dam Conference in 1945. Once President
Roosevelt's vision of a collective security
system monitored by "four policemen" col-
lapsed, the United States required nearly
three years to develop the alternative
which came to be known as "the contain-
ment doctrine." Dedicated to the objective
of preventing further Soviet expansion,
containment provided an operational defi-
nition for the cold war, and it served as a
guide to every administration for the next
40 years. There were tactical disagree-
ments (some of which I shared) but no chal-
lenge to the overriding concept.

No comparable concept has been evolved
for the post-cold-war world. There is no
longer a worldwide ideological threat, nor
an overriding geopolitical one. At the same
time, upheavals seem to multiply around
the world, some profoundly offensive to
our moral convictions, and some deeply
disturbing even when they do not pose a
direct threat to the United States. These
conditions would exist no matter who was
president. Where the administration has
created problems—for itself and its inter-
locutors—is in failing to articulate an oper-
ational theory and to relate individual
events and crises to it.

A number of characteristics of the Clinton administration have contributed to this failure. First, the convictions of many of the top officials of the administration were formed in opposition to the cold war and ironically are now even more outdated. These include a distrust of America's power, a preference for multilateral solutions and a reluctance to think in terms of national interest. All these impulses inhibit a realistic response to a world of multiple power centers and diverse conflicts.

There is a curious academic quality about
many administration pronouncements.
What passes for conceptual thinking is
translated only with great difficulty—if at
all—to concrete actions. For example, last
year the national-security adviser made a
speech announcing “enlargement of democ-
racy” as the administration’s alternative to
containment. But containing the expansion
of the Soviet sphere was a clear strategic
concept that anybody could understand and
to which day-to-day policy could be geared.
But what precisely does enlargement of de-
mocracy mean? Whom does it imply we
should support? With what means? Over
what period of time and at what risk? If those
questions cannot be answered, our policy
risks appearing morally intrusive and oper-
ationally impotent.

Similarly, before meeting with the Asian
heads of state in Seattle, the president talked
of a "Pacific community." The meeting itself
was a good idea. It is very important for the
president to stake U.S. interest in the fastest-
growing region in the world. On the other
hand, what was meant by the word "commu-

nity”? The reality is that Japan and China
consider each other potential adversaries.
Korea is afraid of both. China is concerned
not only about Japan but Russia and, to some
extent, India. Indonesia is afraid of Japan
and China. Absent a realistic assessment,
bilateral relations with the key Asian na-
tions have deteriorated even while commu-
nity is being proclaimed.

This tendency toward abstraction is com-

NEVER-NEVER LAND: Bosnian Serb forces

President Clinton must
respond to the existing
vacuum in global
leadership or doom the
United States to
increasing irrelevance

TOMISLAV PETERNEK—REUTER

pounded by an extraordinary obsession
with public relations. Exorbitant attention
is devoted to blunting short-term domestic
criticism, treating foreign policy as if it were
a domestic issue susceptible to consensus
through trade-offs. But foreign affairs is a
continuing process; segmenting it into indi-
vidual cases generally ends up offending
everybody, at home and abroad.

The administration's foreign policy is
also marked by an extraordinary lack of
discipline. The difference between an out-
standing football team and an ordinary one
is that while every coach knows the same
plays, only a few are capable of squeezing
additional nuances out of their system. Sim-
ilarly, an effective foreign policy requires

mastering not only the concepts but also the
nuances of execution. The Clinton adminis-
tration has not yet achieved enough coherence
to insist on such operational mastery.

The reluctance to deal with foreign policy
consistently and conceptually has resulted
in a paradox. The president is actually
spending more time putting out one foreign-
policy fire after another than he would have
to if he had devised a strategy and put in
place a machinery to monitor it. For foreign
policy to have credibility, foreign leaders
must believe that we mean what we say, that
we understand their concerns and the na-
ture of the global situation, and that we will
carry through on our pronouncements. Yet
many of these elements are now missing.
Thus, even when the day-to-day policies are
prudent, the administration receives insuffi-
cient credit, because its second thoughts are
measured against original positions. Too of-
ten this leaves an impression of weakness.

Bosnia is a good example of an essential-
ly prudent policy defeating itself because
of the inability to convey its purpose and
the failure to impose discipline in execu-
tion. During a three-week period in April,
the administration went through at least
four phases with respect to the situation in
Gorazde: a statement by the defense secre-
tary that force should not be used; a dis-
avowal of that statement by the national-
security adviser; an ineffectual bombing
attack; a presidential statement disavowing
force and re-embracing diplomacy, and,
finally, an ultimatum demanding Serbian
withdrawal.

That clutter, typical of much of the ad-
ministration's Bosnian policy, inhibited the
articulation of the basic choice: whether to
give priority to the political issue of the
territorial integrity of Bosnia or to the mor-
al issue of ending the suffering. When Clin-
ton came to office, the civil war had been
raging for nine months and about 35 per-
cent of the territory had been occupied by
Serbian forces. Restoration of the entire
territory would have been achievable only
by protracted outside intervention, proba-
bly requiring ground forces. This neither
the administration nor its allies was pre-
pared to undertake—even though Wash-
ington's rhetoric implied otherwise. The
other option was to impose a cease-fire by
methods similar to those applied over a
year later in Sarajevo and Gorazde. One
mechanism for this would have been sup-
port for the plan of U.N. mediators Cyrus
Vance and David Owen. That, however,
would have left some 40 percent of Bosnian
territory in Serb hands and was thus de-
clared unacceptable by the administration.

