President Clinton's decision to launch a campaign against Saddam Hussein, whether or not it translates into real firepower, indicates that one key lesson of the last 50 years has yet to be learned -- when the U.S. acts alone its efforts more often serve to prop up dictators than to topple them. PNS commentator Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat, is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Clinton's campaign of threats against Saddam Hussein ignores a major lesson from recent history. Simply put, there are strict limits to what can be achieved with unilateral power.

In today's complex, multipolar world, U.S. attacks on enemy dictators can serve more to secure their positions than to remove them from office. A major war in Korea and a nuclear crisis over Cuba both underlined this point.

Consider Kim Il Sung of North Korea who -- until his death in 1994 -- was, with Fidel Castro, one of the longest-lived chiefs of state. Both leaders maintained control of their countries, not just despite U.S. hostility but precisely because of it. U.S. attempts to weaken their power and isolate them internationally only strengthened nationalist unity at home, and spurred compensatory aid from anti-U.S. forces abroad.

Recent petty efforts to isolate Cuba in particular have had the opposite effect, isolating the United States. The injustice of U.S. pressures has brought unexpected support for Castro -- even from the Pope. At the same time, these moves have created diplomatic difficulties between the U.S. and its closest allies, Canada and Western Europe.

Now the U.S. is isolating itself again by blustering threats of war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. One result, according to the London Times, has been to heal the deep differences between Iraq and its most hostile neighbor, Iran. In response to the U.S. threats, the two countries have just signed a secret agreement resolving issues left over from their recent war in the name of furthering a common anti-American policy.

It is instructive to contrast the actions now proposed with the U.S. response in 1990. Then Iraq was seen as the aggressor against Kuwait, and the U.S. as moving in a measured way to restore the status quo. Its cautious approach made it possible for the U.S. to isolate Saddam from potential allies, notably the Soviet Union, and to sustain a working international consensus against him.

Another relevant contrast is with Clinton's cautious intervention in Bosnia. Here the U.S. devised a program to assist a beleaguered Moslem nation that was tailored to ensure multilateral support, including some assistance from potential enemies like Russia. This gained respect for the U.S. among Bosnia's Moslem backers, notably Iran, and strengthened an international consensus that served American interests and could indeed be called a Pax Americana.

Today Clinton is rapidly undoing those achievements -- and, above all, that consensus. Yeltsin has responded to U.S. threats against Saddam with his own threats that projected U.S. actions could lead to World War III. Saudi Arabia, our leading Gulf ally in 1990, will not permit the use of its air bases for any attack. In Western Europe only Britain has supported the U.S. position, while France has come out strongly against it. So has China, a country which Clinton needs to help resolve the Asian economic crisis.

The great immediate risk here is not World War Three, it is the loss of the Pax Americana. America's (and Britain's) concern about Iraq derives from the need to maintain access to oil from the Gulf region. But a policy which reconciles Iran and Iraq, and estranges the U.S. from Saudi Arabia, is more threatening to that access than is Saddam by himself. And it carries the further danger that the friendliest Arab countries, like Egypt, will face increased internal opposition from Moslem nationalists, who will find the killing of Iraqi civilians intolerable.

President Clinton is in a difficult place. Saddam undoubtedly possesses weapons of biological warfare, and he has mocked U.N. efforts to monitor them. But there is no acceptable U.S. response that can guarantee the elimination of those weapons. America faces the same dilemma it did with Cuba and North Korea. Any tactic strong enough to take care of the local problem would indeed threaten a much larger war.

The only workable policy is that followed in the Gulf War: To serve as the protector against aggression. Not to be the aggressor. To defuse the crisis now will prove less embarrassing than a futile military foray that throws a united Middle East back toward the arms of Moscow.