Echoes of LBJ In Clinton's Kosovo Policy
By BOB DAVIS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton came of age politically opposing the
Vietnam War policies of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Now, as
commander in chief, Mr. Clinton echoes many of LBJ's strengths and his
weaknesses.
Mr. Clinton has been able to use an LBJ-like ability to size up political
leaders to persuade reluctant lawmakers and foreign allies to back
airstrikes on Serbia and to keep the alliance united. But at the same time,
he shares President Johnson's faith that air power can bring determined
enemies to heel, and LBJ's reluctance to place foreign-policy concerns
ahead of domestic ones.
"With both of them, foreign policy has
intruded rudely on their domestic agendas,"
says Michael Desch, a University of
Kentucky national-security specialist. "Air
power holds out the possibility you could
take out the problem on the cheap."
In many ways, Mr. Clinton is Mr. Johnson's heir. Like LBJ, Mr. Clinton is
a southerner who loves politics, presides over a prosperous economy,
stresses civil rights and focuses on an agenda of domestic reforms. But Mr.
Johnson also was faced with an insurgency in Vietnam that came to
consume his presidency as he eventually committed 500,000 troops in a
failed effort to win the war.
Haunting Legacy
The legacy of Vietnam haunts Bill Clinton and his aides, and goes a long
way to explaining their reluctance to commit ground troops to roll back
Serbian gains in Kosovo. Nobody expects the Balkan crisis to reach the
scale of Vietnam. But, ironically, the president's approach has some
echoes of Mr. Johnson's record of gradual escalation, putting sharp limits
at each stage on how much military power can be used and allowing hubris
to cloud his vision. In Johnson-like style, Mr. Clinton approves which
targets are to be attacked, questions objectives and inquires whether there
could be unintended casualties.
But foreign-policy experts say Serb leader
Slobodon Milosevic could read the limits Mr.
Clinton has set on the campaign in the same way
that Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh did decades
ago: a lack of will on the part of the U.S. Mr.
Milosevic "understands the difference between
having the largest military and the effective use of
military power," says Anders Stephanson, a
Columbia University historian. "The difference is a
willingness to use power."
A White House spokesman rejects the analogy
with Mr. Johnson and says the Kosovo campaign
represents "the president's finest hour of leadership." White House officials
dispute that the Serbian campaign will end in a Vietnam-like setback. The
air war by North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies is only seven days old,
they say, and hasn't had time to wreak enough havoc on Mr. Milosevic's
forces to get the Serbs to sue for peace.
During an Oval Office meeting Wednesday with national-security advisers,
Mr. Clinton said the administration must remain "steady as it goes. There
will be good days and bad days; but we have clear objectives and clear
interests" in Kosovo.
Thus far, Mr. Clinton's main success has been to rally public and
congressional support, and to keep U.S. allies in NATO on board. In that
effort, he has employed an LBJ-style ability to understand the political
needs of those he is dealing with and to figure out the most effective way to
address them.
Leveling With Lawmakers
In congressional briefings, for instance, Mr. Clinton concedes up front that
the campaign could result in substantial casualties and could last
indefinitely, countering the standard criticism that he doesn't level with
lawmakers. "You saw people going into the meetings grousing," says Sen.
Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, "and coming out convinced, or at
least silenced."
With NATO allies, Mr. Clinton has
pressed them successfully to speed up
the pace of the war and to accept U.S.
Gen. Wesley Clark's recommendation
that Belgrade be bombed. He has
tailored the pitch to each leader,
stressing with German Chancellor
Gerhard Shroeder that the allies must
halt Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" -- a
phrase redolent of Nazi-era atrocities.
And he has put special focus on Italy's
Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema,
calling him at least three times in recent days to say how much the U.S.
appreciates Italy's contributions, especially since Mr. D'Alema's
Communist Party coalition partners have been squeamish about continuing
the air war.
"He's better with foreign leaders than when he deals with Congress," says
Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff. "He really listens to them,
he speaks to them, and they develop a message that is much closer."
But in the same way that President Johnson used to muse that he could
persuade Ho Chi Minh to end the war if only he could talk to him directly,
Mr. Clinton's tendency to personalize foreign policy has led him astray
when it comes to Mr. Milosevic. Some White House aides acknowledge
that they were surprised by the ferocity of Mr. Milosevic's sweep in
Kosovo, and the resolve he and the Serbian population have shown so far
in the face of NATO's air campaign.
Vietnam-Style Escalation
President Clinton "never sat down one-on-one
with Milosevic" to take the measure of the man,
says Mr. Panetta. "Clinton's great strength is
understanding and communicating with others;
when he's cut off from that, it becomes a
weakness."
Many in the White House had hoped that Mr.
Milosevic would crack under the initial NATO
bombing, or at least use the attacks as a reason to
accept a peace deal. But as that calculation has
turned out to be incorrect, Mr. Clinton's strategy is
a Vietnam-style phased escalation. "For a
sustained period, he [Mr. Milosevic] will see that his military will be
seriously diminished, key military infrastructure destroyed, the prospect of
international support for Serbia's claim to Kosovo increasingly
jeopardized," Mr. Clinton said Tuesday at the State Department.
But the effectiveness of air power may turn out to be as much an illusion
for Mr. Clinton as it was for his Vietnam-war era predecessor. The choice
then would be similar to one that faced Mr. Johnson: a humiliating loss or
further escalation with ground forces. Publicly, White House officials say
that Mr. Clinton ruled out ground forces months ago when he was putting
together a war plan that could gain support on Capitol Hill and at NATO
headquarters. But his recent statements have been silent on the issue, at
least leaving open the chance for a change of policy.
Taking the plunge with ground troops would complete the eerie morphing
of Clinton into Johnson. "Johnson had his Great Society and Clinton has
his domestic focus," says Richard Haass, director of foreign studies at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "Johnson's undoing was
Vietnam. Bill Clinton has labored for six years to avoid having foreign
policy at center stage; now it threatens to do just that." |
