COLUMN ONE : U.S. Cozies Up to Law of Nations : American attitudes in the past have ranged from indifference to hostility. The country has been criticized for violating international law itself.

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait has brought about a striking change in the American government’s attitude toward international law.

President Bush has repeatedly invoked Saddam Hussein’s violations of international law in justifying a forceful response. And he has repeatedly turned for help to the United Nations Security Council, which has passed 10 resolutions condemning Iraq. The Bush Administration this week is pressing for another resolution that would permit the use of arms against Iraq.

But for a decade before the Aug. 2 invasion, many experts say, the U.S. attitude toward international law and the United Nations ranged from indifference to hostility.

During the Reagan Administration and first two years of the Bush Administration, the United States repeatedly took actions--in Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Mexico and elsewhere--that were widely regarded by scholars and other countries as serious violations of the United Nations Charter and principles of international law.

International lawyers and scholars differ about the Bush Administration’s motives for its new interest in an approach the Reagan Administration generally scorned. “It is too early to tell if international law has been used in the last three months as an instrument of expediency, or if there is a new commitment to it,” said David J. Scheffer, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

There is general agreement among experts, however, that the Bush Administration’s actions in the gulf crisis have advanced the cause of international law, at least so far.

“And advanced the cause also of the Security Council, of the United Nations, “ said Abram Chayes, professor at Harvard Law School and legal adviser to the State Department in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The U.S. appeal to the United Nations, Chayes said, has set “a very significant and helpful pattern--though of course we can’t predict how things would work the next time around.”

John Norton Moore, professor of law at the University of Virginia, praised Bush’s actions and said the Security Council resolutions against Iraq represent “the first time in the whole history of human effort” that such steps have been taken in the name of collective security.

By raising the standard of international law in the gulf crisis, the Bush Administration has returned to rhetorical themes and actual practices common most of the time since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.

An outgrowth of Roman law, medieval church law and the practical necessities of arranging relations between modern sovereign states, international law in the West, or the law of nations, came by the late 19th Century to be viewed as a positive alternative to war. It had evolved from rules covering how kings borrowed from one another to finance wars to regulations for the exchange of envoys and then to more complex arrangements for arbitration of conflicts between sovereign states.

Before the turn of the century, the United States became interested in arbitration as a way of settling international disputes but routinely intervened in the affairs of other nations in the Western Hemisphere.

The first effort to extend the rule of law through an international organization, the League of Nations, failed and expired in the flames of World War II.

The victors of World War II tried again, creating in the United Nations an international institution they hoped would promote stability and peaceful resolution of disputes between nations. The new World Court (the International Court of Justice) was created as the principal judicial arm of the United Nations; the United States in 1946 accepted its jurisdiction, while saying, as many countries have, that the court had no jurisdiction over domestic affairs.

International law as it is understood today consists of treaties and international agreements (including the United Nations Charter), international custom, the general principles of “civilized” nations and the interpretations of law scholars.

Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union prevented the United Nations from realizing the hopes of its founders for more than 40 years, but as the organization’s principal founder and financier, the United States generally stood in its defense. It led U.N. forces in Korea, and it participated in peacekeeping missions in lesser conflicts.

Between the Wilson and Reagan administrations, however, international law and international organizations were honored by the United States more often than not. The United States, for instance, relied on an international tribunal established in 1982 for its disposition of seized Iranian assets after American hostages were taken in that country. After the hostages were released in 1981, the assets were gradually released during the course of negotiations that lasted through 1987.

But “in the Reagan Administration there was a general cynicism toward the principles of international law as generally understood,” said Scheffer of the Carnegie Endowment, reflecting the views of most experts.

Reagan Administration officials were particularly frustrated by what they viewed as anti-American sentiment in the United Nations among many smaller, Third World countries, and they argue that their actions were within the bounds of international law.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Reagan, articulated what came to be called the “Reagan Doctrine”: the U.N. Charter’s proclamation of individual and collective self-defense demanded reciprocity; that is, if during the Cold War the Soviet Union supported movements of “national liberation,” the United States could also.

This was the rationale for U.S. support of the Contras fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, even though the U.N. Charter forbids such action against a nation with which it is not at war.

In 1984, the United States mined a Nicaraguan harbor, an act prohibited by the U.N. Charter. It also violated the Rio de Janeiro Treaty of 1947--which the United States had promoted and signed--that prohibits intervention by one American nation in the affairs of another.

