Clinton's Foreign Policy Skills Face Questions
By Laurence McQuillan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As criticism of U.S. policy on Kosovo increases, the war in the Balkans is fueling new questions about President Clinton's foreign policy skills and the impact of the crisis on other diplomatic fronts.
The three-day NATO summit that begins Friday in Washington has been dramatically altered by the escalating intensity of the daily air strikes in Yugoslavia.
What once was to be a triumphant gala celebration of the alliance's 50th anniversary, instead will be a far more somber affair.
The gathering, which will be attended by the heads of the 19 NATO countries plus some 25 other world leaders, comes as Clinton faces a growing number of questions about his foreign policy results in places like Russia, China and the Mideast, as well as Kosovo.
''There is a very, very big problem here and it is exemplified in Kosovo,'' said John Steinbruner, a foreign policy expert with the Brookings Institution, in discussing Clinton's ventures in diplomacy.
''At the core of the problem is his tendency to see all foreign policy issues simply as an extension of immediate domestic American politics, which is what he understands,'' Steinbruner said.
While saying outside intervention was necessary in Kosovo, Steinbruner agreed with an increasing number of critics who fault Clinton for ruling out the use of ground troops before the air war even began -- a decision driven by domestic concerns.
''We're hurting the things that we say we're trying to help, that's what's so discouraging ... He's left us with a legacy of misjudgments and tremendous consequences for those misjudgments,'' Steinbruner said.
With some 33,000 Air Force reservists likely to be activated soon because of the steady increase in air attacks on Yugoslavia, members of Congress increasingly are calling for a clearer picture of where Clinton's policy in Kosovo will lead.
Sen. Max Cleland, a wheelchair-bound hero of the Vietnam War, spoke for many in his generation when he talked of the policy mistakes that cost so many of his comrades their lives or their limbs. He said he was searching for ''some coherent sense of where we are and what we ought to do'' in Kosovo.
''I am convinced that one of the tragedies of the Vietnam experience was that it was both no win and no exit,'' the Georgia Democrat said, echoing criticism of the current U.S. approach.
''We can't afford to repeat that mistake in Kosovo. We either have to come up with a policy to win militarily, or come up with a good exit strategy or both,'' Cleland told fellow members of Congress.
He noted the U.S.-led attacks on the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have hurt relations with Russia, where once-ignored hard-liners have gained new political life, and with China, which had hoped to sign a deal ending trade barriers to its markets.
''We are paying a price,'' he said of Kosovo. ''I think we lost a trade agreement with China because of that. I think we have a deteriorating relationship with Russia ... We have strained relationships in NATO, and not to mention the incredible strain on
the neighboring states -- Albania, Macedonia, and others.''
The unusually blunt assessment from a fellow Democrat underscores the risk Clinton has taken with his presidency.
''The economy is great, they couldn't pin Monica on him but boy Kosovo may hang him if he doesn't find a good way out,'' said Valerie Hudson, a foreign policy professor at Brigham Young University.
''He's never been in the military, and that was by his own design,'' she said. ''Now he's calling other people's sons and daughters to war ... There's some very deep ironies here that can't help but undermine him in his role as commander-in-chief.''
She echoed the concern expressed by numerous foreign policy experts about the impact of the Kosovo war.
''Americans are now worried about looking like the biggest idiots on the world stage,'' she said. |
