Kennan explains how this mentality in foreign policy -- just the kind that inspired Bush's notion of new world order -- ironically leads to the opposite of its desired effect:

The legalistic approach to world affairs, rooted as it unquestionably is in a desire to do away with war and violence, makes violence more enduring, more terrible, and more destructive to political stability than did the older motives of national interest. A war fought in the name of moral principle finds no early end short of some form of total domination.

United States national security -- not moral obligation -- must be the sole criteria for determining when to intervene militarily. We cannot and should not assume the role of world protector of peace and democracy.

As Kennan reasonably observed, the United States must acknowledge that "our national interest is all that we are really capable of knowing and understanding." Consequently, national interest is all that we really capable of pursuing. And "national interest" requires a limited interpretation. The Communist presence in Vietnam did not constitute a national security crisis that justified U.S. intervention. And the Nicaraguan Sandinistas were not an expansionist national security threat that neccessitated hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid to the Contra rebels.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY that we must resort to complete non-intervention and Washingtonesque isolationism in our foreign policy. Kennan did not call for complete withdrawal from the international arena. Instead, he proposed that we develop a more conservative, more realistic attitude when determining whether to intervene in the affairs of external states.

Before we embark upon Bush's plan for a new world order, we should listen to Kennan:

Let us recognize that there are problems in this world that we will not be able to solve, depths into which it will not be useful or effective for us to plunge, dilemmas in other regions of the globe that will have to find their solution without our involvement.

Our current presence in the Gulf is not unjustified -- there seems to be a legitimate U.S. national interest in the Middle East. But Bush's strategy -- casting a shadow of the true U.S. interest in the region and rallying pro-war fervor our of a jingoistic moral obligation to peace and democracy -- is not the way we should conduct foreign policy. Such a mentality would lead to a dangerously interventionist United States. That's not in anyone's interest -- not the world's not our own.

The United States should not intervene in international affairs every time our moral sensibilities are offended.

America should get involved in foreign adventures only when American interests are at stake.