematics called chaos theory, which highlights the occasional susceptibility of the course of a very large system to be drastically diverted by rather minor perturbations within it. Some of the weather forecasts we hear, for example, are rather certain of fulfillment because even moderate changes in the variables would yield the same outcome. At other times, however, even a small change in one factor can send the evolving weather system in a wholly different direction. The hyperbolic image frequently used is that the flutter of a butterfly's wing in the Amazonian jungle might alter the weather in North America. In the apparent chaos of human history, we have reached one of those rare moments where how we move to meet the challenge of the moment may govern the pattern of world evolution into the next millennium.

[possible captions:

"A war of the international community against an international outlaw would do more to establish a world order than a bad negotiated settlement."

"We have reached one of those rare moments where how we move to meet the challenge of the moment may govern the pattern of world evolution into the next millennium."

Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author of The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.