PERSPECTIVE ON THE PERSIAN GULF : Our allies, with far more experience as Arabists, may have reason to insist on Bush’s initial goal, collective security. : Are We Ready to Go It Alone?

Iraq is confronting Americans with a fateful choice: negotiation or war. And, if President Bush finds no alternative to war, Americans face another fateful choice: Does the United States go to war only if its allies agree or, if they won’t agree, does the United States go to war on its own?

The current indication is that the enthusiasm of America’s allies for war in the Persian Gulf is restrained. The Bush Administration finds itself trapped in a paradox--the very “new world order” that U.S. military intervention would be intended to promote constrains the United States from any military intervention at all. Which, then, should the United States choose? To stay in concert with allies or to go it alone?

The oldest American tradition is freedom of national action. George Washington told his countrymen that “our true policy” was “to steer clear of permanent alliances.” Thomas Jefferson warned against “entangling alliances.” With the infant Republic shielded from world power struggles by two great oceans, isolationism was the American way in foreign affairs in the century after 1815.

With the steamship, the telegraph and the airplane, the planet began to shrink. When America could no longer escape the great world, Woodrow Wilson proposed a stirring new vision--U.S. participation in collective maintenance of international order, “not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.” Congress rejected Wilson’s League of Nations and the country relapsed into traditional unilateralism, until German and Japanese aggression woke the Republic from its isolationist slumbers. The Grand Alliance won the war. Wilson’s League was reborn as the United Nations. The onset of the Cold War produced NATO, and the United States reigned as superpower. America no longer steered clear of entangling alliances.

Now the Cold War has ended. The United States is being out-produced by Germany and Japan, and no longer reigns supreme in the Western alliance. It is no longer capable of attaining great objectives all by itself. The United Nations, no longer paralyzed by the Cold War, at last appears in a position to redeem its promise and promote an organized common peace. Circumstances thus argue for multilateral action.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, President Bush unfurled the standard of collective security, secured U.N. support for an economic embargo, assembled a coalition that included Arab states, and enlisted the cooperation of the Soviet Union. In terms almost Wilsonian, he declared the U.S. objective to be the creation of a new world order.

If that strategy fails, and Hussein does not withdraw peacefully from Kuwait, it is widely assumed that the next step would be war.

It may be that our allies would accept war in the gulf so long as Americans do the fighting. But in that case, would Americans support a protracted war in which they take the casualties while other nations cheer from the sidelines?

And, if the allies think war a poor idea, should the United States revert to unilateralism and go to war on its own?

Can we be so sure that we know better than anyone else how to handle the Middle East?

Americans can hardly claim infallibility when it comes to that mysterious part of the world. The British and French have had far more operational experience in the Middle East and a far stronger scholarly tradition on Arab and Islamic questions. The State Department has no Middle Eastern experts comparable to its Soviet experts in years past. We simply don’t know the territory--which is why we get so many things wrong. After building up Saddam Hussein, we now call him another Hitler. After fulminating against Hafez Assad of Syria, we now clasp him to our bosom. Why are we so certain that Washington knows the best course today? If we rush ahead against our allies’ best judgment, they will distance themselves from the result. Indeed, we may find ourselves in a position where they will insist on being heard.

America is hustling other countries to subsidize the military deployment. But economic dependence reduces political independence. Other nations will not subsidize U.S. policy without having a say in the use of the subsidy.

“There can be no burden-sharing without power-sharing,” an Italian commentator recently warned.

If the American objective is a new world order, should not the American government abandon any thoughts of unilateral action and remain dedicated to playing by the rules of collective security?

Congress and the President had better ponder these questions before the Republic plunges down the dark and bloody path.