of even asking the questions, much less providing the answers.
It is difficult to point to anything where they have genuinely
developed a policy, as opposed to a set of changing positions."
Paul Goble, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, phrases the same criticism as a blunt question: "If we're
the last remaining superpower, why do we act like a banana republic?"
</p>
<p> The central problem, agree most observers, is Bill Clinton himself.
"Character has become destiny," muses a former State Department
official. His weaknesses, strengths, proclivities "are defining
the international order." Domestic renewal is his passion, and
he cannot see much political imperative to change. Says Lee
Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "He
came out of the 1992 campaign with at least one lesson seared
on his brain--that the American people want him to focus on
domestic affairs." An occasional exception proves the rule:
Clinton is now revising his policy on Haiti partly because it
is becoming a domestic issue, important to the black voters
who gave him indispensable support in the election.
</p>
<p> Determinedly immersed in domestic issues, the White House frequently
displays a don't-bother-me attitude toward foreign affairs.
Clinton was not even aware that the U.N. had decided to issue
what amounted to a warrant for Aidid's arrest, for example.
And the President, says a Washington official, "doesn't have
any instinct about what plays abroad." Relations between the
U.S. and India are normally prickly, but there was no need to
irritate them further by letting more than a year go by without
sending a U.S. ambassador to New Delhi (even now the expected
choice, Under Secretary of Defense Frank Wisner, has not been
formally named). Many Indians take the delay as a deliberate
downgrading of their country, the world's largest democracy,
to second-class status. Images matter a great deal in foreign
capitals, where people draw powerful conclusions from what they
see on CNN. Carnegie's Goble recalls the embarrassing case of
the U.S.S. Harlan County, the ship carrying U.S. military construction
experts to Haiti that turned back when faced with a few government-paid
thugs at the port. "If you think you might have to withdraw
a ship," he says, "you don't send it."
</p>
<p> The inability to figure out the next move in long-running crises--something at which the late Richard Nixon was a master--is by now a drearily familiar problem with Clinton's foreign
policy, which often seems improvised day to day. "It's just
a series of ad hoc responses trying to get past the press questions
of the day," says William Odom, former head of the National
Security Agency, the Pentagon's electronic-snooping arm. And
the reason is simple: the President will not devote the time
and attention necessary to map out a steady and consistent foreign
policy. Stung by such criticism, aides have taken to tallying
a list of "substantive presidential involvements" in foreign
policy: more than 50 phone calls, meetings and briefings from
April 8 to 21; and conversations with foreign leaders--153
since the beginning of his Administration.
</p>
<p> Clinton has the intelligence to conduct an effective foreign
policy, and he did not come to the presidency unfamiliar with
the wider world. He studied at the Georgetown School of Foreign
Service and later at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and was once
on the staff of J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. He is a quick study, and when he
does focus--as when preparing to meet foreign leaders, for
which he crams like a student facing a tough exam--can be
quite impressive. But he rarely does focus that way. He gets
a 15-minute intelligence briefing about 8:45 a.m. and confers
on international problems with National Security Adviser Tony
Lake and Vice President Al Gore a bit later. By 9 or 9:30 a.m.
he has spent 30 minutes or so on foreign policy. Except in times
of crisis, he is often through for the day.
</p>
<p> A President need not immerse himself in the details of foreign
policy to conduct it successfully. But one who does not then
requires a strong team to run things, and that Clinton does
not have. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Lake are
intelligent, hard-working and well informed, but neither is
exactly a take-charge guy. Perry has tried to step into the
vacuum, but he has made some impolitic statements that clashed
embarrassingly with evolving policy.
</p>
<p> If anything, the group is a bit too pleasant and agreeable.
Christopher and Lake, as veterans of the Carter Administration,
remember all too well how its foreign policy was almost paralyzed
by the rivalry between National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. They have vowed not to repeat
that experience and have succeeded--but at a heavy price.
Too often they let politeness develop into fuzzy agreements
rather than vigorously thrashing out alternative policies for
the President's decision.
</p>
<p> In an attempt to improve their dismal press, two senior White
House officials and a foreign policy aide called in correspondents
to put a bright spin on the President's performance last week.
Clinton, said one official, "has been steady in his leadership
in making slow progress, but real progress" on Bosnia. "It's
important to pay attention to the President's rhetoric," said
another. "He did not say the point of the bombing is to guarantee
the safety of those enclaves. He was not trying to make that
argument." But, the same official added, "we are trying to argue
that this will enhance the safety of the safe areas." That superfine
distinction seems aimed mainly at ensuring that new air strikes
won't be judged a failure even if some Serb shelling persists.
</p>
<p> Lake, "happy today" about the more muscular approach to Bosnia,
defends his embattled boss. He points out that every bit of
progress in that country has come from U.S. initiative: the
NATO resolution last August against Sarajevo's strangulation,
the no-fly zone, the air drops, the Sarajevo exclusion zone,
the Croat-Muslim agreement and the new ultimatums. Says he:
"It's unbelievable to me that we can make progress that no one
would have predicted two months ago, through a lot of hard work
by the President. Then you get Gorazde, which was a setback,
and the critics start saying again, `Clinton isn't engaged with
foreign policy.' It's ridiculous."
</p>
<p> Such positive thinking is generally shared by those people whose
opinion Clinton values most: the American voters. Poll after
poll shows majorities consistently think Clinton is doing a
presentable job in international affairs. Tired of the burdens
of world leadership after two generations of cold war, many
citizens think the best foreign policy is one that keeps U.S.
soldiers, sailors and flyers at home and does not cost much
money. And if Clinton often treats international affairs as
an unwelcome distraction from health-care reform, crime and
other domestic problems--well, so do most of the people who
elected him.
</p>
<p> In another way Clinton is fortunate: it might be said, and not
entirely facetiously, that the time is ripe for an ineffective
foreign policy. The U.S. is more secure from attack than it
has been in decades, and its margin for error is vastly greater
than it was in the days when thousands of Soviet and American
nuclear warheads were ready to be fired within minutes. At the
same time, though, framing a coherent policy is much more difficult
than when every problem could be viewed in the organizing framework
of the cold war. And in foreign policy, as in other activities,
success breeds success--and vice versa.
</p>
<p> Says a U.S. ambassador: "As long as people know the U.S. is
engaged and reliable, they are unlikely to do foolish things.
It's reassuring and restraining. And this serves our national
interests because stability and peace make our economy and trade
prosper." Conversely, a senior Administration official admits
the American backdown in Somalia probably emboldened the Haitian
military to defy the U.S., and it would be surprising if Kim
Il-Sung were not watching Bosnia for clues as to how far he
can go. Moreover, another Administration official warns, for
all the American public's current indifference, "foreign policy
could unhinge this presidency." Clinton may not score many points
with a foreign policy promoting international peace and prosperity;
voters will greet it with a yawn. But they may not readily forgive
a fumbling response to a crisis that poses a serious threat
to American interests, and Clinton has given little indication
