Sometimes, Right Makes Might

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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.