Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Critics of the Bush Administration's decision to lead a coalition of the willing to eliminate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction argue that the end-result of such a policy will be the demise of international cooperation and collective security. When one examines the lessons of history, however, one draws a different conclusion.

From 1919 until the onset of World War Two, collective security was championed by a League of Nations. This organization, however, rendered itself irrelevant by its failure to use force to expel Japan from Manchuria and Italy from Ethiopia. As the Hitlerite regime cast its dark shadow upon the civilized world, the League of Nations came apart through its own failure to unite in order to meet the looming threat.

France, which had not acted unilaterally since the days of Napoleon, saw its own nation conquered and occupied for four horrific years. Would it have been such a crime for France to have acted unilaterally against Hitler in 1935 before he became too powerful to do so?

After World War Two, the United Nations replaced the League of Nations. The U.N.'s record in authorizing the use of force to stop aggression, however, has not proved much better than that of its failed predecessor. Only three times since its inception has the United Nations authorized force to punish aggressors.

In the case of North Korea, only a Soviet boycott of the Security Council made it possible to gain the votes needed to authorize the use of force.

In the case of Saddam Hussein's brutal invasion of Kuwait, the first Bush Administration had to pull out all of the stops to craft a coalition of the reluctant, which quickly unraveled after the first Persian Gulf War.

And, in the case of Sept. 11, the U.N. acted only after a series of dastardly attacks on American soil because a failure to do so would have made it appear criminally negligent in the eyes of the civilized world.

Since Sept. 11, however, President Bush has grasped the dangers to America and to the civilized world posed by rogue nations that seek weapons of mass destruction. The Bush Doctrine moves beyond containment because Saddam Hussein proved the folly of containment when he successfully expelled the U.N. inspectors in 1998.

While the Clinton Administration sought the use of force to compel Saddam to reconsider his actions, our European allies balked, as did the leaders of the League of Nations when asked to punish Japan, Italy, and Germany for their respective threats to the civilized world. Unlike the 1930s, however, the price of inaction today is potentially far greater and far more destructive.

Critics argue that American foreign policy is grounded in our desire to build an empire in which America dominates the civilized world. These critics, however, must point to their own histories because America has never pursued war as a means to plunder those less fortunate than ourselves.

Unlike Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolf Hitler, our own leaders have fought wars only as a last resort in order to make the civilized world safe for democracy and the rule of law. What Jacque Chirac of France and Gerhard Schroeder of Germany fear most is reflected in their own nation's histories rather than America's past.

Since Sept. 11, the world has changed. The true test of leadership is to recognize the new dangers and respond to them accordingly.

In the 1930s, Winston Churchill proved to be a lone voice warning the civilized world of the dangers posed through its failure to remove the Hitler Regime.

Today, George W. Bush warns the civilized world of the dangers posed by outlaw regimes that pursue the weapons of mass destruction to blackmail civilized societies and sponsor international terrorism. Like Churchill in 1940, our President understands the grave consequences if we fail to act and act now.

Tony Pattiz

Peachtree City