Dropping the Ball?

(6 of 8)

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.