The clash between the administration's
convictions and willingness to run risks
was never resolved. It is debatable whether
Bosnia should have been established as a
nation in the first place, given that it has no

JUNE 6, 1994 NEWSWEEK 37

INTERNATIONAL

clear-cut ethnic, historic or cultural identity. But leaving that question aside, the Clinton administration was never prepared in practice to restore Bosnia to the status quo ante because that would have required a massive deployment of U.S. ground troops. Therefore, the only objective that was ever credible was to stop the fighting by seeking a cease-fire along the existing dividing line.

Since the administration never explained that reality to the American public, the result was a kind of never-never land in which there was no real sense of any direction. And while the administration was debating, the Serbs conquered more Muslim territory. Now the administration is talking about committing U.S. peacekeeping forces to monitor a cease-fire that both sides would accept, if at all, only under duress. This is bound to transform peacekeepers into potential hostages. What is desperately needed is some comprehensive statement of goals commensurate with actions we are prepared to undertake.

Haiti presents similar problems. The president has implied that we may have to intervene militarily because Haiti is nearby. Yet geographical proximity is not a reason to use force unless there is a clear threat to U.S. security, which there is not. If we intervene because Haitian institutions are morally offensive, are we proclaiming a general principle or a target of opportunity based on propinquity? If the objective of a military operation is fundamental reform of Haiti's domestic situation, has the American public been prepared for such a protracted process? And if the objective is to stop immigration to America, have we faced the reality that most immigrants are economic refugees and will want to leave as long as Haiti is poor, whether we intervene or not? In the face of these ambiguities, do we really want to challenge the near-unanimous opposition to intervention in the rest of the Western hemisphere?

Bosnia and Haiti symbolize the basic challenge before the administration: in the absence of an overriding ideological or geopolitical challenge, it must develop some idea of the national interest to guide American policy. Even President Clinton's wise decision to extend Most Favored Nation status to China, which has removed an obstacle to a constructive relationship, has not defined a context for it. What is urgently needed is a high-level political dialogue to define what objectives are common, what policies can be coordinated and which differences can be eased. And in the process, China must understand that even in the absence of sanctions, relations with the United States will always be facilitated by progress on human rights.

Even more imperative is a new look at the relationship with Europe, for so long the bedrock of American foreign policy.

Obviously, American priorities in the post-cold-war period will change. But the administration is not simply altering priorities; it is reversing the entire trend of one of the most creative periods of American diplomacy. The North Atlantic relationship has heretofore been an end in itself. Now it is becoming an adjunct to the relationship with Russia and subordinated to the abstract multilateral concept of joint planning,

GIANT STEPS: Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng

## Even the wise decision to extend MFN status to China has removed an obstacle to a constructive relationship without defining a context for it

FIGARO-SIPA

the purpose of which is nebulous. President Clinton has described his proposed Partnership for Peace as bringing together NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the former republics of the Soviet Union and European neutrals in a structure that would engage in joint military planning. Yet what can Kazakhstan and Belgium plan together? Operationally, the Partnership for Peace implies an arrangement aimed at China and Japan, or an empty shell.

The practical result will be to bring about two categories of borders in Europe: one protected by NATO, the other not. Yet the borders that NATO would not protect are precisely the ones—indeed the only ones—that some Europeans are most concerned

about. Countries that view themselves as threatened will be given an incentive to make their own arrangements with Moscow, further weakening NATO.

In order to entice Russia into the Partnership, Washington has also signaled that Moscow would be granted an undefined special status within NATO. But to Russia's neighbors, that can only be seen as a move toward resurrecting the historic Russian claim to a veto over the former satellite nations of Eastern Europe and the new nations on the territory of the former Soviet Union. What started out as a proposition designed to eliminate discrimination against Russia has wound up discriminating against Russia's historic victims in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

The proposal of Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev to the effect that NATO be placed under the European Security Conference, together with the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States, would give Russia a veto over all institutions integrating the Atlantic area. Thus Russia would achieve the emasculation of NATO, which has been the goal of Russian foreign policy for 45 years. What will be left of the North Atlantic Alliance if all this comes to pass? What is its new purpose? It is to be hoped that the president's forthcoming trip to Europe will deal with some of these issues.

I strongly favor Russian participation in the Group of Seven and the European Security Conference. But NATO must be the safety net underneath all these other arrangements. NATO remains the only institutional structure that relates America to Europe. It must not be jettisoned on behalf of U.S. relations with Russia; the effect would be the opposite of what is intended.

