The justification we gave for intervening in Kosovo forces us to take a hard line against Russia's barbarous conduct in Chechnya. Politically and morally, the situations are identical. Kosovo marked the first breach in the wall of sovereignty behind which cruel regimes have long been free to violate the human rights of their own peoples: no longer would "It's an internal matter" be an allowable excuse for a concert of nations not to intervene to stop pogroms in places like Kosovo. The Kosovo precedent is the most humane development in international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia curbed religious violence by establishing the modern state system, in the seventeenth century. Ever since, so far as other states are concerned, citizens have "belonged" to their states, an idea that underlines the power governments have to treat as they like their own citizens. Our intervention in Kosovo suggests that citizens have universal human rights that transcend the state's claims. Intervention by outside states in the name of upholding these rights is not only permissible under international law, it is what Harvard University professor Stanley Hoffmann terms a "duty beyond borders." This principle deserves to be called the "Clinton Doctrine," the post-Cold War equivalent of the Truman Doctrine, under which the United States and its allies moved to contain the Soviet Union. The Clinton Doctrine is the missing new paradigm in U.S. foreign policy.

Next to hewing to the Clinton Doctrine, the modalities of intervention are mere details. No, we can't use force to drive the Russians out of Chechnya. The Russians, as Yeltsin pointedly reminded us before leaving office, still have nuclear weapons; any conventional war against them could escalate into nuclear war. The Clinton Doctrine is not a suicide pact. Hard power, in this case, must yield to soft power. The IMF can stanch the flow of money and credit to Russia. Stop the war in Chechnya or see the still-functioning sectors of Russia's economy collapse -- such would be Russia's choice.

Some in your Administration have talked of how the Russians are "liberating Chechnya." This is the same claim made by the Serbs in regard to Kosovo. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were "bandits," Belgrade said -- Mr. Putin uses the same word to describe the Chechen rebels. Whether they are bandits or freedom fighters depends on one's point of view. The rebels are no more the issue in Chechnya, however, than the KLA were in Kosovo. The issue is the human rights of Chechen civilians. The issue is what's happening to the forty thousand civilians trapped in Grozny under the heel of the Russian army.

After Bosnia, after Rwanda, a morally chastened West, led by the United States, established a new principle in Kosovo. The mass killings of the twentieth century will have meant nothing, Mr./Ms. President, if they are not enshrined in that principle: Never Again.