Official Sees New Limits on U.S. Leadership

President Clinton’s decision to defer to European views on Bosnia-Herzegovina reflects a deliberate shift to a new, post-Cold War model of American power: limited by economic problems, modest in style and rarely to be exercised unilaterally, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.

The Cold War brand of U.S. leadership in international crises “is going to be the case much less than it was before,” the official told reporters in an informal speech.

“We don’t have the money” in the federal budget to act as freely as before, he added.

His comments, if confirmed in action, would signal a major shift from the largely unilateral American leadership practiced by Cold War Presidents from Harry S. Truman to George Bush.

“We’re talking about new rules of engagement for the United States,” said the official, who holds one of the top policy-making positions in the State Department. “There will have to be genuine power sharing and responsibility sharing.

“The approach is a very difficult one for some of our European friends to understand, and many would have preferred it the other way,” he said. “It is different. But it’s not different by accident; it’s different by design.”

However, other officials, including Secretary of State Warren Christopher, sought to soften the impact of the remarks in telephone calls to reporters Tuesday evening.

“Our responsibility of leadership is undiminished in this period,” Christopher said. “The post-Cold War period will require it.”

Still, he added, “It will be, perhaps, a somewhat different leadership.”

Clinton has come under stinging criticism from some members of Congress and some foreign countries for his decision to back away from a campaign pledge to consider U.S. military action in Bosnia, and to support a European-designed plan that leaves Bosnian Serb forces in control of most of the country.

The State Department official--who spoke at a lunch meeting with 49 reporters, under ground rules that stipulated that he would not be identified--argued that the Administration’s refusal to go beyond its allies’ views on Bosnia was not an isolated incident but rather part of a pattern that is likely to recur.

“We have a very different view of collective action than what might have been the case during the Cold War,” he said, explaining that U.S. public opinion and the growing federal budget deficit both make military action more difficult now.

In the case of Bosnia, Clinton decided that multilateral action is preferable, Christopher said. “When you reach that conclusion, you certainly have to negotiate with your allies,” he said. “That is certainly not the rule for other examples.

“Where our strategic interests are affected, we will act alone, if necessary,” he added.

Christopher’s comments did not directly contradict the senior official’s remarks, and he did not intend to deny them, an aide said. “These are shades of meaning over a philosophical issue,” the aide said. “I’m sure (the senior official) did not mean that the United States is abandoning its leadership role.”

But the controversy, however philosophical, went to the heart of the debate over U.S. policy in Bosnia and similar conflicts in the post-Cold War world, now that there is no global threat from the Soviet Union.

“This is the right question, but (the senior official’s) formula swings the pendulum too far,” said John D. Steinbruner, director of foreign policy studies at Washington’s Brookings Institution.

“Yes, we have to act multilaterally and carefully,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re just one country among others. We’ve got to marshal the world. . . . The world needs a lot more assertiveness out of us than that doctrine allows.”

The senior official argued that by seeking a consensus with Britain, France and other allies on Bosnia, the Administration was practicing “a form of leadership that’s quite appropriate at this moment.”