Enable java in your browser. Or use the links below. Send us your Feedback For our privacy policy, click here . For our user agree- ment, click here . Having at one time shared responsibility for national security policy and the extrication from Vietnam, I am profoundly uneasy about the proliferation of open-ended American commitments involving the deployment of U.S. forces.
American forces are in harm's way in Kosovo, Bosnia and the Gulf.
They lack both a definition of strategic purpose by which success can be measured and an exit strategy. In the case of Kosovo, the concern is that America's leadership would be impaired by the refusal of Congress to approve American participation in the NATO force that has come into being largely as a result of a diplomacy conceived and spurred by Washington. Thus, in the end, Congress may feel it has little choice but to go along. In any event, its formal approval is not required. But Congress needs to put the administration on notice that it is uneasy about being confronted with sudden ad hoc military missions.