NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Faces a World of Foreign Policy Choices : Transition: President-elect’s nominees may well signal the role that he and the U.S. will play in global affairs.

After choosing much of his domestic team last week, President-elect Bill Clinton has turned his attention to selecting a secretary of state and a national security staff--and finds himself forced to choose among competing goals in his ambitious foreign policy agenda as well as conflicting advice from his supporters.

Clinton’s choices will be key in determining his Administration’s success or failure, but the stakes are even higher than that: His foreign policy team will be the first ever chosen to deal with the post-Cold War world.

“Clinton is going to make more basic decisions about the way the United States operates in the world than anyone since Harry Truman,” said historian Michael Beschloss.

Despite his promise to “focus on the economy like a laser beam,” Clinton has staked out daunting goals in international affairs. The President-elect says he wants to remake U.S. foreign policy for the post-Cold War era, reshape the armed forces, boost the nation’s competitiveness in the global marketplace and promote the spread of democracy.

“I am convinced, more than I ever was before . . . that only the United States can play the leadership role that we ought to be playing--to try to stick up for the alleviation of human suffering, the continued march of democracy and human rights, and the continued growth of market economies,” he said last week.

“That means I have two choices,” he added. “We can either try to focus on these problems (and) get ahead of them . . . or we can ignore it for a while, wait for it to explode. Then the problems will swarm on us--and I might have to spend all my time on foreign policy.”

In foreign policy, just as in economic policy, Clinton wants to have it all. But more likely, he will have to choose which of his many priorities to spend time on--and his supporters and advisers differ over what those should be.

Some say Clinton should focus on promoting democracy abroad and exercising U.S. leadership in trouble spots like Bosnia. But others worry about diverting Clinton’s--and the public’s--attention from his core economic agenda.

His choices to head his national security team will tell much about how he hopes to resolve the conflicts and, over time, clarify his view of America’s new role in the world.

Transition aides say Clinton may name a secretary of state, a secretary of defense and a national security adviser as early as this week.

For the State Department, most Clintonites expect the President-elect to turn to Warren Christopher, the Los Angeles attorney and Democratic wise man who has been his top transition aide; for the Pentagon, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a noted Democratic hawk; as national security adviser, Anthony Lake, a former White House and State Department aide who ran Clinton’s foreign policy brain trust during the campaign. But none of those choices is certain yet, aides maintained.

Christopher is viewed as an ideal secretary of state if Clinton wants a seasoned manager and experienced diplomat to head off international problems before they turn into crises--as he suggested last week.

But if Clinton wants to reshape U.S. foreign policy around economic issues, he might look to Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), a respected expert on international finance. If he is more worried about building a bipartisan consensus in Congress, his choice might be Gen. Colin L. Powell, a registered independent who served the last two Republican administrations. And if he wants to please his moderate and conservative colleagues in the Democratic Leadership Council, he could turn to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).

All four candidates have fierce proponents--and all have qualities Clinton admires. “What we’re looking for,” joked one Clinton adviser, “is an eminent lawyer from Los Angeles who’s black, who’s been elected to the Senate from New Jersey and who’s been chairman of Armed Services.”

The President-elect confronts much the same kind of problem at the Pentagon. He has pledged to reshape the nation’s armed forces to fit the new missions of the 1990s--but he has also promised to maintain military readiness and seek only limited cuts in the defense budget.

If he decides to maintain that moderate approach, his choice for secretary of defense may be Aspin, a military reformer who knows the limits of what Congress--and the Pentagon--will easily embrace. If he wants to take a more radical tack in restructuring the vast military Establishment, he might turn to an outside manager like Norman R. Augustine, a former undersecretary of the Army who is chief executive of Martin Marietta Corp., the nation’s eighth-largest defense contractor.

At the White House, the choices as national security adviser center on two veteran policy wizards who headed Clinton’s foreign policy team during his presidential campaign: Lake and Samuel (Sandy) Berger.

Lake, an up-and-coming aide to Henry A. Kissinger during the Richard M. Nixon Administration, resigned his White House job over the 1970 U.S. invasion of Cambodia. He later ran the State Department policy planning staff in the Jimmy Carter Administration and is now a professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and a widely-respected scholar of international relations.

Berger, a trade lawyer, worked with Lake at the State Department, has known Clinton for years and would bring more economic expertise to the job. “Tony is more policy, Sandy is more process,” said a former senior official who has worked with both. In the end, he suggested, Clinton might choose Lake as national security adviser with Berger as his deputy.

