Paris, Thursday, September 17, 1998
Allies Worry About U.S. Leadership
Appalled at President's Humiliation, They Fear for World Agenda
By Joseph Fitchett International Herald Tribune
PARIS - The international reaction to President Bill Clinton's political woes has been passionate, almost irate in allied countries, partly because most foreigners are appalled by the humiliating public stripping of a national leader. But passion is also high because many people in these countries feel that the potential for a paralysis
of U.S. power will imperil their own national interests, diplomats and officials said Wednesday.
''The international agenda is suddenly jammed with urgent questions - economic, military and organizational - that require U.S. leadership to catalyze some useful consensus among allies who are able to do little or nothing separately,'' said Jonathan Eyal, director of studies at London's Royal United Services Institute.
Explaining why the juncture of these questions with Mr. Clinton's predicament is so crucial, Mr. Eyal said that ''for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the core principles on which the West is organized - democracy and free markets - are under serious threat, and only the American presidency has the authority to attempt restoring these foundations.''
This historic challenge is manifest in the nearly anarchic state of Russia and the protectionist momentum in Asia, where a rising chorus of influential voices has started advocating curbs on markets.
Ominous developments have emerged in quickening tempo recently in North Korea, Iraq and Kosovo - all hot spots where U.S.-led containment policies seem to be unraveling and offering fresh opportunities to Pyongyang, Baghdad and Belgrade.
The risk now, Donald Cameron Watt, a distinguished Cold War historian, said recently, is that Saddam Hussein or ''some of the other naughty boys might be tempted to see how far they could take advantage'' of any power vacuum in Washington if President Clinton's energy is sapped by an impeachment inquiry.
In encounters with British, French, Germans and other Europeans in recent weeks, a former American ambassador reports, ''I'm assailed by angry Europeans about what is happening in America - because they
realize that they depend on Washington more than on their own governments to handle international problems.''
London, Bonn and Paris, for example, look to Washington to set the pace in handling the response to India's nuclear tests and the danger that many analysts see of armed conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Suddenly, Ukraine's future looks uneasy as a neighbor under threat of being dragged down by Russia's economic collapse and worsening political instability.
Cyprus, with its plan to acquire Russian-built missiles, has brought Turkey and Greece to the point of threatening hostilities, and U.S. pressure may be the only factor capable of getting them off their collision course.
Dwarfing all else is the question of Russia itself, a virtual economic ruin with 30,000 nuclear warheads - and the prospect of less accommodating leadership in Moscow.
With so many questions on the boil, the main historical comparison is oddly unreassuring. When President Richard Nixon was ousted from office in 1974, the outside world weathered the process, including a nuclear alert between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Nowadays, threats have become smaller but more numerous and much more unpredictable. Paradoxical as it may sound, that trend seems to have made Washington more needed as the source of international leadership
in the post-cold war era.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once described the United States as ''the indispensable country.''
In other words, even though Washington has followed other capitals in giving higher priority to domestic agendas, the United States retains the capability to launch international initiatives and push them through.
After listening to reports from foreign capitals, a State Department official said that ''politicians and public opinion in other countries recognize that the United States is the only country that can maintain a significant degree of global stability and organization and tackle big international problems.''
A European ambassador at NATO added: ''Europe has become very good at paying the costs of easing problems with humanitarian relief and civil reconstruction, but it lacks governments or leaders capable of
stepping up to the challenge of actually managing a crisis.''
Even France, usually prompt to relish signs of U.S. weakness, seems uncomfortable with Mr. Clinton's predicament. ''French officials who publicly would never say so readily admit privately that France does depend on the seriousness of Washington about international affairs,'' a French government adviser said.
The Clinton administration's major accomplishment in foreign policy - NATO enlargement - seems to be steadying Europe. A former Clinton administration ambassador said, ''The new NATO posture can be credited
with calming nerves in central Europe and preventing the anxieties in Germany and elsewhere that otherwise would arise with Russia's current problems.''
Yet Mrs. Albright has seemed unable to transform her verbal forcefulness, so conspicuous when she was ambassador to the United Nations, into consistent, potent policy. Disappointment among allied governments crystallized last month when she was forced to disclose that the Clinton administration had secretly adopted a softer approach to Iraq.
Already, presidential weakness has shifted the balance toward Congress in foreign policy - another source of concern outside the United States. No longer influenced by an internationalist caucus of the sort that existed during the Cold War, Congress has alarmed other capitals by attacking the International Monetary Fund and frequently seeking to impose sanctions, even on U.S. allies.
The very bleakness of this outlook has prompted some to think that the United States will be forced to become more assertive, almost as an antidote to presidential weakness.
Views that Mr. Clinton is ''on an ugly, drip system of political life-support coexist with an expectation among many leaders that the United States will look around for ways in which it can reassert itself,'' according to Mr. Eyal, the British analyst. |
