Pre-emption used to be the watchword of Bush foreign policy. The world's sole superpower would not hesitate to wield force against an imminent threat to its security. The old doctrines of the Cold War era -- of containment and deterrence of a potential enemy -- were disdained as weakness.

Now, facing the most serious national security challenge since the end of the Cold War -- the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea -- the administration is reaching back to those oldies but goodies.

The determination of Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons has so far been largely unchecked by this administration. The North Koreans, since breaking out of the freeze agreed to during the Clinton administration, have been steadily producing plutonium, and presumably warheads. The Iranians, after the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reversed their deal to suspend uranium-enrichment activities, the crucial step toward nuclear weapons.

Diplomatic negotiations in both cases have produced little movement. But a military strike on their nuclear facilities is almost inconceivable. The danger of potentially horrendous retaliation and the sapping of American will and resources in Iraq have almost killed that option.

"As shaky as a policy of containment is, it is certainly preferable to confrontation, 'rollback,' or 'regime change' through military force,'' wrote conservative national security expert Thomas Donnelly in a recent analysis. "Containment is, in fact, regime change by tolerable means, and the solution to the problems of Iran and North Korea lie in an indirect approach.''

While we try to contain a nuclear Iran and North Korea, suggested Donnelly, we should surround Iran with movements for democratic change in Iraq and Afghanistan. North Korea, he believes, will be changed through Chinese influence.

Donnelly cautions that there may be circumstances when containment proves even more risky than intervention -- say if Iran tries to slip nuclear materials to Islamist terrorists. Iran is less stable than the Soviet Union, though it is worth remembering that the first 15 years of the Cold War brought us to the brink of nuclear war once and close to it several times.

For the administration, this is a stealth policy shift. That is no surprise. It flows directly from the mess in Iraq, a mistake the administration can never really acknowledge.

For those who once touted American global domination, it is still hard to face the reality that containment is impossible without allies and partners. By ourselves, we cannot press those regimes by cutting off their access to investment and advanced technology.

The administration is rightly moving to take Iran to the United Nations Security Council to seek a mandate to enforce the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency. North Korea is undoubtedly watching this carefully.

China and Russia, who have veto power in the Security Council, are reluctantly going along. But they still resist any move to impose economic sanctions against Iran. Nor are the Europeans, Japanese and others who depend on oil and gas from Iran eager to halt their investment and trade.

Similarly in the case of North Korea, the Chinese and South Koreans are not prepared to cut the flow of economic aid and investment into the otherwise isolated North Korean state. This is less a case of economic interests than a fear that sanctions will escalate to greater confrontation, even war.

"The strategic challenge the Bush administration faced was to convince the rest of the world that Iran is more dangerous than the United States,'' says nuclear proliferation expert George Perkovich. "They finally did it -- and it took Ahmadinejad to do it,'' referring to the inflammatory rhetoric, including threats to "wipe Israel off the map,'' issued by the Iranian leader.

The administration made some headway down the same path with North Korea by engaging in direct talks with that regime this past fall, dispelling the image that the United States was unwilling to negotiate. But that progress has been undermined recently because hard-liners inside the Bush administration pulled the plug on such talks.

Managing an effective containment partnership will be a huge challenge. And there is still tremendous resistance inside the administration to engaging and negotiating -- and compromising -- with the enemy. But that was always a part of making containment succeed, even at the height of the Cold War.

Containment is no silver bullet. It is merely, as Donnelly puts it, "the least bad alternative, but not by a lot, and not under all circumstances.'' And right now, it is the only game in town.

You're being watched...Congress will soon hold hearings on the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2002. But that program is just the tip of the iceberg.

Since 9/11, the expansion of efforts to gather and analyze information on U.S. citizens is nothing short of staggering. The government collects vast troves of data, including consumer credit histories and medical and travel records. Databases track Americans' networks of friends, family and associates, not just to identify who is a terrorist but to try to predict who might become one.

Remember Total Information Awareness, retired Adm. John Poindexter's effort to harness all government and commercial databases to preempt national security threats? The idea was that disparate, seemingly mundane behaviors can reveal criminal intent when viewed together. More disturbing, it assumed that deviance from social norms can be an early indicator of terrorism. Congress killed that program in 2003, but according to the Associated Press, many related projects continued.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency runs a data-mining program called "Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery", which connects pieces of information from vast amounts of data sources. The Defense Intelligence Agency trawls intelligence records and the Internet to identify Americans connected to foreign terrorists. The CIA reportedly runs Quantum Leap, which gathers personal information on individuals from private and public sources. In 2002, Congress authorized $500 million for the Homeland Security Department to develop "data mining and other advanced analytical tools." In 2004, the General Accounting Office surveyed 128 federal departments and agencies to determine the extent of data mining. It found 199 operations, 14 of which related to counterterrorism.

What type of information could these mine? Your tax, education, vehicle, criminal and welfare records for starters. But also other digital data, such as your travel, medical and insurance records - and DNA tests. Section 505 of the Patriot Act (innocuously titled "Miscellaneous National Security Authorities") extends the type of information the government can obtain without a warrant to include credit card records, bank account numbers and information on Internet use.

Your checking account may tell which charities or political causes you support. Your credit card statements show where you shop, and your supermarket frequent-buyer-card records may indicate whether you keep kosher or follow an Islamic halal diet. Internet searches record your interests, down to what, exactly, you read. Faith forums or chat rooms offer a window into your thoughts and beliefs. E-mail and telephone conversations contain intimate details of your life.

A University of Illinois study found that in the 12 months following 9/11, federal agents made at least 545 visits to libraries to obtain information about patrons. This isn't just data surveillance. It's psychological surveillance.

Many Americans might approve of data mining to find terrorists. But not all of the inquiries necessarily relate to terrorism. The Patriot Act allows law enforcement officers to get "sneak and peek" warrants to search a home for any suspected crime - and to wait months or even years to tell the owner they were there. Last July, the Justice Department told the House Judiciary Committee that only 12% of the 153 "sneak and peek" warrants it received were related to terrorism investigations.

The FBI has used Patriot Act powers to break into a judge's chambers and to procure records from medical clinics. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union recently revealed that the FBI used other new powers to eavesdrop on environmental, political and religious organizations.

When Congress looks into domestic spying in the "war on terror," it should ask a series of questions:

• First, what information, exactly, is being collected? Are other programs besides the president's NSA initiative ignoring traditional warrant requirements? Are federal agencies dodging weak privacy laws by outsourcing the job to private contractors?
• Second, who has access to the data once it is collected, and what legal restrictions are set on how it can be used or shared?
• Third, who authorized data mining, and is its use restricted to identifying terrorists?
• Fourth, what is the collective effect of these programs on citizens' rights? Privacy certainly suffers, but as individuals begin to feel inhibited in what they say and do, free speech and freedom of assembly also erode.
• Fifth, how do these data collection and mining operations deal with error? As anyone who's tried to dispute an erroneous credit report can attest, once computer networks exchange data, it may be difficult to verify its accuracy or where it entered the system. Citizens who do not know they are under surveillance cannot challenge inaccurate information that may become part of their secret digital dossier.

What will Congress do to ensure that the innocent remain so?