Global vigilante.

• Position: Comment

The Bush Administration grows scarier by the day. One of the latest bits of ghastliness is Bush's new military doctrine of preemption. On June 1 at West Point, Bush said, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge."

In subsequent weeks, his aides fleshed out this idea, saying it would become a central doctrine of a new U.S. national security strategy, and it would justify attacking nations or groups that were engaging in terrorism or trying to acquire or export weapons of mass destruction or were "weak states" that harbored terrorists.

While such a doctrine might seem prudent in the wake of September 11, it flouts international law, is of dubious constitutionality, and will make the world a much more dangerous place. It contemplates the use of nuclear weapons as just another tool in the shed, with the Bush Administration talking publicly about the utility of such weapons in a way not heard since the early, crazy days of Ronald Reagan.

This is unilateralism run amok.

The doctrine is so broad that it would seem to allow Bush to attack dozens of countries right now, without the constitutional requirement of a declaration of war, as sketched out in Article 1, Section 8, and without any consultation whatsoever with Congress. Any nation that possesses weapons of mass destruction or tries to acquire them or traffics in them would be fair game. So, automatically the nuclear powers are on the list: Russia, China, France, England, Israel, Pakistan, India, and South Africa. Add to them those nations reputed to have chemical or biological weapons: Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, South Korea, Syria, and Taiwan. On top of those, Bush could get out his atlas and go to town by alleging that any one of dozens of countries was trying to obtain or export weapons of mass destruction, or was engaging in terrorism, or was a weak state that could host terrorists.

But according to international law, a nation is justified in using force only when it has been attacked or is about to be attacked. The acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, or the attempt to acquire them, does not come close to imminent attack. If the United States arrogates to itself the right to take out other nations' arsenals, it would simply be acting as a global vigilante. And it would be doing so out of no sense of universal standards, but on the basis...