President Clinton and his foreign-policy advisers have come to power in an America that can no longer afford all the obligations of the cold-war period. They face a situation in which diplomacy and economics must replace the militarization of the two-power world. But that only makes it more urgent to define what remains vital to U.S. interests, and where we will place our priorities. Reality will impel these choices anyway: the real issue is whether they are developed by leadership or in chaos. Will we be driven to decisions in a way that makes us appear weak and rudderless—and tempts intransigent foreign leaders to test us—or can we formulate a basis of U.S. policy that allows us to anticipate the challenges of the new international situation before they erupt into crisis? Most of the administration's shortcomings are remediable; the opportunity for great achievement still remains. But answering that basic question requires more discipline, organization and focus than has been demonstrated thus far.

38 NEWSWEEK JUNE 6, 1994

05/31/94 16:17

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GLOBAL VIEWPOINT -- Bill Clinton

(Bill Clinton is the President of the United States. In this exclusive article for Global Viewpoint, Clinton explains his controversial decision to renew most-favored-nation trade status for China and outlines how the United States will continue to press for human rights. Next Saturday, June 4, marks the 5th anniversary of the 1989 massacre in Tian An Men Square.)

ADVANCING HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA<

BY BILL CLINTON

(c) NPQ. Dist. by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate<

WASHINGTON -- While much of the world's attention has turned to Europe, the D-Day celebration, and the triumph of our values over tyranny in the long Cold War, we must not waver in the challenge of advancing those same values -- freedom and prosperity -- in Asia, and especially in China. It is in this region that many of the profound challenges to America's national interest can be found; it is in this region that our generation's progress will in large part be measured.

A 21st Century economy is taking shape in China. China, last year, was the world's fastest growing economy, a market for $8 billion worth of American produced goods, and the source of 150,000 American jobs. China has an atomic arsenal and a veto in the U.N. Security Council; it is a major factor in Asian and global security. We share important interests, such as a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and sustaining the global environment. And it is here, in China, where the human march of freedom must cover some of its most difficult remaining ground. <

We won the Cold War by realistically and persistently balancing the security, economic and moral interests of the United States. We will protect our interests and make progress in China by doing precisely the same thing. <

Our challenge is how to trade with China without trading away our ideals; how to help economic growth lead to greater individual freedom; how to advance our interests in a more open China while recognizing other substantial interests in China and throughout Asia.<

That is why I have renewed China's MFN (most-favored-nation) trading status and embarked on a new

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☑003

course to support forces of constructive change in China while
strengthening the U.S.-China relationship. <

Last May, I issued an executive order conditioning future
renewal of China's MFN on overall progress regarding seven
aspects of its human rights performance. After years of
argument and veto, we no longer had two China policies -- one
from the Congress and one from the President -- but a single,
American policy toward that nation. <

The Executive Order, together with expanded high level
contacts with China over the year, bore some fruit. The
Chinese resolved urgent emigration cases we have called to
their attention and are permitting inspection visits
concerning Chinese exports produced with prison labor. <

The government released Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, two of
the most important dissidents from the Tian An Men Square era,
along with several prominent religious prisoners. It provided
us with an accounting of some other prisoners. China has
engaged in serious conversations with the International
Committee of the Red Cross about allowing prison visits. The
Chinese government has voiced its acceptance of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and they have begun technical
talks with us about ending the jamming of the Voice of
America. <

I welcome these steps -- but I do not believe they
constitute sufficient progress. To say otherwise would not
honestly or accurately reflect the situation in China.
Although China released some dissidents, it failed to release
many more, and during the same period, arrested or detained
other Chinese who appear to be guilty of nothing more than
peacefully expressing their views. And there has been little
or no progress regarding protection for Tibet's distinctive
religious and cultural heritage. <

While the Executive Order and our other efforts clearly
produced results that made a genuine difference in some
people's lives, linking human rights to MFN has taken us as
far as it can. Because of the progress China has made in a
time of political turbulence and difficulty, very few
advocates of human rights have called for a total lifting of
MFN. But some still propose targeted but sweeping sanctions or
linking human rights to our annual MFN review. <

I believe such approaches are less likely to advance the
cause of human rights in China and more likely to undermine
our own interests there than the approach we are pursuing.
Annual debates linking MFN to human rights threaten to block
needed progress on security and economic issues while yielding
little if any further progress on human rights. <

We must pursue our human rights agenda with China in a way
that does not isolate China from us. We can't help change
human rights in China if we're not there. The best way to do
this is with more direct and targeted means to achieve
continued improvements. Therefore, we will pursue a new and
vigorous program to support those in China working for
democracy and human rights, delinked from MFN. <

-- We will tell freedom's story to the people of China. We

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R004 (c)

will launch Radio Free Asia, increase the Voice of America's
radio broadcasts to China and inaugurate a weekly VOA
television program to report on developments in China.<

-- We will support others who stand for the dignity of the Chinese people. We will encourage American non-governmental organizations to give assistance, where it is desired and can be lawfully received, to the many new private organizations working in China to advance the cause of human rights.<

-- We will encourage the business community to work for progressive change. We will ask American business leaders to join us in developing a voluntary set of principles regarding the activity of American firms doing business with or in China, so that their presence will do more to improve working conditions, expand the access of Chinese people to information and otherwise enhance human rights conditions in China.<

-- We will engage others -- in the United Nations and elsewhere -- in the efforts to improve human rights in China. This approach will help us to emphasize that human rights are universal standards, not American imposed ideas.<

