The Guns of August Echo

In recent years, with a curious consistency, the scheduled indolence of August has been interrupted by the sound of gunfire -- in Kuwait, in the failed Moscow coup, in half a dozen hot spots. As he is wont to point out, George Bush is the man who receives the midnight phone calls when such crises erupt overseas and who has "the guts" to act. It is August, and there are two dangerous disasters blazing on the horizon. Yet Bush, the foreign policy President, is moving most cautiously to deal with them.

Iraq's government, more defiant than ever last week, vowed to bar U.N. inspectors from all its ministries. Asked if his patience with Saddam Hussein is wearing thin, Bush said, "I've been fed up with him for a long time." From the warring states of the former Yugoslavia, images of inhuman conditions in detention camps flashed to television screens around the world, provoking disgust and anger.

Bush has the option to use American military power in both places and has threatened to do so. Some of his political friends and foes urge him to act forcefully now, especially in Yugoslavia's civil war. He has suggested that he would consider the use of U.S. air and naval forces to safeguard relief shipments into Bosnia, but resists calls to do more.

As the guns of this particular August are loaded and trained, there is an extra twist for the President. He must make his command decisions in the midst of a re-election campaign. Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton is free to discuss, as he did last week, the use of military force "against the Serbs to try to restore the basic conditions of humanity." Yet if Bush orders the armed forces into action, he will be accused of using them cynically to rally the nation behind him. Discontented American voters, demanding first priority for domestic problems, will search suspiciously for political motives in his every foreign move.

But Bush sets more historic goals for himself than re-election. He has declared the U.S. to be the world's only superpower and outlined his concept of a new world order under its aegis. The essence of that order was to be the rule of law and collective action to preserve international security and roll back aggressors, as in Operation Desert Storm.

Though Iraq remains high on the August agenda, Yugoslavia, with its millions of innocent victims displayed daily in the media, has become Issue No. 1. Rarely is a nation presented with a clear, unequivocal moral issue to decide. Washington faces one now: to act or not to act to end Serbian aggression and the human agony it is inflicting. This question is uncluttered by direct American national interests, because the U.S. has none in Yugoslavia. If Bush decides to risk American lives in any form of military action there, it will be only because the U.S. accepts a moral obligation to rescue suffering innocents and to enforce a new world order.

A moral obligation of that kind, however, is by nature universal and would have to be applied across the board. Military intervention cannot be restricted to what U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali crudely referred to as a "rich man's war." It logically implies that U.N. intervention in Eastern Europe should be matched by similar action in other catastrophic conflicts: in Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi, Burma and elsewhere. By the same token, this new world cannot be managed unilaterally by the U.S. but must instead work from the consent of all major powers around the globe. It would have to be supported by their armies and their treasuries.

Obviously, no such agreement exists. The U.S. appears as reluctant as its NATO allies to accept the case for military involvement in Yugoslavia. It can lead the U.N. into a world police role only if Americans first have a debate and reach a national consensus. In fact, by providing a forum for such a debate, the presidential campaign may be a blessing in disguise.