NEWS ANALYSIS : Somalia Closing Out Bush’s ‘New World Order’

The United States’ offer to send up to 30,000 American troops to Somalia represents what is likely to be the Bush Administration’s final attempt to define the idea of a “new world order”--the concept first used to justify American action against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

At the peak of his presidency during the Persian Gulf War, President Bush invoked the spirit of “a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom and the rule of law. . . . As Americans, we know there are times when we must step forward and accept our responsibility to lead.”

Now, in his last weeks in office, Bush is trying once again to establish the principle that in the post-Cold War world, the United States and other countries will team up, through military action if necessary, to police the world against injustices such as invasion or starvation.

In the process, however, the Administration is also raising questions about when and how this principle will be applied. And it will have to leave to the incoming Clinton Administration the tricky job of determining what happens in a country after the troops of the “new world order” finally depart.

In Somalia as in Iraq, the United States is proposing to send American forces to a Third World nation as the spearhead of a multinational operation under auspices of the United Nations. But this time, unlike Iraq’s case, the United States has no oil or other economic interests at stake, and the rationale for large-scale American military intervention is exclusively humanitarian.

Bush’s concept of a “new world order” had been called into question over the past year by continuing U.S. inaction in the Balkans. Critics argued that American reluctance to send troops or take the lead role in stopping bloodshed there demonstrated that American military action in the Gulf War was a one-time-only affair and that the dominant trend in U.S. foreign policy will be to recognize the high costs and limited benefits of overseas military operations.

“One part of the new world order is trying to decide at what point international intervention is legitimate,” one European diplomat observed last week. “Somalia is an easier case (for the Bush Administration) than Yugoslavia. . . . Yugoslavia is both militarily difficult and politically complex. There are different countries and governments to deal with there. In Somalia, at least there is only one country.”

There seems to be little doubt about the moral justification for an international military operation in Somalia. According to U.N. estimates, 250,000 Somalis may die within the next few months if food is not supplied soon. This fall, aid shipments have been stolen by armed militias, and the country’s warlords have interfered with other relief operations.

Still, the moral case for active American intervention would appear to be compelling, too, in what used to be Yugoslavia, where Serbian forces have engaged in “ethnic cleansing” by uprooting and killing Bosnian Muslims. And in the case of Bosnia, Bush has made it clear all year that he wanted to avoid putting troops on the ground.

“I don’t want to commit a soldier to battle unless I know that we’ve got the wherewithal for them to win and win fast, and that I can see how that soldier’s going to get out of there with his head high, his country backing him,” the President said on the eve of the Republican National Convention last August, at a time when he was under pressure to take more aggressive action in the Balkans.

One crucial difference between Somalia and Bosnia appears to be the attitude of the Pentagon.

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was strongly opposed to putting American lives on the line in Bosnia, facing determined Serb fighters on hilly, wooded terrain where even the German Wehrmacht had trouble in World War II. Though cautious, the Pentagon has reportedly been less opposed to committing American troops to Somalia.

Among the foreign-policy questions left unsettled by Bush’s offer is the extent to which other nations will be ready or eager to commit their own troops to join American forces in Somalia.

For example, one French diplomat said that while Paris is likely to go along with the idea of sending American troops as part of a U.N. operation, France may be reluctant to contribute forces to that endeavor.

“We have already committed troops in other parts of the world, and our military is feeling overextended,” he said. “France has 2,000 troops in Cambodia and more than 4,000 in Yugoslavia. I think it’s time for others to commit their forces (to Somalia).”

Another, larger foreign-policy question is what should happen to Somalia at the end of a U.N. military operation. Somalia is not like Iraq, where a powerful leader had to be restrained through the use of force. In fact, Somalia is the reverse situation: There is, effectively, no one ruling the country at all.

“What is going wrong in Somalia is that it is a very particular case where you have no government,” U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told The Times last week.

Does that mean Somalia will be placed under some form of U.N. trusteeship, like the former territories of Japan and Germany after World War II? Or should the United Nations try to put together a Somali government before the troops leave? Will it do this on the basis of democratic principles and elections? If so, how will the idea be sold to nations like China, a permanent member of the Security Council strongly opposed to Western-style democracy?

The decision to offer American troops to Somalia also has important implications for the debate everyone in Washington expects in the early months of the Clinton Administration over the size of the U.S. defense budget.

Those who favor large cutbacks in defense contend that with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the United States can reduce its overseas military deployments. Advocates of a strong American defense caution that there are still problems requiring the judicious use of American troops abroad, and they will point to Iraq, Yugoslavia and Somalia to buttress their argument.

Finally, in personal terms, the decision to offer American forces to Somalia marks a turnaround for Bush from the seeming despondency into which he and his White House had fallen in the three weeks after he lost the presidential election.

Throughout November, the Bush Administration had seemed so inactive and so unwilling to engage in new foreign policy that some political leaders voiced alarm. “Our country and the Western world does not have the luxury of declaring a recess while we change administrations,” Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), said Wednesday at a press conference at which he and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) spoke of the urgency of dealing with problems in Russia.

The Bush Administration may have a couple of other opportunities for foreign-policy initiatives in its dying days.

It is possible there will be a landmark international trade agreement, but that hinges on further cooperation from European governments and Japan. It is also possible the United States will take new steps toward normalization of ties with Vietnam, but that depends on more cooperation from Hanoi in turning over the records and remains of missing American servicemen.

Chances are, then, that Bush’s decision to volunteer the use of American troops to stop starvation in Somalia may go down in history as the final legacy of a President who, his critics said, was preoccupied with foreign policy.