Shooting Ourselves in the Foot : The U.S. response to Iraq--not Iraq’s action--has precipitated an oil crisis. We have only ourselves to blame.

President Bush’s frenzied response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait is surely ill-considered. Engineering a U.N. trade embargo and talking up a military blockade are themselves precipitating the very oil crisis that the Iraqi invasion supposedly threatened to bring about. U.S. paratroops are said to be en route to Saudi Arabia. It is as though a nervous householder, hearing that an armed robber is in his neighborhood, pulls out a pistol and shoots himself. The stock market has dropped and the price of oil has soared, but these probably are as much in reaction to the exaggerated U.S. response as they are to Saddam Hussein’s invasion.

We are told that the Security Council’s 13-0 vote for an embargo was “welcomed by many participants” as a sign that the United Nations is emerging from “Cold War paralysis.” Perhaps a certain degree of paralysis was not a bad thing. The consensus now is that since we have the Soviets on our side, we no longer need fear nuclear confrontation and can swing happily into action against anyone we dislike. This may be seen in retrospect as a green light to rashness.

The invasion of Kuwait, of course, is to be deplored. The world would be a nicer place if such things did not happen. Iraq and Kuwait together produce about one-twelfth of the world’s oil. It is a cliche, but nonetheless true, to say that “the oil weapon” is a destabilizing one in today’s “interdependent world.” But a few points seem to have been overlooked:

Saddam Hussein was certainly planning to sell Kuwait’s oil, not hold it off the market to drive up the price. As we have been told repeatedly, his long war with Iran impoverished Iraq; Hussein owes his creditors at least $60 billion. Withholding production in order to force the price up helps other producers at the expense of one’s own bank balance. Such altruism has proven to be rare among oil producers, which is why the OPEC cartel has never worked very well.

We are also led to believe that Hussein plans to invade Saudi Arabia, as a result gaining control of even more oil, and that we should stop him before he does this. Unless and until he does, we should stay out. President Bush’s order Tuesday, sending thousands of U.S. troops for purposes that were not made clear, is exactly the sort of gesture that invites a megalomaniac response.

We should not assume that the defunct Kuwaiti emirate was a pocket of constitutional and democratic enlightenment in the Middle East. It was little more than a wealthy oligarchy, importing guest workers to do the manual labor, lavishing welfare benefits on favored subjects and, with its ample spare cash, bankrolling the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The governing principle of our foreign policy, and of the United Nations itself, seems to be that it doesn’t matter what governments do to their own subjects, just so long as they respect one another’s jurisdiction. For President Bush, foreign policy seems to mean governments helping governments. If one government finds its prerogatives curtailed by another, however, the whole world is supposed to become incensed. “Collective action” is then called for, as Margaret Thatcher keeps reminding us. But it is hard to understand why Americans are supposed to become outraged--and pay more at the pump--because Kuwait’s oil is now controlled by a tyrant in a military uniform rather than by oligarchs in traditional attire.

If Americans feel they have the right to depose one Arab ruler because they suspect him of harboring military ambitions, they had better have a good idea of who will replace him. If Saddam Hussein goes, who comes after him? You can be sure that the State Department doesn’t have the slightest idea. It wasn’t so long ago, remember, that we were supporting Hussein in his war against Iran. Why? One reason, in case you had forgotten, was that he was “secular,” and, to that extent, supposedly enlightened, by comparison with the Ayatollah Khomeiniand his fundamentalist zealots. Well, if we keep on playing Morally Superior Policeman, we had better be prepared for an Arab world swarming with fundamentalist zealots who will make Saddam Hussein look judicious by comparison.

As Dan Rather’s recent reporting from Jordan makes clear, people in the region view themselves less as citizens of particular countries than brother Arabs facing Western powers that arrogate to themselves both the right to buy Arab oil and to dictate which Arab, precisely, controls which slice of territory. How would we feel if the state governments of California and Arizona came to blows over water rights, and Arab leaders responded by hectoring us in the United Nations and “peacemaking” Arab warships began showing up over the horizon?

Is it “right” that we are so moralistically projecting? Or is it might? I used to think that the rhetoric about “U.S. imperialism” was stale and exaggerated. Now I’m not so sure.