Pundits’ Early Praise for Christopher Turns Sour : Cabinet: Secretary of state is criticized for disarray over Bosnia, lack of a coherent overall strategy. He launches a quiet rebuttal campaign.

When Warren Christopher left Los Angeles in January to become Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, the early reviews were glowing: Here was a supremely steady hand, the pundits said, to help an untested young President navigate a tumultuous post-Cold War world.

Four months later, Christopher can be forgiven for admitting he occasionally misses life in California. Washington’s conventional wisdom has swung savagely against the secretary of state, pronouncing him responsible for disarray in the Clinton Administration’s policy toward the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and for confusion on other issues as well.

Last week, some of the same critics who had praised Christopher in January called him “uninspired” (Time), “dithering” (the Arkansas Democrat Gazette).

One of the harshest barbs came from William Safire in the New York Times when he called Christopher “inept.”

“We’re really getting whacked,” a Christopher aide moaned.

“The long knives are out,” grumbled another.

Christopher takes a longer view. “I’ve been in tough situations before,” he said. “I wouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t affect me somewhat, but I just have to plow through it. I know that it’s part of the territory in a job this big.”

But it isn’t easy, even for a 67-year-old super-lawyer long noted for his iron self-discipline. Christopher was nettled enough, after what may have been the nastiest week of his career, to launch a quiet public relations counteroffensive with a sudden spate of television and newspaper interviews. During a reflective half-hour discussion in his private office on the State Department’s seventh floor, he occasionally caught himself beginning to complain. “My main message to myself is: ‘Above all, don’t whine,’ ” he said.

What happened to Warren Christopher’s reputation in only four months?

“Bosnia,” he said crisply.

In Bosnia, the secretary of state was the point man on a policy that unintentionally made the United States look indecisive, uncertain and weak. He conspicuously failed to win support from Britain and France for Clinton’s preferred strategy, lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia.

Then one of his top aides told reporters that the dispiriting performance reflected a conscious move toward a less assertive U.S. role in the post-Cold War world--drawing a rebuke from the White House and forcing Christopher to respond with a hasty disavowal.

The result, the critics charged, was U.S. impotence in Bosnia, confusion in the American public and alarm among the allies.

“The performance has been fairly aimless, fairly confusing and has not made a reassuring impression abroad,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former State Department official under President Gerald R. Ford now at the Brookings Institution. “And it has probably damaged our interests in terms of some of the bad actors out there in the world; they’re now watching to see what they can get away with.”

Not surprisingly, Christopher has dismissed such charges. Most of the criticism on Bosnia, he has said, is from “East Coast newspaper columnists” who wanted the United States to use military force in the former Yugoslavia. “I don’t find that (sentiment) out in the country,” he said. Aides note that Christopher keeps close track of public opinion polls that do, indeed, show widespread opposition to U.S. military action in Bosnia.

The Administration has had plenty of problems with Bosnia, he acknowledged. “That’s a problem that nobody has been able to find a satisfactory answer to,” he said.

But he argued that the Administration has done well on other issues--launching a new program of aid to Russia, restarting Arab-Israeli peace talks and devising a compromise that extended most-favored-nation trade status to China for another year despite concerns over human rights.

“Russia was a great achievement by the President,” he said, carefully giving credit to Clinton. “China, I think, was done very well by the President.”

Some critics agree that Christopher has succeeded admirably on individual issues, but still complain that he has failed to bring the Administration’s positions together in a coherent strategy.

“They’ve done well on Russia, Christopher handled the Middle East nicely . . . and they did the right thing on China,” Sonnenfeldt said. “But you get the impression that they aren’t sure of their sense of direction. It’s sort of the same problem people have with Clinton: Where’s the core?”

“Christopher gives speeches and testifies and goes on talk shows . . . but I don’t think it really has a central thread to it,” he said. “I’ve read all that stuff, but I still don’t know how he envisages the American role in the very fluid situation of the post-Cold War world.”

And in Bosnia, Sonnenfeldt noted, “There was an awful lot of back-and-forth.”

Christopher’s abortive attempt to win the allies’ support on the Bosnian arms embargo has drawn particular criticism. Detractors have charged that it made the United States look weak. Some have said Christopher should have known that the British and French would refuse his request. Others have suggested that he was half-hearted in his advocacy because he was not, himself, particularly enthusiastic about lifting the arms embargo.

Christopher rejects both theories. “I certainly did not go off on that trip anticipating rejection,” he said. “The case for allowing Bosnia to defend itself seemed to me to be such a potent argument that I could persuade the allies. . . . I found that their positions were absolutely set.”

And, he added with evident exasperation: “It’s quite surprising to me that I’ve clearly not been able to adequately explain to people that if you’re doing things multilaterally, it makes sense to talk in a consultative way with the people who you’re dealing with--multilaterally.”

Christopher said he knows of only one way to quiet the charges of confusion and ineptitude at the State Department. “You keep on working,” he said. “We’ll have some successes.”

His next priority, he said, “is turning the corner to the issues that are on our own agenda--not the inherited issues,” like Bosnia. The new issues, he said, are “global, cross-cutting” problems: weapons proliferation, the environment, population, refugees.

Asia is a priority, too, he said, “and Russia--that is of constant importance.”

And, he insisted, he still loves his work.

“I’m challenged by the criticism, not daunted by it,” he said. “Challenge is what life is all about, and there’s plenty of it here right now.

“I certainly miss my friends in Los Angeles,” he said. “I’m such a Californian, I miss California; I do enjoy life there.”

He has maintained some California habits, jogging daily at dawn along the Potomac River and playing tennis near his rented Georgetown house once a weekend.

The biggest drawback to life in Washington? The usually taciturn Christopher grows animated.

“It’s hard to follow the Dodgers from here,” he complained. “When they play games on the West Coast, they sometimes don’t even get the box scores in the Washington Post.”