-- As appropriate, we will maintain the pressure of sanctions to combat continuing human rights abuses. We will extend the sanctions imposed by the United States as a result of the events in Tian An Men Square. I am also banning the import of munitions, principally guns and ammunition, from China.<

I believe the course I have chosen gives us the best chance of advancing all of America's interests with China. We will have more contacts, more trade, more international cooperation, and more intense and constant dialogue on human rights issues.<

We must see our relations with China within the broader context of our interests in the Asian Pacific region, of which America is an integral part.<

In three decades and three wars during this century, Americans fought and died in the Asian Pacific to advance our security and our ideals. The goal of promoting more open societies abroad -- advancing democracy, human rights and an evolution toward market economics -- is deeply embedded in our nation's history, ideals and security. The actions I have taken with regard to China are in the long-term interests of both the United States and China. I am confident that they will prove to be the best way to advance the cause of human rights.<

2875 words

5/27/94

NEWSWEEK

Before discussing the by now conventional wisdom that the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration lacks focus and a sense of direction, fairness requires that its successes be listed. The ratification of NAFTA was handled skillfully and courageously, as were the negotiations concluding GATT.

Secretary Christopher has kept the Middle East peace process moving forward unobtrusively and effectively. The disengagement from the over-commitment in Somalia was accomplished with a minimum of damage.

The cause of the global uneasiness is not doubt about the administration's tactical skill. There is a widespread recognition of the administration's ingenuity in extricating itself from dilemmas, some of which have been self-inflicted. It is the inability up to now to provide a conceptual framework through the perplexities of the post-Cold War international order.

2

As a result, after nearly a year and a half in office, foreign policy confronts President Clinton with a profound irony. Reflecting the mood of the electorate, he campaigned on the platform that he would be a domestic president who would give a lower priority to foreign policy. Yet he came to power at a time when historic changes had produced a vacuum in world leadership and established patterns of world affairs. His real choice, therefore, is not between foreign policy and a domestic agenda. If he cannot do both, he will fail in both. His administration must respond to the existing vacuum or doom the United States to increasing irrelevance and the rest of the world to growing instability.

The Cold War ended during the presidency of George Bush who presided skillfully over the final disintegration of the Soviet empire and over the immediate consequences of that breakup. But Bush did not have to face the question of what to put in its place. In speaking of a new world order as if it would emerge automatically from the collapse of Communism, he reflected a very

[y]

3

American notion: tensions are caused by evil people and will disappear when the evil people disappear.

In fact, new world orders never emerge automatically; their birth pangs are instability and turmoil.

As a result, the Clinton Administration finds itself in a position analogous to that faced by President Truman after the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Once President Roosevelt's vision of a collective security system monitored by "four policemen" collapsed, the United States required nearly three years to develop an alternative which came to be known as "the containment doctrine." Dedicated to the objective of preventing further Soviet expansion, it provided an operational definition for the Cold War, and it served as a guide to every administration for the next 40 years. There were tactical disagreements (some of which I shared) but no challenge to the overriding concept.

No comparable concept has been evolved for the post-Cold War world. Both Communist ideology and the Soviet empire have disintegrated. Russia is no longer a global superpower. There

is no worldwide ideological threat, nor an overriding geopolitical one. At the same time, upheavals seem to multiply around the world, some profoundly offensive to our moral convictions, and some deeply disturbing because of their sheer violence, even when they do not pose a direct threat to the United States. These conditions would exist no matter who was president. Where the administration has created problems--for itself and its interlocutors--is in failing to articulate an operational theory and to relate individual events and crises to it.

A number of characteristics of the Clinton Administration have contributed to the failure to formulate a conceptual framework. First, the convictions of many of the top people of the administration were formed in opposition to the Cold War and are ironically even more anachronistic. These include a distrust of America's power, a preference for multilateral solutions and a reluctance to think in terms of national interest. All these

5

attributes inhibit a realistic response to a world of multiple
power centers and diverse conflicts.

As a result, there is a curious academic quality about many
administration pronouncements. What passes for conceptual
thinking can be made relevant only with great difficulty--if at
all--to concrete situations. For example, last year the National
Security Advisor made a speech announcing that "enlargement of
democracy" was to be the administration's alternative to
containment. But containment was a clear strategic concept that
anybody could understand--namely, preventing an expansion of the
Soviet sphere. Therefore, day-to-day policy could be geared to
it. But what precisely does enlargement of democracy mean? Whom
does it imply we should support? With what means? Over what
period of time and at what risk? If those questions cannot be
answered, our policy runs the risk of appearing morally intrusive
and operationally impotent.

Similarly, before meeting with the Asian heads of state in
Seattle, the President talked of a "Pacific community." The

[y]

6

meeting itself was a good idea. It is very important for the
President to stake America's interest to the fastest growing
region in the world. On the other hand, what was meant by the
word "community?" The reality of the area is that Japan and
China consider each other as potential adversaries. Korea is
afraid of both. China is concerned not only about Japan but
about Russia and, to some extent, India. Indonesia is afraid of
Japan and China. In fact, Asia today looks more like 19th
century Europe, with all its deep-seated mutual suspicions, than
a united community.

