A crisis of competence.

SOON after the recent firelight in Mogadlshu, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin was called to Capitol Hill to give an emergency briefing on the Administration's response to the Somali crisis.

American forces had taken heavy losses in a gun-battle with militiamen loyal to warlord Mohammed Aidid; 17 Americans were dead, 77 were wounded, 1 was missing in action, and 1 had been taken prisoner. Pictures of a Somali mob dragging the body of a dead American soldier through the streets flashed on the evening news. Members of Congress wanted answers: What had gone wrong? Why were we caught off guard? How were we going to respond? And what exactly was the Administration's objective in Somalia?

But Aspin had no answers; he had come with the intention of holding a dialogue. Big mistake. The meeting quickly grew white hot, and Aspin took a verbal pummeling from furious congressmen who had expected him to present a coherent plan of action. As members emerged from the meeting, they were unusually harsh in their criticism of Aspin and of the whole Administration.

"Outrageous," fumed Senator Bob Kerrey (D., Neb.).

"Never have I heard a more confused, disjointed, vague defense of American foreign policy in my professional career," complained Representative Jim Walsh (R., N.Y.).

As congressional criticism grew louder and more heated, the situation was reaching crisis proportions. President Clinton cut short a campaign trip to California, where he was promoting his health-care plan. In an effort to articulate some modicum of policy, he gave a televised address from the Oval Office in which he announced a pull-out date of March 31, 1994. The speech served to calm things down and buy him time. Most members, appreciating the threat to our international prestige, fell in line behind the President. Bob Dole extended an olive branch to the White House, appealing to members to "come together and not quibble over a date." Congress backed off less because it supports the President's policy than out of a basic loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief. As Senator Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) put it, "At this point there is no good alternative but to support the President."

The immediate uproar had been stilled, but its underlying cause remains. Expressing publicly what many in Congress are saying privately, Senator Richard Lugar recently complained that, since taking office, Clinton has presided over "a virtual collapse of presidential leadership in [foreign] matters .... There is almost a sense of incompetence."

Indeed, confidence in Mr. Clinton's ability to lead is so low that nearly a dozen amendments have been proposed in both Houses restricting the President's ability to commit troops abroad. Even Mr. Clinton's friends in Congress are beginning to urge a major shake-up of his foreign-policy team in order to restore faith in the Administration's foreign-affairs competence. Democratic Representative Frank McCloskey, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, recently called on Secretary of State Warren Christopher to step down, stating that "the effect of Christopher's mishandling of these vital issues is that he is not seen by our allies as an effective or serious secretary of state."

How did we come to this? Since taking office, the Clinton Administration has essentially abdicated, its leadership responsibilities on the world stage, creating a power vacuum. With nobody steering the ship of state, others have moved in.

When the Bush Administration sent troops to Somalia back in December 1992, it did so with a clear and limited objective: to go in, feed starving people, and get out. But when Clinton took office, instead of completing the mission and pulling out, he allowed Secretary General Boutros-Ghali to turn what was originally a humanitarian effort into a complex scheme of "nation building."

That abdication of responsibility exploded in the President's face with the fire fight in Mogadishu. And then when Secretary Aspin arrived on Capitol Hill and demonstrated that the White House essentially had no policy, Congress was infuriated.

It was in this hostile atmosphere that the President announced his intention to commit U.S. troops to Haiti, in an effort to help "build democracy" there and assist the restoration of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. For many in Congress, this was too much. They had no confidence that the President would not turn Haiti into "another Somalia."

Dole, for example, proposed amendments to restrain the President from sending any American forces to either Haiti or Bosnia, except to rescue Americans or to protect American national security. To avert a war-powers battle with the Senate, the White House immediately began negotiating with Dole to water the amendments down from legally binding requirements to "Sense of the Senate" resolutions requesting congressional consultation. Dole eventually agreed, and both amendments passed by wide margins. Senator Robert Byrd (D., W. Va.) proposed a similar amendment on Somalia, which would have forced the President to pull out all our troops before March 31. After intense negotiations with the White House, Byrd accepted language with lesser restrictions on U.S. actions, and his amendment passed the Senate last week.

The amendments proposed by Dole, Byrd, and others, while misguided, are not so much a congressional "power grab" as they are an effort to fill a power vacuum created by President Clinton. Dole, for his part, was clearly not motivated by a philosophical desire to restrict presidential decision-making power in foreign affairs. Speaking on CNN as recently as October 7, Dole criticized congressional efforts to exert greater control over U.S. policy in Somalia, stating: "Whenever possible on foreign-policy matters, where American forces are involved and American forces are in danger, we ought to be speaking with one voice, and that voice ought to be the President's."

But Dole seems to have come to the same reluctant conclusion that many others in Congress have--that the current Clinton team cannot be trusted to project U.S. forces responsibly.

The dangers this crisis of confidence poses are several. First, in the immediate term, there is a danger that, by squandering public faith in his ability to act on the world stage, President Clinton may be hampered from acting when vital U.S. interests really are at stake. Today, through his various missteps, he is doing more for the cause of isolationism than a thousand Pat Buchanans ever could.

Second, and perhaps worse, the President is running the risk not only of undermining domestic support for U.S. engagement in the world, but of damaging America's prestige abroad, undercutting his Administration's ability to lead our allies the next time a crisis (renewed Iraqi aggression, for example) erupts.

And third, in the longer term, Clinton's missteps today could hamper the ability of future Presidents to conduct foreign policy. Not since the 1970s, when a weakened President Nixon allowed Congress to pass the War Powers Act, has Congress been so anxious to restrict the President's authority in international affairs. Unlike past power struggles between the White House and Congress over foreign affairs, however, this one is not over policy--it is over competence. There is a growing danger that, if the President does not act to restore trust in his international leadership, there might be a permanent shift in the balance of executive-legislative power in foreign policy.

There is one bit of comfort to be taken: the Somalia fiasco may have hammered the final nail into the coffin of the New Democrat Doctrine of multilateralism. Until this crisis erupted, the Clinton Administration was moving toward a greater involvement with the United Nations in Somalia-style "nation building" efforts. Administration officials had drafted "Presidential Decision Directive 13"--a document which would have committed the U.S. to a "rapid expansion" of UN peacekeeping operations. The White House was considering committing U.S. forces to a permanent UN army under foreign command. All such talk has stopped for now, and it is very unlikely in the current atmosphere that Congress would ever approve such a commitment.

It is still possible for President Clinton to recover. One first step being recommended by some is to replace Aspin and Christopher with secretaries of state and defense who would have the confidence of Congress. But, even if the President did this, it would only be a short-term solution. The real problem with the Clinton foreign policy lies with the President himself. He seems to regard foreign affairs as some sort of distraction from his domestic agenda. Until he recognizes that foreign policy is the primary and most important job of a President, these crises will continue to erupt.

Mr. Weber, the former congressman from Minnesota, is co-founder of the new conservative group Empower America.