A unilaterally proclaimed global right to wage war preemptively against any group or nation we deem a threat or potential threat will be terribly corrosive morally and economically to the country. In large measure, how corrosive will depend on what the definition of “we” is.

If “we” is the Congress, expressing its will constitutionally through declarations of war, there will at least be some constitutional restraint on our imperial forays. If “we” is a president acting alone, in contempt of the Constitution and the Congress, the only restraint will be his fear of public opinion. As anyone who follows the politics of immigration or abortion knows, public opinion does not always have much to do with the state of policy.

What will suffice to define a threat/potential threat for purposes of deciding to attack? If our multinational corporations or ethnic pressure groups come to see that the Congress (or worse, the president alone) is willing to attack countries preemptively, what pressure will they bring to bear to declare as “threats” countries of interest to them, whether as markets/sources of resources or as sources of “refugees” who can be brought here to bolster an ethnic group’s numbers in America? Perhaps because of my time as a Marine officer, I know enough of the history of U.S. interventions in the West Indies and Central America to know that such corporatist imperialism is something the United States has been willing to engage in.

Who is to say that imperial overstretch will not induce national fatigue? Korea and Vietnam indicate the price of war is not paid only on the battlefield. Another consideration is that war and long stretches of quasi-war always lead to greater Federal intrusion into our lives, and an effective suppression of dissent. Finally, what of the resentments we will excite? American intrusion, even when justified, is often resented. If we award ourselves a global hunting license, those resentments will grow.

One of the most worrisome things about the new Bush Doctrine is that most of its supporters seem not to have thought these things through. The neo-conservatives who want to seize the opportunity the Arab terrorists’ attacks of last September created to use American power to make the Middle East safe for Israel are in too great a hurry to stop and think about them. I doubt President Bush has thought about them, if only because he doesn’t seem the type to think much about these things. His senior advisors (Cheney, Rumsfeld) seem to assume the global balance of power will always be as favorable to us as it is today. That is an optimistic assumption indeed. HRS