Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Resource amid conflict

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002 | 8:58 a.m.

NEVER FIGHT on more than one front at a time.

There is much that I learned from my father, a man who packed as much of life's experiences into his 79 years as anyone I know. He lived through his family's stories of deadly pogroms in Eastern Europe; his own very poor upbringing among newly settled immigrants to an America in a new century; the quest for knowledge in a world where the poor had little chance to acquire it; a depression that sapped the strength and vitality from a nation reeling from economic chaos; a world war that not only pitted our nation against the Nazi war machine in Europe but also a full-fledged frontal assault by the empire of Japan; the birth and struggles of a brand-new homeland for the Jewish people in Israel following the Holocaust; the growing pains of Las Vegas, which moved from a mobbed-up town to the envy of the world less than half a century later; and a host of other s kirmishes along the road of a very active life.

His life, like that of many other members of the Greatest Generation, was generous in its lessons taught and even more notable for the lessons learned. And he was not shy about passing on what he learned to his children, although those lessons usually came in some oblique fashion that took hold only after considerable retelling. It is not that we weren't capable of understanding what he was saying, it is just that we weren't "of his generation," so that what we did learn came by way of abstraction.

The few times he did speak plainly are remarkable to me in their application, not only to the times in which they were taught but for all times. Especially now.

I remember during the height of the Vietnam War, when China was on one side of the fence and the United States was on the other, when communist China was not necessarily allied with the communists in the Soviet Union, and when the rest of the world thought that the three superpowers -- China was still coming into its own but needed to be reckoned with -- were sufficiently distracted so they could start their own form of nuclear proliferation without significant interference. It was a scary time for many reasons, but one in particular was the idea that mouse-like countries could acquire the means of nuclear destruction to the point that the big guys could be bullied. For a people who had saved the world from the Nazis, the thought that we might be held hostage to a second-rate country was unfathomable.

Hank Greenspun wrote a column suggesting that the world's best-known enemies -- the USSR and the USA -- come together for the purpose of imposing a different order upon the growing free and not-so-free world. Believing that no country of dubious character with dubious characters in control should be allowed to obtain nuclear status, he thought that the two real superpowers should lay down the law to everyone else. Throw down your nuclear weapons and your plans to obtain them, or Russia and America would do the job for you. In a way, what he was saying more than 30 years ago is not unlike what President George W. Bush is trying to say to the world today.

With one huge difference of course. In those days the countries under consideration for superpower attention were only thinking about nuclear proliferation. Today, if the president is correct, Saddam Hussein is close to success and North Korea is in the process of stockpiling atomic weapons. When 30 years ago the two superpowers could have forced their will upon the younger upstarts, that task is complicated a hundredfold, now that the bad guys hold the atom in their hands.

That brings to mind a second admonition that my father gave me, which, if memory serves me right, was in the context of a business dilemma but had its roots in times of war. Never, he said, engage in a multifront war. Pick any world power and you can trace its demise to the arrogance of fighting on more than one front at a time. Unless, of course, survival was at stake.

I have thought about that advice in the wake of the very disturbing admission by North Korea that it, indeed, has nuclear weapons and presumably the ability to deliver them somewhere other than its own peninsula. Given the context of the president's policy to preemptively strike any country that poses a mass destructive threat to us or our friends, the idea of fighting both in the Middle East and in Korea at the same time should give us all pause for concern.

Concern that we might not have the manpower to do the job. Concern that we might not have the intelligence-gathering forces to make sure of success. Concern that we might not have the weaponry and technology in sufficient quantity to handle any contingencies should our plans go awry. Concern that we might be the only ones paying for our policy of preemption and, therefore, that the money might not be available, given our current economic woes. Concern, concern, concern.

All of this is not to say that we shouldn't go after Iraq and North Korea if they don't lay down their weapons but, rather, that we understand the lessons of multifront warfare before we move to far forward.

It may be time to rethink our priorities to determine which of the two countries is the more immediate threat.

If it is both, do them both. But if only one is a real threat to our peace and security because the other can be handled short of war, then get ready to rumble in that direction. The question, of course, is which way, if either, do we go.

The experiences of prior, greater generations should provide good counsel. I hope President Bush has the patience to pay them heed.