U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf are now at levels like those near Vietnam before 1965. But U.S. strategy now stresses isolating a troublesome nation by befriending its neighbors -- a strategy badly shaken by the exchange of nuclear tests between India and Pakistan. Pacific News Service editor Franz Schurmann, author of "The Logic Of World Power," writes extensively on the Middle East and China.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that America is once again acting as "world cop." After the Vietnam debacle, the American world cop was assigned to a desk job. Now, without any publicity, the cop is back out on the beat, ready to take on the bad guys.

The most threatened region now is not Southeast Asia but the Middle East, the biggest trouble spot is not North Vietnam but Iraq.

From 1961 until 1965, the United States, under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, kept a military force of 16,000 in South Vietnam. This time, according to Defense Secretary William Cohen, 17-20,000 are stationed in the Gulf.

Iraq is considered a rogue state, not only a continuing threat to its neighbors but a political time bomb ready to go off. Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites, who make up a majority, hate being ruled by Sunni Arab Saddam Hussein.

Saddam claims -- as Indonesia's Suharto did -- that he alone can hold Iraq together and keep it secular. Washington wants to keep Iraq together but ruled by a more acceptable secular figure. If America didn't fear an Iraq in chaos more than it loathed Saddam he would have long since been dead.

Iraq also is close to the storm center of an Islamic world in revolution. To the east are revolutionary Shi'ite Iran and the revolutionary Sunni Taliban, close to final victory in Afghanistan. To the south lies Saudi Arabia, where dangerous internal dissent is surfacing in the Saudi Nejd heartland. To the north are Turkey and the Central Asian republics where Islamic social power is fast growing. To the west , Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, the Sudan where Islam is winning despite sharp reverses.

In 1964, America's only response to Communist revolutionary waves flowing over most of Southeast Asia was a big military build-up aimed at North Vietnam. This time Washington's political strategy is different. Now it wants to isolate Iraq, surrounding it with new and old friends. Until recently America followed a "dual containment" policy against both Iraq and Iran. Now, despite angry reaction in Congress, Iran is rapidly becoming a new friend -- it has already become a new friend of key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

The Arabs know American policy is now tilting towards them. Political analyst Kareem Al-Baqraduni writes in the influential Saudi-financed "As-Sharq al-Ausat" that the U.S. is now as committed to the security of the Persian Gulf states as it is to Israel. He sees the "progressive deployment" of U.S. forces to the Gulf as a sign of that new tilt.

But America is also counting on an outer ring of new friends and allies to help stabilize the Middle East. In fact, everywhere in the world except for the Gulf region, the world cop is more a peace-maker than crime-buster.

Chief among these new friends is China, which seems to have replaced Russia as the world's second super-power. Another friend on the outer ring Washington counted on to help contain Islamic fundamentalism was Pakistan -- long an ally of China and the chief external supporter of the Taliban. Washington, too, supported the Taliban, hoping they could become good fundamentalists, like the Iranians.

But Indian-Pakistani tit-for-tat nuclear tests put the Clinton administration's grand strategy in peril.

Taking India for granted was a huge mistake. India's message to the world is clear: we are a great world power and we, not the Seventh Fleet, are the heart and core of the Indian Ocean.

Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh used to say wars are always marked by "fight-fight and talk-talk." India's entry into the global game could decide whether the future holds more fight-fight or more talk-talk.

Right now talk-talk prevails in East Asia while the possibility of more fight-fight grows in the Middle East. India and Pakistan, geographically between the two regions, could well decide which of the two will mark world affairs as we enter the next century.