he United States has a long and calamitous history of toppling unfriendly foreign governments. The damaging repercussions of cold-war coups in Iran and Guatemala haunt Washington to this day. As President Bush draws up plans to deal with Afghanistan, apparently the first target in the war against terrorism, he must do a better job than some of his predecessors in thinking through the potential consequences of American intervention. There are a lot of tripwires on the road to Kabul.

Mr. Bush has begun suggesting that the Taliban should be overthrown. But engineering the ouster of the Taliban, which have let Osama bin Laden hide out in Afghanistan for years, could engulf Afghanistan in civil war, aggravate a growing refugee crisis on Afghanistan's borders and even destabilize Pakistan. Any of these developments would embolden terrorists and undercut American interests.

The Taliban's contorted interpretations of Islam, venomous rhetoric and sheltering of the bin Laden network make the regime a tempting target for Mr. Bush. Many Afghans have suffered under the harsh rule of the Taliban. But Washington should not expect American soldiers to be greeted as liberators if they move into Afghanistan. An effort to depose the Taliban, if it comes to that, has to be designed with great care.

The Taliban brought a measure of stability after conquering 90 percent of Afghan territory in the 1990's. Though their support is said to have waned, they could still command substantial loyalty in the southern half of the country in response to American intervention. Taliban leaders are also largely ethnic Pushtuns, the nation's dominant ethnic group. The Northern Alliance, the armed opposition force that Washington seems eager to embrace, represents Persian-speaking ethnic groups that are viewed with hostility by much of the country.

Afghanistan is a feudal society organized around many tribes and clans with a long history of mutual alliances, betrayal and strife. The one force uniting them over the centuries has been a common outside enemy ・in modern times the British and more recently the Soviet Union. The United States could easily find itself next in line. Any American effort to intervene in Afghanistan that comes with open Russian assistance, as now seems likely, is bound to backfire. Iranian assistance, were it to materialize, would also infuriate the Pushtuns, who are Sunni Muslims deeply distrustful of the Shiite leadership in Tehran.

American action in Afghanistan also risks igniting an upheaval in Pakistan. Though now aligned with the United States, Pakistan fears that an effort to overthrow the Taliban would provoke a rebellion by Pushtuns in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province. It would not take much to turn that political tinder into a firestorm that consumes the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

In the presidential campaign last year, and again this week, Mr. Bush warned against the arrogance of outsiders engaging in "nation-building" in the developing world. While pondering his next move in the fight against terrorism, he should factor that caution into the military and political strategy for dealing with Afghanistan.