Clinton's foreign policy: right destinations, wrong maps.

President Bill Clinton's most visible foreign policy problems--Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia--are not the country's most important foregin-policy challenges. The irony of the Clinton administration's foreign's-policy deficit--and it is real in the eyes of many whom a Democratic president needs for support--is that on the traditionally decisive issues of foreign policy, the relationship with Russia, the Middle East, and nonproliferation, the Clinton team has set forth and sustained a coherent, effective policy.

The decisions confronting the United States on Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti have enormous human significance, but limited geopolitical consequences. The truth of this proposition is, however, not very useful to Clinton at the present time. The danger he faces is that his foreign policy instincts are being judged by the secondary cases (Bosnia, et al.) and found wanting. The critique extends beyond his policies to the national security team upon which he depends. In my view, the talent of the team is quite good, but his view is probably a minority position in the foreign-policy fraternity. The challenge which the president and his advisers face is not only framing a policy adequate for the secondary issues, but communicating more clearly and decisively why these issues should engage U.S. talent and treasure, and why they are so resistant to rapid resolution.

The administration's basic position has been to stress that "the world has changed" and the old models for developing and explaining foreign policy do not fit any longer. In a series of September addresses (President Clinton at the United Nations, Secretary of State Christopher at Columbia University, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies), the administration sought to specify its view of what has changed and how U.S. policy should respond to it. This most expansive attempt to explain the administration's view of the world was quickly overtaken by events. Rather than being asked in October to debate and defend his broad vision of world order, Clinton spent the month defending his specific choices in Somalia and Haiti. In neither case were the administration's Policy, vision, or tactical choices adequate. The danger now is that these cases threaten to stamp the entire Clinton Policy as a failure before it is given a fair hearing.

In fact, running through all three of the hard cases (Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti) are basic themes which do have to be adjusted to new realities. The Clinton policy shows sound instincts on these themes, but does not have an articulated view of them. The three themes are multilaterialism, intervention, and human rights. Each has been a staple wf the foreign-policy debate for decades, but each must be reinterpreted in light of the political and strategic changes of the 1990s.

Multilateralism: The idea is a old as the United Nations system (and indeed is grounded in the Wilsonian vision of the League of Nations), but the cold war effectively smothered any serious strategy of multilateralism. The post-cold war world presents both problems which demand a multilateral response and geopolitical conditions which make such a strategy possible. The Gulf War is sold under a multilateral banner but it has little relevance to most of the problems demanding a multilateral response in the 1990s. The Gulf War was a response to a classical case of aggression (the kind the UN system is designed to meet). Both the control of the war effort were solidly unilateral, in U.S. hands, with the support of key allies from Europe and the Arabs states.

The challenges of the 1990s, as Lake noted in his September address, asre conflicts within countries or conflicts designed to create new sovereign entities. The category of aggression is virtually useless in Somalia and Haiti, and of marginal value in the Bosnia conflict. Moreover, a model of multilateralism with the United States as the choreographer, conductor, and a majority of the orchestra cannot be sustained either by the UN system or by U.S. domestic opinion. But it is not sufficient to criticize the Gulf War model as inapplicable. The deeper question about multilateralism is rooted in the fact that objective conditions of international politics today (not simply "ideals" about international relations) make it necessary to develop institutional responses which go beyond the capacity of individual states. This truth is recognized in the area of political economy, but less developed in the peacemaking/peacekeeping capacities of the United Nations. The world today lices in the open space where state capacities are not sufficient and international institutions do not yet complement the activities of the states.

Bridging this gap between states and other institutions requires U.S. involvement, and the Clinton policy is committed to such engagement. The Gulf War mode is too much U.S. involvement, but it is also clear from Bosnia and Somalia that the strategic and tactical capabilities of Un-led forces are not equal to the immediate task of peacemaking, though their record in peacekeeping is more satisfactory. The secretary general's idea of a UN force drawn from many nations and available for rapid deployment is useful goal, but not a present reality. The Somalia experience will make it difficult in the immediate future to deploy U.S. troops in anything other than a U.S. command structure. That is not an adequate long-term-institutional strategy, but support for a UN force will have to be built incrementally in U.S. public opinion.

Intervention: During the cold war the rationale for intervention was always a perceived "security threat" to U.S. vital interests. Often the threat was less than vital, sometimes less than real. In addition, several interventions failed to pass the higher standard of being morally justifiable. But the category provided a way to define the purpose of intervention, and it provides a rough method of justifying to the public the sacrifice of American lives. The 1990s' debate about intervention often does not have a security rationale; clearly, Somalia cannot be cast in such terms, and Haiti would meet such a standard only tenuously. The proposals for intervention today, emerging from the United Nations or from individual states calling for intervention, are cast in terms of protecting human rights or adjudicating political-ethnic conflicts. A case can be made for such interventions, but neither the rationale for policy nor the explanations given to spouses and families of military personnel killed in such actions can be convincingly presented as defending national security. This kind of intervention requires a justification in terms of what John XXII called "the international common good." This case has not yet been broached with the U.S. public by the Clinton administration or others.

Human Rights: Human rights have been on the international agenda since the founding of the United Nations. They did not become a serious topic of U.S. policy discourse until the 1970s. Even then the measures to protect and promote human rights limited to conditions placed on military and economic assistance or to international censure or blockade. The post-cold war policy proposals reach all the way from these measures to the use of force to protect human rights. This put human rights on the agenda of "high politics," not simply a humanitarian measure, but a topic for political and strategic discourse. The stakes are higher, the expectations about human rights are more expansive, and the willingness of the U.S. to expend significant resources in pursuit of rights is more demanding of us.

The world has changed; the Clinton team has properly defined the new horizon for policy. But it has yet to provide a road map for the U.S. public which generates confidence and support in moving toward the horizon. They deserve more time, but the need for a clearer rationale is urgent.