Nasty Little Wars

SENATOR GEORGE MCGOVERN once said, "I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to fight in." Of course in more circumspect moments, McGovern would acknowledge that rarely have Americans engaged in war cavalierly. Nonetheless, he does express a frustration born of the Vietnam War, that the goals of war are not always correctly matched against the required sacrifice. At that time, McGovern voiced the Liberal isolationism rooted in the belief that the US is too quick to impose its imperialistic vision on others. This contrasts with Conservative isolationism, particularly pre-World War II isolationism, that asserts the US is too good to sully and corrupt itself with the intrigues of the world.

The recent bombing of Serbia by NATO forces led by the United States raises legitimate questions about legal, moral, and prudent uses of America forces. It is clear that the United States can act to protect itself against a direct physical attack, but what about humanitarian obligations or less direct threats?

Although the US did not enter World War II in response to German genocide against the Jews and others, we collectively promised ourselves then to never again permit a holocaust on so grand a scale. While military action to relieve the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians in the province of Kosovo by the Serbian regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic qualifies as morally justified, under what general principle can the US conduct its foreign military policy? There are other places in the world where the massacre of civilians occurs of far grander scales. The Soviets and Communist Chinese have annihilated millions in this century. The Khmer Rouge systematically killed millions in Cambodia. More recently, innocents have been ruthlessly slaughtered on a large scale in the Congo and Rwanda. Slavery still exists in the Sudan. Atrocities in Sierra Leone cry out for amelioration. The People's Republic of China still suppresses Tibet. Clearly, if the US wishes to police the world on humanitarian grounds, there are more problems than we have resources to solve.

The inability to resolve all problems, however, does not relieve us of the responsibility to act when we can. One way to grapple with this dilemma is to limit intervention to those situations where there is a significant overlap between humanitarian concerns and US national interests.

The Gulf War provides an illustrative example. Although the rhetoric used by the Bush Administration to justify the Gulf War rightly painted Iraqi leader Suddam Hussein as a monster, the alliance of humanitarian impulses to defend Kuwaitis from invasion and Western interests in the free flow of oil provided

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