Unintended consequences haunt U.S. actions

Okay, I admit it. I was wrong.

In the days leading up to the Iraq invasion, I questioned the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive war, on the grounds that it would lead dozens of other countries around the world to preemptively invade their neighbors on a variety of flimsy pretexts. After all, if the great United States thinks it's morally justified to invade because it thinks someone might attack it, why shouldn't others?

This, however, did not happen. Unfortunately, however, what did happen, which I utterly failed to predict, is even worse. Countries around the world started making decisions, and conducting actions, out of fear that we might attack them preemptively.

Iran has been the loudest and most belligerent of those, but North Korea's efforts have been the most successful (read: frightening). Kim Jong Il's autocratic but impoverished family fiefdom has managed to "go nuclear," at least in a minor but worrying way. It has also done pretty well about developing long-range missiles that could, if they get the bugs ironed out, carry a North Korean nuclear warhead all the way to the West Coast of the United States.

Kim is a nut-case, granted. But his histrionic avowals that his nuclear program is only defensive in nature, to avert a U.S. attack, don't ring as hollow as they should, taken in the context of Iraq. Ditto Iran, and its pursuit of a "peaceful" nuclear program. Ditto Syria. Ditto, probably, half-a-dozen other countries that may be surreptitiously trying to create or acquire nukes: the fact that we attacked Iraq, which didn't have nuclear weapons, and did not attack North Korea, which does, is not lost on despotic regimes worldwide.

Most concerning of all has been the reaction of Russia. A few weeks ago, the general commanding Russia's strategic missile forces warned that Poland and the Czech Republic could be targeted by Russian missiles if they agreed to host U.S. anti-missile defenses, according to an AP report. This, despite U.S. insistence that the defenses are aimed at a missile attack from the Mideast, not Russia -- a claim bolstered by the small size of the defense, which Russia could overcome with ease.

It might be tempting to dismiss these threats as the blusterings of a bellicose, vodka-swilling bullyboy (take a look at a picture of General Solovtsov, and you'll see what I mean), were it not for the words of his suave, sophisticated, and coldly dangerous boss not long before.

Vladimir Putin is a shining example of the fact that you can take the man out of the KGB, but you can't take the KBG out of the man. He has the background of a Soviet-era secret police boss, which he was, and the instincts of a Russian tsar, which he appears to be headed toward becoming.

On February 10th, again according to AP reports, Putin accused the U.S. of "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations," and stated that "one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way," and that this was forcing countries opposed to the U.S. to build up their nuclear arsenals, fomenting a new arms race.

Now, one can observe that the Kremlin complaining of American use of force in international relations and overstepping our national borders is a decided case of the pot calling the kettle black. But that does not mean that Putin is entirely wrong, particularly when he notes that "unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem, they have become a hotbed of further conflicts."

One can quibble over the use of the word "illegitimate." But it is plain that our post-9/11 tendency to go it alone, or with a shaky coalition of the not-entirely-willing, to believe that preemption is an appropriate response to potential threats, to attempt to solve political and social problems with military force, and to believe that 9/11 gave America the moral right to do basically whatever we felt like in the world, has not only failed to achieve the desired ends, but has destabilized the balance of power both in the Middle East, and in the world as a whole.

We can only hope that the next president, of whichever party, proves more willing to engage in multi-lateral negotiations to resolve problems and threats diplomatically, preserving the option to use force as a last resort, not a first choice -- and that the world situation does not worsen too much in the interim.