When Nicaragua took its case to the World Court six years ago, the United States announced it would refuse to accept the court’s jurisdiction--even though a nation withdrawing from its jurisdiction was required to give six months’ advance notice. With the United States presenting no arguments in its defense, the court ruled against the United States. In 1985 the United States withdrew from the World Court’s compulsory jurisdiction by following prescribed rules, although at the same time it volunteered to submit a business dispute to the court’s review.

International lawyers allege a number of other American violations of international law, although each action also has its defenders:

The 1983 invasion of Grenada. Some lawyers argued that the United States acted without justified provocation, but others said apparent threats to the safety of Americans was reason enough.

* The drastic reinterpretation by the Reagan Administration in 1985 of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union. The reinterpretation, which was contrary to internationally agreed upon procedures for interpreting treaties, was undertaken to permit the Reagan Administration to proceed with the “Star Wars” missile defense system.

* The 1989 invasion of Panama. Critics viewed it as an armed attack or “intervention” by one American nation against another without adequate provocation; its supporters said American troops in Panama were in danger.

* The April 2 kidnaping from Mexico of an alleged accomplice in the torture-murder of Drug Enforcement Agency agent Enrique S. Camarena. A Los Angeles federal district judge ruled that the kidnaping violated the U.S.-Mexican extradition treaty. Government lawyers claimed the judge misconstrued the treaty and ignored Supreme Court rulings that a forcible abduction does not violate due process.

Yet “the Bush Administration has been much less hostile to international organizations than the Reagan Administration,” said Richard N. Gardner, professor of law and international organization at Columbia University and former ambassador to Italy.

The remarkable nature of the transformation is evident from what has appeared in international law journals. Five years ago, “The Twilight of Internationalism” by Carnegie Endowment President Thomas Hughes ran in Foreign Policy. By last summer, “The Comeback of Liberal Internationalism” by Gardner showed up in Washington Quarterly.

One reason for the change, many observers believe, is Bush’s own diplomatic experience as ambassador to China and to the United Nations itself.

The Bush Administration has started paying dues to the United Nations after years of withholding money, although past bills are still due. In career diplomat Thomas R. Pickering, the President chose a U.N. ambassador highly regarded for his skill and for his understanding of the organization.

Of great importance in the Bush Administration’s approach has been the now embattled Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s enthusiasm for the organization and international law. Soviet cooperation was necessary for progress under the auspices of the United Nations toward settlement of regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Namibia and Angola, Nicaragua and Cambodia.

At the invitation of the Soviet Union, the two superpowers are working on a plan for compulsory World Court jurisdiction for the interpretation of a number of treaties, including those covering terrorism and international drug traffic.

“All this has taken place in the period of glasnost and perestroika , without which, of course, we would not have had these opportunities,” said Moore of the University of Virginia.

Gorbachev and his allies in the Soviet Foreign Ministry are the key to Bush’s use of the United Nations in the gulf crisis. Without their support Bush could never have gotten the Security Council to pass 10 resolutions condemning Iraq; only with their support can the Administration obtain passage of a resolution authorizing further use of force.

On additional force, a furious debate has broken out among scholars of international law. The arguments are so complex as to be “theological,” as Los Angeles lawyer and former deputy secretary of state Warren Christopher dryly observed. But the issue has political implications.

The question is whether a nation can legally take military action on its own without explicit Security Council approval after it has obtained initial support from the council in repelling aggression, for example through the blockade of Iraq.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III argues that a country can take unilateral action, but he seeks Security Council approval to strengthen the hand of the United States in the gulf.

His view is strongly disputed by some international lawyers. Without further provocation by Iraq, they argue, the United States is constrained by the U.N. Charter not to take further action without Security Council approval. In the homely analogy of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), “You can’t round up the posse and then act like the Lone Ranger.”

Yes, you can, says Abraham Sofaer, the State Department’s legal adviser in the Reagan and Bush administrations from 1985 until last June. Under such restrictions, he recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “a state would be required to lay down its arms as soon as the council takes any measure, however ineffectual.”

While Sofaer “fully applauds” the involvement of the United Nations in the gulf crisis, he sees risks for the rule of international law. “If the U.N. process fails this time,” he said, “it will be a long time before anyone tries again.”