SINCE THE START of the Persian Gulf conflict, President Bush's unceasing call for a "new world order" has inspired great confusion. No one -- not even Bush himself -- seems to understand exactly what it means for the United States' role in the post-Gulf War world.

Bush has described his broad notion of a new world order as a world in which "no one, friend or foe, should doubt our desire for peace, and no one should underestimate our determination to confront aggression."

Apparently, the United States' first national priority will be to preserve peace and stability worldwide, whether or not U.S. national interests are at stake. And the United States will act toward this end -- if necessary, through military force -- to the exclusion of all other considerations.

This Bushian Interventionist Manifesto goes beyond even Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I call for collective security through a strong League of nations -- it sanctions United State intervention anywhere international law is breached.

Bush's description prescribes a world where the United Nations is responsible for protecting the security of every nation from aggression. It's a world where we could go to war with any dictator who crosses borders and pillages his neighbors. And if Bush plans to be consistent with his own rhetoric, it's a world where we have a moral obligation to invade repressive governments that deny their citizens self-determinations.

In Bush's new world order, will we invade South Africa and force democratic elections? Will we send U.S. troops to the Baltics to defend against Gorbachev's attempt to preserve unity by force?

After considering the possible implications of Bush's rhetoric, we must consider whether his concept of a new world order is desirable, or even feasible. Do we really want to be the world's policeman? Is it always in our national interest to intervene liberally in the international arena?

The answer to both questions is an unequivocal no. Even if the United States had the economic power to assume the role of deliverer of freedom and democracy, aspiring to the role of world policeman would be ultimately counterproductive.

EMBARKING upon a foreign policy of unlimited United States intervention in world affairs would have two disastrous effects.

First, it would divert resources away from efforts to resolve domestic problems. It is absurd to attempt to solve the rest of the world's problems while we are in such bad shape ourselves. We need to address our own domestic crises -- homelessness, a recessing economy, a deteriorating environment, a wasteful and ineffective health cars system, a drug epidemic.

Each of these problems poses a more tangible and direct threat to United States national security than Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles. If the U.S. is to regain is position of strength, it must begin by addressing its internal problems. Flexing our military muscles around the world is our military muscles around the world is not the answer. Indeed, the professed ambiguous goals of Bush's new world order -- "To stand up for what's new world condemn what's wrong, all in the cause of peace" -- will not an cannot be achieved by an arrogant foreign policy of interventionism.

The inherent danger of basing foreign policy on an American idea of "what's right and what's wrong" in foreign affairs was demonstrated 40 years ago by George F. Kennan, a leading expert in United States foreign policy and diplomacy. Kennan condemned what he called the United States' "legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems" in which the American idea of world order is imposed by force on the rest of the world.

BUSH'S COMMITMENT to "resist aggression" via U.N. resolutions smacks of Kennan's warning against "the belief that it should be possible to suppress the chaotic and dangerous aspirations of governments in the international field by the acceptance of some system of legal rules and restraints."

When the United States or the United Nations determines its perspective of "what is right and what is wrong," it implicitly assigns moral worth to "right" actions and moral unacceptability to "wrong" ones. This brand of moralism in foreign policy leads to a much less stable and much more bloody world than a policy of prudent diplomatic calculation. Instead of promoting peace, moralistic foreign policy paves the way for inevitable war.

The concept is simple: America is right, and anyone who doesn't act like America is wrong. If a state acts contrary to the American idea of what's right, we have the legal authority (and its corollary, a moral imperative) to limit the influence of the "immoral" state. The frightening result is a government that thinks it has the moral duty to destroy states that do not conform to its idea of world order. That's the sort of "stability" Bush's new world order would bring to the postwar international arena.

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.