Even if you're not a one-world conspiracy theorist, you've got to admit that the current leaders of many major Western states -- the United States, Britain, Germany, etc. -- are philosophically joined at the hip with an internationalist mindset. This mindset is generally unsympathetic to the traditional nation state and its right to territorial and political sovereignty.

You see it in Tony Blair's eagerness to surrender much of his nation's sovereignty to the European Commonwealth and in Bill Clinton's willingness to subject the United States to the environmental fascism of certain international bodies. Being no respecter of nations, this mindset readily champions the cause of independence for ethnic groups living within other nations, such as Kosovar Albanians within Serbia and Arab Palestinians within Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no globalist himself, describes this mindset in his 1993 book, "A Place Among the Nations." In the book, Netanyahu eerily recounts the events leading to Czechoslovakia being forcibly subsumed by Hitler's Germany while Western Europe was preaching appeasement and "peace in our time."

Netanyahu explains that Czechoslovakia, being in the heart of Europe, was central to Hitler's plans to conquer Europe. But the Sudetan mountains formed a physical barrier to external attack, giving even Hitler pause about an overt offensive. Instead, Hitler devised a scheme whereby he could annex the Sudetenland with its formidable mountains and overcome the Czechs' natural defenses.

Conveniently for Hitler, those living in Sudetenland were predominantly German and he worked them into an ethnic frenzy to the point that they were demanding independence -- even though they enjoyed prosperity and full civil rights. Through propaganda he was able to convince the West that Sudetenland should be returned to the Germans, ignoring the fact that it had never been part of Germany.

Astonishingly, Hitler and the West coerced the Czechs to accede to Hitler's demands and relinquish this territory. Less than a half year later, no longer deterred by the mountain fortress, Nazi armies overran Czechoslovakia.

Netanyahu draws a parallel between Hitler's designs on pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and the Arabs' ambitions with respect to Israel. Israel, like Czechoslovakia, possesses natural physical barriers to outside attack. Like the Western nations before World War II, today's Western nations are pressuring Israel to surrender its land for peace.

Today's Oxford peacehawks have been sermonizing to conservative forces in Israel to adopt as a sure avenue to peace the Rodney King Doctrine: "Why can't we all just get along?" Netanyahu's Israel, like yesteryear's Czechoslovakia, has been subtly demonized by the West as the obstacle to peace. The Arabs within the Israeli nation, they say, deserve the right to self-determination and Israel must surrender its strategically vital real estate to its sworn Arabic enemies in exchange for peace.

Clinton, ultimately unable to prevail upon the determined Netanyahu to acquiesce to his "peace-plan," decided to intermeddle in the internal affairs of our fervent ally, Israel. This time, however, instead of using military force to achieve its ends, he decided to intermeddle in a forum where he has no equal: the electoral process.

Just as surely as Bill Clinton personally dispatched Carville, Flynt and Lenzner into war against Ken Starr and his witnesses, he sent his triumvirate of Carville, Greenberg and Shrum to ensure the electoral defeat of "peace-blocker" Netanyahu by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak. With Barak's resounding victory, the internationalists are a step closer to "peace in our time." Barak is decidedly more moderate than Netanyahu and less dogmatic about retaining much of the territory Netanyahu deems essential to Israel's security.

While pretending detachment from these events, Clinton could barely contain himself with exuberance over Barak's victory. So anxious is the legacy-hungry lecher for the Nobel Peace Prize that he is already counting on resurrecting his Wye River peace accords. "We have an accord at Wye to implement, and we have a lot of work to do on the final-status issues."

It is one thing for Clinton to seek to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation with the ostensible purpose of preventing ethnic cleansing. It is altogether another for him to do so for the purpose of imposing his worldview on the sovereign nation of Israel.

Clinton had the audacity to announce that Israel's election represented a victory for peace. How utterly predictable for liberal's poster boy to calculate that peace is better achieved through appeasement and weakness than through vigilance and strength. Bill Clinton seems hell-bent on turning a blind eye to history's lessons: with his Serbian Vietnam and Israeli Czechoslavakia.

To find out more about David Limbaugh, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 1999 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.