Sovereignty is such a lonely word: two decades of promiscuous intervention softened the ground for Putin's expansionism.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: From the Top

ON SEPTEMBER 10, 1990, U.S. President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev issued a simple and remarkable joint statement. "We are united in the belief that Iraq's aggression must not be tolerated," the former Cold War opponents declared after a seven-hour meeting in Helsinki to discuss Saddam Hussein's annexation of Kuwait. "No peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbors."

Observers understood immediately the historical significance of two previously antagonistic superpowers agreeing on the principle that countries cannot swallow one another. What was less obvious at the time is that the moment would look like science fiction from the perspective of the future as well.

President Bush--we did not need to differentiate him as "H.W." back then--was so giddy about the prospects of rules-based global cooperation that on the not-yet-portentous date of September 11,1990, he gave an unfortunate name to the concept during an address to a joint session of Congress: new world order.

"Most countries share our concern for principle," he asserted. "A new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective--a new world order--can emerge: a new era--freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.... A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak."

Because "new world order" sounded creepy and was already a phrase used by conspiracists worried about one-world government, Bush's larger point got washed away in the ensuing brouhaha. But terminology aside, the creation of an international taboo against subsuming weaker countries was a worthwhile endeavor.

When an unprecedentedly large U.S.-led coalition drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in February 1991, it was possible to imagine that this non-aggression principle might be elevated into an international norm. Instead, the idea has been systematically degraded ever since, to the point where Gorbachev's...