Such a state of affairs might suggest that the United States
should seek bilateral relations with each of the Asian nations
that are at least as good as their relations with each other, in
order to give us maximum flexibility in designing our Asian
policy. But such a strategic concept has never been put forward-
nor explicitly rejected.

These tendencies towards abstraction are compounded by an
extraordinary obsession with public relations. An exorbitant

[y]

7

amount of attention is devoted to responding to or blunting
short-term domestic criticism, treating foreign policy as if it
were a domestic issue in which you can arrive at a consensus
through trade-offs. But foreign affairs is a continuing process,
not a series of deals, and segmenting it into individual cases
generally proves a recipe for offending everybody, both at home
and abroad.

For example, in Bosnia, it took the explosion of a mortar
shell in a marketplace on a Saturday morning to galvanize us into
an action, even though the objective conditions in Sarajevo had
not substantially changed for over a year. The ad hoc decision
to impose a cease-fire in Sarajevo did not, however, define long-
term objectives, the nature of risks and the definition of a
national interest.

These problems are compounded by an extraordinary lack of
discipline. An effective foreign policy requires mastering not
only the concepts but also the nuances of execution. The
difference between an outstanding football team and an ordinary

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8

football team is that every coach knows much the same plays, but some of them are capable of getting additional nuances out of their system and others are not. Right now, our foreign policy apparatus is operating at the low end of subtlety and efficiency. There is a babble of voices that is nearly incomprehensible.

The reluctance to deal with foreign policy consistently and conceptually has also created a fourth--and paradoxical--result. The President is actually spending more time on foreign policy, putting out one fire after another, than he would have to if he had devised a strategy and put in place a machinery to monitor it. For example, he has certainly spent more time on the tactics of Bosnia than he would have had to spend a year ago developing a coherent strategy.

Without a reliable road map, the administration has revived a worrisome question: whether US foreign policy is credible. For a policy to have credibility, foreign leaders must believe that we mean what we say, that we understand their concerns and the nature of the global situation, and that we will carry

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through on our pronouncements. Yet many of these elements are now missing. Thus, even when the day-to-day policies are prudent, the administration suffers because its initiatives seem to be driven by seemingly accidental events rather than by mastering them.

Bosnia is a good example of an essentially prudent policy defeating itself because of the inability to convey its purpose and the failure to impose discipline in execution. During a one-week period in __________, the administration went through at least four phases with respect to Gorazde: a statement by the Defense Secretary that force would not be used; a disavowal of it by the security advisors; an ineffectual bombing attack; a presidential statement disavowing resorting to force and relying on diplomacy and finally an ultimatum demanding a Serbian withdrawal.

In that clutter, which was typical of much of the administration's Bosnian policy, the fundamental issues prevented the articulation of the basic choice before the administration: the political issue of the territorial integrity of Bosnia and

[y]

10

the moral issue of ending the suffering. When Clinton came to
office, the civil war had been raging for a year and about 35
percent of the territory had been occupied by Serbian forces.

Restoration of the entire territory was achievable only by
protracted outside intervention probably requiring ground forces.

This neither the administration nor its allies was prepared to
undertake--even though Washington's rhetoric implied otherwise.

The other option was to impose a cease-fire by methods similar to
those used 12 months later in Sarajevo and Gorazde. A mechanism
for this would have been support of the plan put forward by UN
mediators Cyrus Vance and David Owen. That, however, would have
left some 30 percent of Bosnian territory in Serb hands and was
therefore unacceptable to the new administration.

The clash between the administration's convictions and
willingness to run risks was never resolved. It is debatable, in
my view, whether Bosnia should have been established as a nation
in the first place, given that it has no ethnic, historic or
cultural identity. But leaving that question aside, the Clinton

[y]

11

Administration was never prepared in practice to restore Bosnia to the status quo ante because that would have required a massive deployment of US ground troops. Therefore, the only objective that was ever credible was to stop the fighting by seeking a cease-fire along the existing dividing line.

Since the administration never explained that reality or any other version of reality to the American public, the result was a kind of never-never land in which there is no real sense of any direction. Now the administration is talking about committing peacekeeping forces to monitor a cease-fire that neither side really accepts, which can only be a recipe for turning peacekeepers into potential hostages, much as happened in Somalia. What is desperately needed is some comprehensive statement of goals related to actions we are prepared to undertake.

Haiti presents similar problems. The President has said that we may have to intervene because Haiti is nearby. Yet that alone is not a reason to intervene. Intervention is called for

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12

only if there is a clear threat to the United States which does
not exist. If we assert that internal events in Haiti are so
morally offensive that we cannot live with ourselves if we do not
try to alter them by force, are we proclaiming a general
principle or a target of opportunity resulting from propinquity?
If the objective of a military operation is fundamental reform of
Haiti's domestic situation, that represents a long process. The
United States occupied the country for more than 30 years earlier
in this century and did not succeed in democratizing it.