The liveliest speculation has centered on the candidates for secretary of state. Does Clinton want a strategist or a negotiator, an “architect” who will design a new foreign policy or a “gardener” who will coax the world toward more stability?

His choices may well depend on how Clinton envisions his own role. Does he want to spend time devising his own international strategies, like Nixon and President Bush? Or does he want to leave most of that role to his Cabinet officers and stick to domestic affairs, like a President he sometimes cites as a model--Ronald Reagan?

“Rule No. 1 is this: Make up for what you don’t have yourself,” said Robert Hunter, an National Security Council aide during the Carter Administration. “If Clinton wants to be the strategist, he doesn’t need another one. But he does need a strategic thinker somewhere in the higher reaches of the Administration.”

“In the long run, Clinton may decide to play that role,” said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution: “He loves to gnaw on knotty policy problems, and foreign policy problems are usually the most interesting ones around. . . . Besides, from what we know of his record in Arkansas, he’s not very good at being a hands-off executive.”

In either case, Clinton has made it clear he wants a harmonious team that will avoid battles over turf and policy--and has even pointed to the defeated Bush Administration as a model.

Bush’s smooth-running foreign policy operation was an exception to a general rule--partly because former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft had worked together ever since the mid-1970s, when they were all aides to President Gerald R. Ford. In every other recent Administration--Nixon, Carter, Reagan--foreign policy was a brutal bureaucratic battleground.

“This is going to be a new set of people facing a set of very difficult new policy problems,” Beschloss said. “It’s probably impossible to get it completely right on the first try. I’m willing to bet that in the first year or so, Clinton will either change his people’s duties or make personnel changes--earlier than he expects.”

Times staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

Secretary of State Contenders

Transition aides say President-elect Bill Clinton may name a secretary of state as early as this week. Here are profiles of the four leading prospects:

* Warren Christopher, 67: deputy secretary of state in the Jimmy Carter Administration, deputy attorney general in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration. “He’s the best,” a former top aide to Carter said. “First rate in every way. And he knows how to do the job already.” But a conservative Democrat asked: “Would that send a signal that we were going back to the days of Jimmy Carter?” No, says a Clinton aide: “That split in the party isn’t there anymore.” Christopher is known as a brilliant negotiator but has never had a high profile as a policy visionary--which may suit Clinton if reassurance and stability rank high among his goals. Said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution: “Christopher would be the safe choice.”

* Bill Bradley, 49: Democratic senator from New Jersey, influential member of the Senate Intelligence and Finance committees, and (like Clinton) a former Rhodes scholar. “Bradley would bring strength on international economic policy,” Hess said. The senator also has taken a deep interest in the issue Clinton says is No. 1 on his foreign policy list, supporting reforms in the former Soviet Union. But Bradley is a committed free-trade advocate and might draw opposition from Democratic trade hawks. A spokesman says the senator “isn’t seeking any Cabinet job; he is very happy in the Senate.” However, Bradley hasn’t repeated his 1990 pledge to serve his full term.

* Gen. Colin L. Powell, 55, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan. Powell and Clinton unexpectedly hit it off when the general briefed the President-elect on military issues last month. Vernon E. Jordan, the Clinton transition chairman, is reportedly bullish on Powell too. “There is a strong instinct in Clinton to appoint a figure who can win him bipartisan cover in Congress,” historian Michael Beschloss said. “That makes a case for Powell.” But most traditional Democrats are skeptical; among other problems, the general has already taken positions at variance with Clinton on U.S. action in Bosnia and further cuts in defense spending (Powell opposes both). “Powell is the romantic favorite,” Hess said. “But he and Clinton don’t agree on some significant issues--and if they ever had a serious disagreement, Clinton would find it exceedingly difficult to fire him.”

* Sam Nunn, 54: Democratic senator from Georgia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I talk to him every few days,” Clinton noted last week. “He knows I’ll listen to him whenever he says anything.” Nunn is a favorite among conservatives, Southerners and the Democratic Leadership Council. But he has disagreed openly with Clinton on several issues, including the President-elect’s pledge to allow acknowledged homosexuals to serve in the armed forces. And some transition aides say Hillary Clinton has never quite forgiven Nunn for his failure to support her husband more visibly in last spring’s Georgia primary.