The Bush administration's goal in this latest bout of Middle Eastern terrorism seems to be the release of Joseph Cicippio, and perhaps one or two other hostages as well. That would end the "crisis": The media would lose interest in the affair and President Bush's approval ratings would inch farther into the stratosphere.

But in fact, if the Bush administration accomplishes what it wants, it will be handing yet another victory to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors. Once again, the terrorists will have paralyzed the U.S. government. Once again, they will have used murder to manipulate American public opinion, proving to Israel that the price of counterterrorism is no longer to be paid just in Israeli lives but in the loss of American support. Who says terrorists don't understand deterrence?

Hezbollah and the two states that enable it to operate -- Syria and Iran -- will have gained respect in the Middle East for defying a superpower. Iran will even expect America's gratitude for not killing more hostages. With all these profits, why would any of the terror groups ever get out of the hostage business?

Yet the Bush administration moves inexorably down this path, by making the release of hostages its primary goal. But the crisis is not that eight American lives are now in danger. They have been in danger ever since they were kidnapped. The real crisis is that for more than 10 years state-sponsored terrorism has brought American foreign policy to a standstill with numbing regularity. And until this crisis is resolved, every American in every volatile area of the world is a potential hostage.

Instead, the Bush administration should set itself the following goals:

1. Restore American credibility.

If the U.S. can't deal with a band of thugs, how can it force peace settlements, defend allies, or preserve stability?

2. Re-establish rules of the game.

Superpowers must set the parameters of legitimate behavior in world affairs. The U.S. must make clear that states that attempt to profit from terrorism will regret it.

3. Deter terrorists.

Terrorist groups must be punished, both to hold them responsible for their past actions and to deter future misconduct.

Naturally, diplomacy is to be preferred to force. The administration's efforts to pressure the Iranians and Syrians, to enlist the Algerians, to even involve the Soviet Union are all laudable and necessary. But there should be no pleading for the lives of hostages. The goal must be that Iran and Syria discourage and disband Hezbollah and its sister groups.

Those two governments have the power to end the kidnapping. Iran's officials present demands on behalf of the hostage-takers. Its interior minister publicly recommends that acts of terrorism be committed. Its government supplies money and arms to Hezbollah and its subsidiaries, and could defund and delegitimize these groups. The Syrians, who control the Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut, could shut down terrorist training camps and disrupt their operations. At the least they could cut the flow of aid coming to Hezbollah through the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

Consider an analogy. If the Nicaraguan Contras' principal sponsor, the U.S., were to stop funding and arming them, and if the country from which they operate, Honduras, were to throw them out, as it has said it will, the Contras would be emasculated and effectively finished. Indeed that seems to be what will happen. What Daniel Ortega did to the Contras, George Bush must do to Hezbollah.

The carrots the U.S. could offer Iran are substantial. Over the long term, the U.S. could help Iran rebuild its crumbled economy, ancient technological base and weary military; in the short term, it could take a more conciliatory position on its frozen assets. But not in exchange for the hostages; rather, in exchange for disbanding the hostage-taking groups themselves.

If the Iranians and Syrians ignore diplomatic pressure and keep manipulating the American public, then the U.S. must achieve its objectives by force. Iran's economy is shattered; few noticed that President Rafsanjani's offer to have the hostages released was accompanied by calls for severe domestic austerity. Syria is also vulnerable to economic coercion, as Patrick Clawson pointed out on this page yesterday, and is anxious to avert international attention from its bloody activities in Lebanon. If these pressures don't work, then pressure must become violence -- against Hezbollah first, and, if necessary, against Iranian and Syrian targets later.

There are two ways to think about force. The first, which postwar America has been more comfortable with, is the "economy of force" model, which uses limited and discrete quantities of force to help negotiations and push bargaining along.

The other way, the way in which Middle Eastern nations think about it, is to use force to inflict pain and suffering, and to break an opponent's will by making circumstances unendurable for him. As Samuel Huntington put it the spring, 1986, National Interest, "Military forces are not primarily instruments of communication to convey signals to an enemy; they are instead instruments of coercion to compell him to alter his behavior."

The U.S. should use this model. Once your opponent realizes that you have set yourself arbitrary limits, he knows that he can win so long as he is prepared to go just one notch higher than you.

Anyway, the American military is illsuited to limited warfare. Whenever it has had to perform these kinds of surgical operations it has failed. As Mr. Huntington has suggested, the U.S. should rely upon its strengths by going on the offensive, aiming for a first-round knockout, exploiting technology, and using "bigness, not brains."

Nudging an opponent toward compromise with discrete increments of force assumes that your antagonist shares interests with you, that you at least speak the common language of diplomacy. None of this is true with Hezbollah.

It is futile for those without security clearances to take hard positions on whether the U.S. does or does not know where the terrorists are. But in the past few days, Robert Macfarlane and Adm. James Lyons have revealed that the U.S. was ready to strike terrorist strongholds on two occasions during the Reagan administration. The Bush administration was also planning to strike bases if Mr. Cicippio had been killed. The real problem appears to be that the U.S. does know where to attack, but that the hostages are being held at those very sites.

Hezbollah is "de facto" at war with the U.S. It has killed between 250 and 300 Americans, as well as almost 100 allies. The hostages it now holds are, in effect, prisoners of war. The U.S. did not want to enter this war, and its captured citizens did not enlist as soldiers. But those who wage war rarely ask their victims for permission to do so. Now the U.S. must respond, and must set no arbitrary limits upon its actions. Political and military circumstances may require that it hit Iranian targets, as it hit Libyan ones three years ago.

The idea that terrorists cannot be deterred is not only unproven but discredited. After the U.S. raid on Libya, not only Lybyan but Syrian sponsored attacks slacked off. In their recent actions, the Lebanese terrorists have shown shrewd calculation. Claiming to kill Col. William Higgins in response to the Israeli kidnapping of Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid sowed discord between Israel and America, and put pressure on the American government to ask Syria and Iran for help. But killing Mr. Cicippio would have gone too far, enraging the American public and possibly leading to an American air strike, so they suspended that death threat. The fact that the terrorists' goals are utterly anti-American and their means ruthless does not mean that they are madmen.

The Soviet response to its one recent case of terrorism has ensured that there have been no others. On Sept. 30, 1985, four minor Soviet officials were kidnapped in Beirut and on Oct. 2, one was murdered. It was unclear who the kidnappers were or where the hostages had been taken. The Soviet Union officially stated that it would hold not just the terrorists responsible but also "all those who could have stopped the criminal action but did not do everything possible to this effect."

Soviet official statements also emphasized that "this was an evil deed for which there can be no forgiveness." Within days, Syrian, Druze, Palestinian and Shiite militias began combing Beirut and Sidon, rounding up dozens of people for searches and interrogations. The Syrian chief of military intelligence arrived in Beirut to mastermind the operation personally. The Iranian government sent three officials to help. On Oct. 30 -- exactly one month after the kidnapping -- the kidnappers had been identified and the hostages located and released. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Beirut, the American CIA station chief, William Buckley, was being tortured to death while the National Security Council sold arms to the Iranians.

The problem may not be that Hezbollah does not understand costs and benefits, but that it understands them too well. And till now there have been many benefits and few costs. That won't change if another American president plays another round of the hostage-concession game.

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