Once more, however, the administration has failed to explain
to the American public the choices and why we would do so in the
face of nearly unanimous opposition by the other nations of the
Western Hemisphere. It has never explained that we cannot invade
a country to stop immigration into America, especially if many of
those immigrants are "economic refugees." For by definition,
those immigrants will still want to come to America as long as
Haiti remains poor, whether we intervene or not. In practice,
intervention would mean merely moving the point of interception

13

to Haiti's shoreline rather than the open sea, which might appear
less heartless but would not change the fundamental realities.

Bosnia and Haiti are by themselves peripheral issues. They
symbolize, however, the basic challenge before the
administration: in the absence of an overriding ideological or
geopolitical challenge, it must develop some idea of the national
interest to guide American policy.

For example, President Clinton's wise decision to extend MFN
to China has removed an obstacle to a constructive relationship,
but it has not defined the content of it. What is urgently
needed is a high-level political dialogue to define what
objectives are common, what policies can be coordinated and which
differences can be eased. And in the process, China must
understand that even in the absence of sanctions, relations with
the United States will always be facilitated by progress on human
rights.

Another issue urgently requiring high-level attention is the
relationship with Europe, for so long the bedrock of American

[y]

14

foreign policy. Obviously, American priorities in the post-Cold War period will change. But the administration is not simply altering priorities; it is reversing the entire trend of one of the most creative periods of American diplomacy. The North Atlantic relationship has heretofore been an end in itself.

It is becoming an adjunct to the relationship with Russia and
subordinated to the abstract multilateral concept of joint
planning, the purpose of which is nebulous. When the head of
state of Kazakhstan was in Washington, President Clinton
described his proposed Partnership for Peace as bringing together
NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the former republics of the Soviet Union
and European neutrals in a structure that would engage in joint
military planning. Yet that raises the question: for what?
What can Kazakhstan and Belgium plan together? Operationally, it
can only imply a defensive alliance aimed at China and Japan or
an empty shell.

The practical result of the Partnership for Peace will be to
create two categories of borders in Europe: one protected by

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NATO, the other not protected by NATO. Yet the borders that NATO would not protect are precisely the ones that Europeans are most concerned about. The ones protected by NATO are in no danger. This can lead to a situation where countries that view themselves as threatened begin to make their own arrangements. In order to entice Russia into this arrangement, Washington has also signaled that Moscow would be granted an undefined special status within NATO. But to Russia's neighbors, that can only be seen as a move toward resurrecting the historic Russian claim to a veto over the former satellite nations of Eastern Europe and the new nations on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

This has been made explicit in the proposal to NATO of Russian Defense Minister Pavel Gradek which envisioned that NATO be placed under the European Security Conference, together with the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States, giving Russia a veto over all these institutions. Thus Russia would achieve the emasculation of NATO and its near irrelevance which has been the goal of Russian foreign policy for forty-five

16

years. What will be left of the North Atlantic Alliance if all
this comes to pass? What is its new purpose? It is to be hoped
that the President's forthcoming trip to Europe will deal with
some of these issues.

I strongly favor including Russia in the economic Group of
Seven and having Russia participate more intimately in the
European Security Conference. But it would be reckless to try to
tie Russia to the West by means of a military alliance that
should be the safety net underneath all these other arrangements.
NATO remains the only institutional structure that relates
America to Europe; it cannot be subordinated to America's
relations with Russia.

President Clinton and his foreign policy advisors have
inherited an America that can no longer afford all the
obligations of the Cold War period. They face a situation in
which diplomacy, economics and other measures must replace the
militarization that was the inevitable result of a two-power
world. But that only makes it more urgent to define what remains

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vital to US interests, and where we will place our priorities.

There are those who argue that by setting such priorities, we will create the very insecurity that we are seeking to avoid.

But reality will impel those priorities anyway; our real choice is whether they are developed by leadership or in chaos. The question is whether we will be driven to them in a way that makes us appear weak and rudderless--and tempts intransigent foreign leaders to test us--or whether we can formulate a basis of US policy that allows us to anticipate the challenges of the new international situation before they erupt into crisis. This requires more discipline, organization and focus than has been the case. At the same time, most of the shortcomings are remediable. The opportunity for great achievement still remains.

MAY 25 '94 03:14PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

After nearly a year and a half in office, President Clinton finds himself confronted with a profound irony in the area of foreign policy. He campaigned as a domestic president who would give a lower priority to foreign policy, and given the mood of the electorate at the time that was an understandable platform. Yet the reality is that has come to power at a time when historic changes have left a total vacuum in world leadership. His real choice, therefore, is not between foreign policy and his domestic agenda. It is whether to fill that vacuum or to doom the United States to increasing irrelevance-and the rest of the world, which still depends on American guidance, to growing instability.

The Bush era marked the end of the Cold War period. President Bush presided skillfully over the final disintegration of the Soviet empire and over some of the consequences of that breakup. But Bush did not have to face the question of what to put in its place. He spoke of a new world order as if it would emerge automatically from the collapse of communism. That reflected a very American notion: tensions are caused by evil people and will disappear whenwhen the evil people disappear. But such expectations turned out to be

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unrealistic.

