By Richard Halloran

For six months and more, in his quest to disarm Iraq and drive Saddam Hussein from power, President Bush has been pursuing a doctrine forged by the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago. Today, the chances that it will work fade by the hour.

In "The Art of War," Sun Tzu said: "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not the supreme excellence; the supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

There is ample evidence that such has been the president's intent: The good cop played by Secretary of State Colin Powell holding out an olive branch, and the bad cop played by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld armed with a sheaf of arrows; the authorized torrent of leaked war plans, usually the most carefully guarded of secrets; the roll of drums whenever a military unit deploys, something usually done without fanfare; a delay in mobilizing reservists until just a few weeks ago; the emphasis on pre-emptive strikes; the offers to let Saddam slide into exile; appeals to Iraqi soldiers to lay down their arms; and the latest, a well-publicized demonstration of a powerful new bomb.

Rumsfeld summed it up in a news conference: "There is a psychological component to all aspects of warfare. The goal is to not have a war. The goal is to have the pressure be so great that Saddam Hussein cooperates."

If that didn't work, he said, "The goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition, and there's an enormous incentive for Saddam Hussein to leave and spare the world a conflict."

Secretary of State Colin Powell's diplomacy and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's more hawkish stance might have averted war with Iraq, if support for President Bush's strategy had held firm. Advertiser library photo • Nov. 13, 2002

But the French, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Turks and the president's political opponents at home have turned on him. They could have helped to get rid of the widely despised Saddam and done so without getting their hands dirty. Instead, the Iraqi tyrant seems more defiant than ever.

A good part of this is Bush's own fault. Despite Powell's eloquent performance at the United Nations, and the constant barrage of speeches and news conferences by the president and his advisers, the administration has not produced enough evidence to persuade a skeptical world that Iraq constitutes a clear and present danger. In The New York Times/CBS poll, 62 percent of Americans said the administration had not told them everything they need to know about the threat.

The president asserted last week: "It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam." A more pointed figure of speech might have been that it is time to roll the dice, a game with greater uncertainty. If the president rolls a winner, he has a slight possibility of dislodging Saddam or disarming Iraq without a war. More likely, the president has reached the point of no return, and American forces will soon charge onto the battlefield and into the air above it.

With any luck, they will overwhelm the Iraqi army in short order, sending Saddam into flight or capturing him. The worst case would see the U.S. bogged down in a protracted war in Iraq, with heavy casualties on both sides. That might be compounded if the North Koreans open a second front to exploit the commitment of U.S. forces against Iraq.

Opponents of the Bush strategy, led by feckless France, evoke the appeasers of Britain in 1938 when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced he would go to Munich to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain would seek peace by allowing Hitler to force Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich.

Amid an ovation for Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, later to become Britain's wartime leader, was heard to mutter: "The government had to choose between shame and war. They chose shame, and they will get war."

Unhappily, this time the United States will bear the brunt of a war that France and others might have prevented if they had stood tall.

Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia and Washington. Reach him at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com.