Americans Have Patience to Let International Action Succeed : Gulf: A ‘war party’ in Washington threatens to undo what it took the United Nations 45 years to achieve.

The men and women who have kept alive the world’s hopes for the United Nations through these last 45 years of tribulations and trials have done a singular service. Now their hopes are gradually being realized, at least in part.

For 45 years the Cold War vastly restricted the power of the United Nations to do what its founders hoped for--chiefly, to establish a world order of peace and responsibility, in which the rule of law and international cooperation would replace the old order of brute force.

Now the Cold War is over. The United Nations has taken on new vigor. It has been functioning more effectively than it had in years.

And now in the Persian Gulf it faces a most difficult challenge. The five permanent members of the Security Council have acted repeatedly, with unprecedented unanimity and the support of nearly all the council’s other members, to condemn Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and to impose tough sanctions with the object of getting Iraq to relinquish Kuwait.

This is the principal object for which the United Nations was founded: to establish an international order where once had been only the law of the jungle.

It is an exhilarating spectacle to watch. It is also sobering, because it is dangerous.

It is dangerous first because Saddam Hussein is dangerous. We all know the stories: He came to power through assassination; he has maintained his power by murder and ferocious repression; he not only attacked Iran and Kuwait, he also slaughtered his own Kurdish people with poison gas--and, some say, his own soldiers, deserters in the war against Iran. He has amassed a great war machine and he is racing to build nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.

The situation in the gulf is dangerous also because the presence of so many heavily armed opponents can lead to accidents, to sparks that could set off a great fire no one could control.

And it is dangerous because there exists in the United States a war party that is either assuming that war is inevitable or hoping that it is.

The war party’s argument goes something like this: Sanctions will not persuade Hussein to leave Kuwait, because Iraq will be able to withstand their effects for months or even years--at least longer than the American people will tolerate the tension, and the expense, of keeping so many of their young men and women stationed in the Arabian desert. The international cooperation shown to date is actually fragile, and cannot stand a long, inconclusive period of uncertainty. In any case, the war party’s argument goes, Hussein, if unchecked, will only become more dangerous. Therefore, the argument goes, the United States should either seize upon the least provocation, or create one, to attack Iraq, Hussein and his military, chemical and nuclear installations. Finally, this can be accomplished swiftly, and almost entirely with air power.

That line of reasoning is dangerous.

First, it is foolish to count on air power, and air power alone. A war with Iraq would involve troops on the ground--very many of them--and there would be many, many casualties.

And it is impossible to predict what will happen once a war gets under way. Wars have unintended, indeed unimagined consequences. A war with Iraq in which the United States played the leading role of antagonist would threaten the United Nations consensus. It would seriously threaten, if not destroy, the anti-Iraq stance of most of the Arab states. It would present the containment of Iraq, which is currently a United Nations endeavor, as an attack by the infidel Christian West against a Muslim Arab state. It would throw the Arab world into further turmoil, with all sorts of upheavals, in Saudi Arabia, for instance, or Egypt. It would at least for a while disrupt the world’s supplies of oil much more seriously than they are disrupted now.

In short, a war with Iraq in which the United States played the leading role would gravely set back the cause of international order.

The problem of Saddam Hussein, (and threats to peace from future Saddam Husseins), is better contained by international than by unilateral American action.

Of course, the outcome may not lie in the hands of the United States or its allies. It may be that Hussein by his own unmistakably belligerent acts will precipitate a war. In that case, the international response, and the predominant Arab response, may well hold together in opposition to him.

But suppose Hussein does not precipitate a war, and suppose the war party in Washington--and in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt and perhaps in Israel--is restrained. Is the world then condemned to watch helplessly as Hussein grows in power and arrogance, until he is able to unleash the horror of not only chemical weapons but also nuclear weapons against Israel? To use nuclear blackmail against Saudi Arabia and the oil states of the gulf, Egypt and the Western allies?

The preponderance of evidence is against these assumptions. It is true that the world in general and the United States--and France--in particular, not to mention Kuwait and Saudi Arabia--have much blame to bear for letting Hussein think that he could act pretty much as he wanted to, not only without opposition, but indeed with support. Surely he is disabused of that notion now.

And it is by no means certain that the sanctions will not have a severe effect on Iraq, especially on its more sophisticated war-making machine. The lack of parts and the lack of imported skills and materials will, some people believe, seriously crimp Iraq’s ambitions to build an even more sophisticated engine of destruction.

It has been argued, variously, that an international force under U.N. command could be held in the desert indefinitely, in order to allow the United States to withdraw the bulk of its ground troops while keeping its air and sea power there in conjunction, as now, with other nations.

To be sure, such a course would not immediately solve the problem of Kuwait. Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait should remain the United Nations’ unequivocal position, even though it may take some time to bring that about.

It is often said--by American commentators--that the American people will not put up with a long struggle whose outcome is indistinct and whose purpose is unclear. It is said that the American military force now in the desert must be used soon, or the people will demand that it be brought home--a cynical “use it or lose it” point of view.

I don’t believe that. I believe the American people will support a long struggle--if the purpose is clear, and clearly worthy. After all, the United States has spent a vast fortune and kept several hundred thousands of men and women at arms overseas over the last 45 years in defense of the freedom of our own and other peoples. A long but much smaller watch in the Persian Gulf, in the service of the international order, is a task the people would support if the elected leaders have the courage to ask for it, the intelligence to explain it and the moderation to make it fit the challenge.

It may be that this first post-Cold War attempt at international cooperation will quite literally blow up through miscalculation, or, worse, by calculation. If it does not, if it is sustainable by the international community, then the human species will have taken another faltering but forward step toward organizing itself on rational principles for the benefit of everyone.

None of us should feel smug in our belief that despite the horrors of this ghastly century there is such a thing as progress in human affairs. But those who have supported the concept of the United Nations through its darker and more ineffectual days may take some small satisfaction in seeing that a more orderly and united world is still struggling to be born.