As a result, the Clinton administration finds itself in a position
analogous to that faced by President Truman after the Potsdam
Conference in 1945. Once President Roosevelt's vision of a collective
security system monitored by ``four policemen'' collapsed, the United
States developed what came to be known as ``the containment
doctrine.'' It provided an operational definition for the Cold War,
and it served a guide to every administration for the next 40 years.
There were tactical disagreements (some of which I shared) but no
challenge to the overriding concept.

There is no such concept today. The Soviet Union has
disintegrated. Russia is no longer a global superpower. There is no
worldwide ideological threat; nor is there an overriding geopolitical
threat. On the other hand, there are still a series of upheavals
around the world, some profoundly offensive to our moral convictions,
and some profoundly disturbing because of their sheer violence, even
if they do not directly pose a threat to the United States. These
conditions would exist no matter who was president. Where the
administration has created problems-for itself and its interlocutors-
is in failing to articulate an operational theory and to relate

P.4

The Administration deserves high marks in a number of areas. After much hesitation, it handled NAFTA exceedingly well. The Middle East-at least the Arab-Israeli dialogue-is being monitored professionally. Disengagement from Somalia was the right course, and was managed well once the decision had been made. But even in those cases where the Administration has shown considerable skill, it has been a matter of damage control-of limiting the consequences of crises to which the Administration itself contributed. An overarching policy is still lacking.

A number of attributes of this Administration have contributed to the failure to formulate a conceptual framework. First, pronouncements have often been geared more to producing speeches than strategy. Secondly, the administration devotes an exorbitant amount of attention to responding to short-term domestic criticism, treating foreign policy as if it were a domestic issue in which you can arrive at a consensus through trade-offs. In fact, in foreign affairs that generally proves a recipe for offending everybody, both at home and abroad.

Third, the administration appears to suffer from an extraordinary

MAY 25 '94 03:15PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

lack of discipline. An effective foreign policy requires mastering not only the conceptual process but the nuances of execution. It is the difference between an outstanding football team and an ordinary football team: every coach calls much the same plays, but some of are capable of getting additional nuances out of their system and others are not. Right now, our foreign policy apparatus is operating at the low end of subtlety and efficiency. There is a babble of voices that is nearly incomprehensible.

The reluctance to deal with foreign policy has also created a fourth-and paradoxical-result. The President is actually spending more time on foreign policy, putting out one fire after another, than he would have to if he had devised a strategy and put in place a machinery to monitor it. For example, he has certainly spent more spent more time on the tactics of Bosnia than he would have had to spend a year ago developing a coherent strategy.

Without a reliable road map, the administration has revived a worrisome question: whether U.S. foreign policy is credible. For a policy to have credibility, foreign leaders must believe that we mean what we say, that we understand their concerns and the nature of the global situation, and that we will carry through on our

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pronouncements. Yet almost all of these elements are now missing from U.S. policy. In addition, there seems to be an extraordinary reluctance to impose discipline on the governing process. Even when others agree with the outcome of our policies, the administration has lost credibility because its initiatives seem to emerge from seemingly accidental events.

In Bosnia, for example, it took the explosion of a mortar shell in a marketplace on a Saturday morning to galvanize us into an action, even though the objective conditions in Sarajevo had not substantially changed for a year. On China, the administration has made a wise decision in maintaining qualified Most Favored Nation status with the fastest growing economy in the world. But while that decision has removed the potential for an immediate crisis, it does not answer the key question for Sino-U.S. relations, namely: what do these two nations want from each other? What should our long-term objectives be in relation to a country which, if it stays together, will almost certainly become the powerful country in Asia, and perhaps even a dominant power?

A curious gap also exists between the Administration's articulation of sweeping concepts and day-to-day execution. Often

concepts are articulated, then nothing very visible happens. Last year, the National Security Advisor made a speech announcing that ``enlargement of democracy'' as an American goal. He implied that this was to be the alternative to containment. But containment was a clear strategic concept that anybody could understand-namely, preventing an expansion of the Soviet sphere. Therefore, day-to-day policy could be geared to it. But what precisely does enlargement of democracy mean? Whom does it imply we should support? With what means? Over what period of time and at what risk? If those question cannot be answered, our policy runs the risk of appearing morally intrusive and operationally impotent.

Similarly, the President talked of a ``Pacific community'' before meeting with the Asian heads of state in Seattle. The meeting itself was a good idea. It is very important for the President to have a personal relationship with the leaders of the fastest growing region in the world. On the other hand, what was meant by the word community? Any vague acquaintance with the area suggests that Japan and China look at each other as potential adversaries. Korea is afraid of both. China is concerned not only about Japan but about Russia and, to some extent, India. Indonesia is afraid of Japan and

MAY 25 '94 03:16PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

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Such a delicate balance might suggest that United States should seek bilateral relations with each of the Asian nations that are at least as good as their relations with each other, in order to give us maximum flexibility in designing our Asian policy. But such a strategic concept has never been put forward-nor explicitly rejected.

In Bosnia, the Administration is confronted with two separate issues: the political issue of the future of Bosnia; and the offense to our moral values represented by the suffering inflicted on the civilian population. Yet if the issue is opposing aggression, the only remedy is to restore the prewar situation. Bosnia would have to be returned to its status as an independent state. On the other hand, if human rights violations are the issue, the war must be stopped.

