Washington Notebook

...At another, "America and the world must support the ruleof law...

...So it was that the United States armed and bankrolled insurgencies against established governments everywhere from Afghanistan to Nicaragua...

...At one point he said, "The occupation of Kuwait is illegal under international law...

...And what lies behind the rhetoric about a new world order—this partnership of nations, this vision of an era of peace and justice that Bush said he shared with Gorbachev in Helsinki...

...The United States may be approaching it...

...Is it conceivable that Saddam, once put back in his box, would be left free to pursue his Pan-Arab aspirations, plotting new aggressions at times of his own convenience...

...For example, in declaring his determination to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, Bush gave no indication of what his further plans were for the Iraqi dictator...

...Indeed, a careful reading of the Bush speech reveals echoes of the address President Gorbachev delivered to the United Nations in New York in December 1988...

...But democracy and freedom do not fit very neatly into a situation that has the United States seeking to restore Kuwait to the rule of its unelected Emir, in concert with the undemocratic governments of Saudi Arabia and Syria...

...Or Iran, for that matter, where the heirs to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini are calling for a Holy War against America...

...That recalls the Big Power condominium the founders of the UN envisaged after World War II...

...What would happen to the grand partnership if President Bush decided to use force in the Persian Gulf and his partner opposed it...

...What does it mean when he says, "Let no one even contemplate profiteering from this crisis...

...What sort of "lasting role" does he have in mind...

...These days, however, to help pay for American military operations in the Persian Gulf, the hat is being openly passed around in Europe and Asia by itinerant members of the Bush Cabinet...

...It is understandable that, in saying "America and the world will not be blackmailed" by the holding of hostages in Iraq, the President was not more specific about whether he would contemplate an attack, risking the lives of Americans and other foreign nationals through Iraqi reprisals or in the attack itself...

...intervention in Grenada and Panama under international law...

...This he managed to do while leaving many of his aims in the Gulf crisis and beyond veiled in ambiguity...

...Will it have a military component, and if so, under what kind of structure...

...What Bush Hasn't Told Us In his speech to a joint session of Congress on September 11, President Bush inferentially raised the credibility problem by linking the need for a budget agreement to the Persian Gulf issue...

...But a group of five countries in varying degrees of economic distress, omitting the new economic giants of Japan and Germany, hardly corresponds to current reality...

...But his main purpose, in which he largely succeeded, was to overcome public anxiety with a display of forcefulness...

...The Soviet Union, launching itself perilously onits post-Communist course, has reached andisfacingthatmomentoftruth...

...It seems odd for our pragmatic President to be speaking in such visionary terms of "a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle...

...It may be less harrowing to cut spending and raise taxes than to dismantle the whole Communist system and plunge into the free market...

...Call it "burden sharing" or paying for protection, the practice has enough odor of mercenary troops to make Americans feel acutely uncomfortable about being long on might and short on money...

...in Moscow the unfinished business was a plan for radical economic reform and decentralization...

...Our President's "vision thing" immune system seems to have collapsed...

...Also, the President said he hoped to bring American troops home "soon," then went on to say that there will be a "lasting role" for the United States in the Persian Gulf...

...It may have seemed like a Reagan-era glitch during the Nicaraguan conflict when Administration officials, forbidden to spend appropriated funds to arm the contras, resorted to passing the hat among "Countries Two, Three and Four, " as they were designated for purposesof Congressional hearings...

...If such an alliance is to be anchored in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, where does that leave Israel...

...In his recently published book, On the Law of Nations, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.-N.Y...

...One last question, concerning the extent of Bush's visions...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Long on Might, Short on Money For both Presidents George Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev it must have been quite a comedown to return from their September 9 summit discussions of a "new world order" in Helsinki, Finland, and find such disorder in their own capitals...

...The twin themes have therefore been discreetly muted, and the virtues of "order" have been rediscovered...

...Would he consider a windfall tax on oil profits—à la Jimmy Carter...

...On that occasion Gorbachev foresaw "a new world order," in which a Soviet-American partnership would help to bring about a period of world peace...

...Without pressing the analogy too far, the point is that once back home both leaders felt themselves obliged to exert new pressures for action, as though aware that the ability to maintain a functioning economy would affect their nations' credibility inaperiodof international crisis...

...The rule of law would appear to be a far better bet in the long run than exporting ideology...

...government was summoned before the International Court of Justice to answer for the mining of Nicaragua's harbors, it refused to accept the jurisdiction of the Hague Court...

...Whether this is simply a line that has been fashioned to meet a special situation, or whether it in fact betokens a withdrawal from the moralism of "Project Democracy," as Oliver North called it, remains to be seen...

...where the strong respect the rights of the weak...

...Instead, the American position rested on the general morality of spreading "democracy" and "freedom...

...A Far Better Bet As significant as anything in the President's address to Congress was his particular stress on international law as a standard for American behavior...

...In this capital it was the budget deficit reduction "summit" that had not reached any resolution...

...In each case, with odd symmetry, subordinates and parliamentary leaders had failed to meet deadlines for making painful economic decisions...

...Yet the influence of that superpower was also being called into question as the United States wrestled with exercising political and military leadership from a position of economic weakness...

...No serious effort was made to justify the U.S...

...It is already being said that with the Soviet Union in turmoil, forced to retreat from military and political commitments outside its borders, there is only one real superpower left...

...This stood in vivid contrast to the Reagan Doctrine, asserting America's right to support anti-Communist "freedom fighters" regardless of boundaries and sovereignties...

...Does the President, as Secretary of State James A. Baker III has suggested, envisage a new kind of alliance, bringing together Middle Eastern and outside states...

...When the U.S...

...The new world order that Presidents Gorbachev and Bush talked about is supposed to be based on cooperation between the two and a search for consensus among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the others being Britain, France and China...

...writes: "In the annals of f orgetf ulness there is nothing quite to compare with the fading from the American mind of the law of nations...

...As Senator Moynihan observes, it will be easier to gain the support of other nations for American policies "if our conduct is seen to be based on law that binds us as well as them...

...And we will...

...There were other omissions, though, that cannot be so easily justified...

...he has apparently been inf ected by his new best friend from the Soviet Union...

...There is a limit to the length of time that a nation can swing its weight in the world as a first-class power with a second-class economy, labor force, infrastructure, and social system...