Bush Offers Criteria for Use of Force : Strategy: He warns against employing the military in all but the most necessary circumstances. His guidelines distinguish between Somalia mission and Bosnia.

President Bush, in an emotional farewell Tuesday to the nation’s military, warned against the American use of force in all but the most necessary circumstances and then only when specific requirements can be met.

“The United States should not seek to be the world’s policeman,” Bush told an audience of 4,200 rigidly attentive cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.

There can be no inflexible criteria for resorting to military force as an instrument of foreign policy, he said.

But the President, who three times in the last four years deployed U.S. troops to foreign lands, called for a middle course that recognizes the nation’s responsibilities as a global leader and offered a set of guidelines to those facing similar decisions in the future:

“Using military force makes sense as a policy where the stakes warrant, where and when force can be effective, where no other policies are likely to prove effective, where its application can be limited in scope and time and where the potential benefits justify the potential costs and sacrifice.”

When the United States does intervene, he said, “It will be essential to have a clear and achievable mission, a realistic plan for accomplishing the mission and criteria no less realistic for withdrawing U.S. forces once the mission is complete.”

For Bush, the speech kicked off a series of appearances in what is likely to be an emotional two-week period leading up to his departure from office. Over the last four years, Bush--once a military officer himself--has been warmly received here and at the Naval and Air Force academies. But cadets seemed to go out of their way Tuesday to cheer the departing commander in chief.

The President’s remarks amounted to a report on lessons he has learned about the role of military force in international policy, lessons reflecting a term of public service that began when he enlisted in the Navy 50 years ago during World War II.

The cadets he addressed in Eisenhower Hall here are just now embarking on their own military careers as Army officers. Military force, he told them, “is never a tool to be used lightly or universally. In some circumstances it may be essential, in others counterproductive.”

The world changed greatly during Bush’s four years as President. The threat of East-West confrontation faded and demands on the U.S. military shifted from opposing communism to putting out brush-fire wars and filling humanitarian missions.

During his term, Bush sent troops into action in Panama and the Persian Gulf and just a month ago deployed forces in Somalia on a humanitarian relief mission. In addition, he ordered U.S. fighter jets into the air over Manila to protect the fledging democracy in the Philippines during an uprising there and dispatched helicopters to rescue diplomats in Mogadishu at the outbreak of the Somali civil war two years ago.

In the case of the present Somalia relief mission, Bush said: “The United States should not stand by with so many lives at stake and when a limited deployment of U.S. forces, buttressed by the forces of other countries and acting under the full authority of the United Nations, could make an immediate and dramatic difference--and do so without excessive levels of risk and cost.”

On the other hand, he said: “Sometimes the decision not to use force, to stay our hand . . . is just as difficult as the decision to send our soldiers into battle.” Bush and U.S. military leaders have resisted a major deployment of troops to protect Bosnia-Herzegovina from the Serbian onslaught.

Important humanitarian and strategic interests are at stake there, he said, “but up to now, it’s not been clear that the application of limited amounts of force by the United States and its traditional friends and allies would have had the desired effect, given the nature and complexity of that situation.”

The President turned emotional when he spoke of “a quality of caring and kindness” that American troops have brought to their mission. His voice choking as he fought to keep his composure, Bush told of his visit five days ago to U.S. troops in Somalia.

The President’s address reflected the continuing re-evaluation of the role of the military both in U.S. society and as an instrument of foreign policy in an evolving global political climate.

President-elect Bill Clinton’s choice for defense secretary, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), said in September--three months before he had been picked for the Pentagon job--that he would not readily accept military arguments that the use of U.S. troops in foreign engagements should be rigidly limited.

Aspin said that the “all-or-nothing” approach of military leaders, who often argue against intervention out of fear that conflicts will escalate and draw the United States into deeper involvement, had been undercut by the end of the Cold War and the development of increasingly accurate weapons.

Bush, as well as his predecessor, President Ronald Reagan, and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have articulated a somewhat different policy. As outlined in 1984 by Caspar W. Weinberger, Reagan’s defense secretary, U.S. leaders must be convinced that vital U.S. interests are at stake and that there is a reasonable chance of achieving the objectives before sending troops into action.

Powell has since repeatedly advised U.S. leaders that they should give nothing less than total support, both political and military, before any troops are committed to action.

Bush told the cadets that despite the end of the Cold War, the demands on the United States as a military power will not shrink.

“If we are passive and aloof,” he said, “‘we would risk the emergence of a world characterized by violence, characterized by chaos, one in which dictators and tyrants threaten their neighbors, build arsenals brimming with weapons of mass destruction and ignore the welfare of their own men, women and children.”

Thus, while the United States cannot be policeman to the world--a costly role for which he said there is no support at home or abroad--it remains the nation’s duty “to marshal its moral and material resources to promote a democratic peace.”

A White House spokesman indicated that Tuesday’s speech could be the President’s final policy address in office, although Bush said he may deliver one more.

WARLORD ASSAILS U.N.: Somali leader stalls Boutros-Ghali’s peace efforts. A6