And in practice, that means ratifying whatever dividing line has already been established by military operations.

It is debatable, in my view, whether Bosnia should have been recognized as a nation in the first place, given that it has no ethnic, historic or cultural identity other than as a subdivision of Yugoslavia. But leaving that question aside, the Clinton

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Administration was never prepared in practice to restore Bosnia to
the status quo ante because that would have required a massive
deployment of U.S. ground troops. Therefore, the only objective that
was ever credible was to stop the fighting by seeking a cease-fire
along the existing dividing line.

At no time did the Administration explain that reality the
American public, or any other version of reality. Every position has
been explained entirely in terms of what the U.N. will support. The
result has a kind of never-never land in which there is no real sense
of any policy. Now the administration is talking about committing
peacekeeping forces to monitor a cease-fire that neither side really
accepts, which can only be a recipe for turning peacekeepers into
potential hostages, much as happened in Somalia.

Haiti is extremely worrisome for the same reason. The President
has said that we may have to intervene because Haiti is nearby. Yet
that alone is not a reason to intervene. Intervention is called for
only if there is a clear threat to the United States-which there is
not-or if internal events in Haiti are so morally so offensive that
we cannot live with ourselves if we do not try to alter them. But if
our objective is fundamental reform of Haiti's domestic situation,

that represents a long process. The United States occupied the
country for more than 30 years and did not succeed in achieving it.

Once more, however, the administration has failed to explain to the
American public that we cannot merely go in and get out quickly. And
it has never explained that we cannot invade a country to stop
immigration, especially if many of those immigrants are ``economic
refugees.'' For by definition, those immigrants will still want to
come to America as long as Haiti remains poor, whether we intervene
or not. In practice, intervention would mean merely moving the point
of interception to Haiti's shoreline rather than the open sea, which
might appear less heartless but would not change the fundamental
realities.

As distressing as they may be, however, Haiti and Bosnia represent
peripheral crises. Over the long run, the lack of a strategic concept
risks having much greater consequences for our relations with China
and Russia. On China, I have consistently opposed the imposition of
sanctions, not because I approve of what occured in Tienanmen Square,
but because in today's world foreign policy must begin with an
understanding of the limits of America's reach. The United States
cannot solve every problem simultaneously. And while China is

MAY 25 '94 03:17PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

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prepared to pay some price for our good will, it will not accept a restructuring of its domestic institutions, especially in response to overt pressure.

President Clinton made a wise decision in giving himself a year to decide about China's MFN status. But he boxed himself in by specifying the conditions that had to be met. And even though he has now taken what I believe to be the correct course, that only releases him from his self-imposed short-term dilemma and leaves him with a long-range quandary. If the current decision is justified on the grounds that it is the best way to change the Chinese system, he must build a stronger basis for a lasting dialogue with Beijing. The President must find a way of asserting our human rights convictions by appealing to China's growing economic strength and geopolitical importance, rather than seeking to weaken them, or else Sino-American relations will gradually drift into confrontation.

On Russia, the administration now seems committed to the idea of a Partnership for Peace. When the Kazak head of state was in Washington, President Clinton envisioned this partnership as bringing together NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the former republics of the Soviet Union and European neutrals in a structure that would engage in joint

P.12

military planning. Yet that raises the question: for what? What can Kazakhstan and Belgium plan together? Operationally, it can only imply a defensive alliance aimed at China and Japan. And if Russia becomes a de facto participant in NATO, what meaning can the alliance itself have, since its fundamental purpose was to defend against the former Soviet Union?

The practical result of the Partnership for Peace will be to create two categories of borders in Europe: one protected by NATO, the other not protected by NATO. Yet the borders that NATO would not protect are precisely the ones that Europeans are most concerned about. The ones protected by NATO are in no danger. This can lead to a situation where countries that view themselves as threatened begin to make their own arrangements. In order to intice Russia into this arrangement, Washington has also signalled that Moscow would be granted an undefined special status within NATO. But to Russia's neighbors, that can only be seen as a move toward resurrecting the historic Russian claim to a special veto over Eastern Europe and the territory of the former Soviet Union.

I strongly favor including Russia in the economic Group of Seven.
I strongly support having Russia participate, even more intimately,

MAY 25 '94 03:18PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

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in the CFC. But it would be disastrous to try to tie Russia to the West by means of a military alliance that should be the safety net underneath all these other arrangements. What is more, to restructure NATO, which remains the only institutional structure that relates America to Europe, can only help doom that trans-Atlantic relationship to growing irrelevance.

President Clinton and his foreign policy advisers are right to believe that America can no longer afford all the obligations of the Cold War period. They are also right that diplomacy, economics and other measures must take the place of the militarization that was the inevitable result of a two-power world. But that only makes it more urgent to define what remains vital to U.S. interests, and where we will place our priorities. There are those who argue that by setting such priorities, we will create so much insecurity that we are better off not articulating such a concept at all. But in practice, we will be forced to make those choices anyway. The question is whether we will be driven to them in a way that makes us appear weak and rudderless-and tempts intransigent foreign leaders to test us-or whether we can formulate a basis of U.S. policy that allows us to anticipate the challenges of the new international situation before