PERSPECTIVES ON INTERVENTION : Recast This Issue on a Grand Scale : Nobody has a thorough plan to help the formerly communist societies, or to deal with their ethnic and national conflicts.

Both President Clinton and the American people want the next four years to be dominated by domestic policy. This week, that looks highly unlikely. But for it even to be possible, there is one problem on the growing global agenda that the new President must get right from the start. It’s called Bosnia.

This is both strange and unfair. It’s strange that the United States should need to focus on a remote conflict that will not produce a major European war, much less a direct threat to U.S. security. And it’s unfair that the U.S. President should be called upon to take charge when grown-up, wealthy and heavily armed European states are so much closer to the action.

But the imposition of leadership, like life, is not fair. It is immaterial that the Bosnian question might not now be on Clinton’s plate if George Bush had shown some gumption a few months ago, if the European Community had not become tied in knots over its political future, or if the United States had not resisted European efforts to experiment with alternatives to NATO. Beginning this week, Bill Clinton must make the best of a bad deal in Bosnia.

Because so much has come to a focus in former Yugoslavia, it has become the first critical test of Clinton’s abilities as a world leader. During the Cold War, anxious Europeans judged new U.S. presidents in terms of competence in dealing with the Soviet Union; now fate has cast the Balkans in that role. Clinton’s policy toward former Yugoslavia will reveal his attitudes on using force even more than what he does in Iraq or Somalia. His actions in Bosnia also will set a pattern for all post-communist societies, shape the character of European security institutions, critically influence U.S. relations with the Muslim world and even impinge on the European Community’s ability to be an effective partner with the United States in the global economy.

Clinton will first be pressed to make military decisions. Will he enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia? Lift the arms embargo so the Muslims can defend themselves? Support sending U.N. forces to Kosovo? Before answering any of these questions, he must get command of the issue. Otherwise, trying to micro-manage the tactics will lead him into a political if not military quagmire.

The outgoing Administration never told the American people why Bosnia matters. It never sketched out a broader vision of history, tomorrow’s overarching challenges or America’s role in them; it disdained the “vision thing” and got trapped in tactical decisions. Clinton can succeed only if he fills the vision gap as his first task in dealing with the Balkan tangle.

As a new President, he can buy time by visibly instituting a formal review of U.S. policy, putting the bureaucracy and his new team through their paces. Even though human suffering continues in Bosnia, no one can begrudge him a few weeks’ preparation to make sure he gets the policy right. Above all, he needs to let the nation and the world know what is at stake: nothing less than the future of Russia and other post-communist states--peace and security across the world’s greatest land mass.

The result of the new Administration’s deliberations must be a grand design for Western policy toward these societies. That design needs to be as clear as the 40-year containment policy toward the Soviet Union. It needs to show the American people why long-term U.S. interests, extending eastward from the old inner German border, demand specific short-term actions. Those actions should focus like a laser beam on drawing post-communist societies into the West’s orbit and must include an increased level of both political and economic support.

By sketching the big picture, Clinton can show why Bosnia is important and must be dealt with, not just by the European allies but also by the United States. He can then build a political base for a three-track policy: sorting out the contending political principles at stake in former Yugoslavia, promising post-conflict economic support and convincing the Serbs that there is a military price to be paid for continued savagery.

But the grand design for post-communist Europe and tactical steps on Bosnia can’t just be made in America or reflect only the U.S. President’s vision. At home, that means he must engage Congress in developing his ideas and directly explain them to the American people. Abroad, it means involving European states in both the broader vision and the ways of achieving it.

Remarkably, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is no common Western strategy toward the former Soviet Union, no integrated effort to help communist societies make the painful transition to pluralism and no consensus on dealing with ethnic and national conflicts. Nor has Moscow, Kiev or any other of the Eastern capitals been allied either to a long-term strategy for their future in the West or to short-term steps in the Balkans.

By taking these actions before deciding tactics regarding Bosnia, Clinton has a chance to surround that problem. He could even find that, with such a broad base of U.S. and international support, relatively little military action is needed to convince the Serbs that they are isolated, both in today’s politics and in the sweep of history. If not, the commitment of U.S. force would at least be part of a clear coalition effort. Either way, Clinton would pass this critical early test of his presidency.