LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Warren Christopher : The Embattled Secretary of State Reflects on Foreign Entanglements

Warren Christopher’s first five months as the nation’s 62nd secretary of state have been a diplomatic roller-coaster ride: a dignified start succeeded by a series of gut-wrenching twists and turns. Christopher attained early successes in launching an aid plan for Russia and restarting Arab-Israeli peace talks, but he soon found himself embroiled in acrimonious debate over what the United States should do to end the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In February, Christopher announced the United States was seeking a settlement in Bosnia that protected the republic’s Muslims and did not reward Serbian forces for their conquests--however, he has conspicuously failed to achieve either aim. His attempt to persuade Britain and France to lift an arms embargo on Bosnia met only embarrassing rebuffs. Christopher then changed course and backed a European plan for “safe havens”--but neither the United States nor the Europeans followed up to enforce the scheme. The chain of events left U.S. policy on Bosnia in disarray--and prompted charges that Christopher had bungled his first real crisis.

Outwardly, at least, Christopher is unruffled by the criticism of his stewardship. “I wouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t affect me somewhat, but I just have to plow through it,” he said recently. “I know that it’s part of the territory in a job this big.”

The secretary greets visitors affably in his elegant, cherry-paneled office on the seventh floor of the State Department. He admits to missing some things about Los Angeles--principally the Dodgers, whose progress he follows passionately. But he leaves no doubt that he considers this job the crowning challenge of a long and already distinguished career--which earlier included a term as deputy secretary of state and the job of chairman of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department.

When serious questions begin, Christopher sits stiffly in a Duncan Phyfe-style armchair, the jacket of his pin-stripe suit carefully buttoned, his expression wary and unblinking. The bookshelf behind his antique desk displays nine volumes of Jimmy Carter’s presidential papers, a memento of the last Administration he served.

Question: Because of what looked like zig-zagging on Bosnia, you’ve been hit with charges from indecision to lack of vision, even ineptitude. Where do you think those perceptions come from?

Answer: When we came into office in January of this year, the situation in Bosnia had already reached the point where I think the only way to end the fighting, the only way to compel a settlement, was to have used ground troops--hundreds of thousands of ground troops . . . . None of our military planners thought that air power alone would have brought Serbia to its knees . . . .

Given that choice, the President made what I think was absolutely the right decision. That is that the United States would not use ground troops to compel a settlement in Bosnia.

In this situation, the decision not to use massive force is a much harder one than the decision to do so. If the President had decided to go in massively, there would have been short-term popularity, but, in the long term, the American people would not have sustained that--for good reason. That is because the United States’ vital interests are not sufficiently involved for us to have withstood the cost, the entanglement and the deaths that would have resulted.

Moreover, I think the American people would have soon realized that there was no satisfactory exit strategy. The United States would have been there either permanently, or as soon as we left, the parties would have been battling again within weeks of our departure.

Q: But judged by the objective--which was to prevent the dismemberment of a member of the United Nations--hasn’t the diplomatic effort failed, and aren’t there consequences to that?

A: The diplomatic effort has not yet failed. The diplomatic effort goes on . . . to try to achieve a new settlement that’s agreeable to the parties and that retains the entity of Bosnia. That is probably where this has to come out.

Q: Much of the criticism, though, hasn’t been about the substance of your position so much as the style of your getting there--that there isn’t a clear sense of direction.

A: I’d have to challenge that. I think that, on the basics, we are right where we were before. First, we would deal with this on a multilateral basis. We would not go it alone. Second, we will not use ground troops for purposes of compelling a settlement. We would implement a good-faith settlement which has satisfactory enforcement provisions. Those two basic principles have not changed. Also, what’s not changed is our effort to try to be helpful from a humanitarian standpoint, to impose sanctions and perhaps the most important principle of all, which is . . . to avoid the spreading of the conflict. Hence, our decision to place a limited number of troops in Macedonia in the peacekeeper observer corps.

Q: But your initial aims also included ensuring that international borders could not be altered by force.

A: We had to face that ensuring that the borders would not be breached could only be achieved through the use of massive ground forces. The interests of the United States were, in that situation, not sufficiently engaged to justify the cost of entanglement.

Q: Are there any general lessons to be drawn from this unhappy experience?

A: We are a great power and we’re blessed with enormous resources, an enormous capacity. I think over the course of our Administration we will demonstrate there are many instances in which the United States is prepared to take unilateral action or energize multilateral action to prevent conduct of this kind from being acceptable . . . .

Q: Which bells must we answer?

A: There is a hierarchy of challenges to our national interest. Certainly, something that challenges the United States--such as an attack on Pearl Harbor--presents an easy case. But there are a number of other challenges to our vital interests that would require unilateral action by the United States if we could not persuade our allies to go along.

For example, a challenge to one of our treaty allies, I think, would require action by the United States. Presumably, in most circumstances, the other treaty allies would join us in that action. Threats to American citizens abroad have frequently engaged our unilateral action. They could very well again . . . . Where other countries obtain the kind of weaponry that can threaten us--and then if they were to threaten us--that might require some action.

We always prefer, I think, to do it in the company of others. But we need not allow ourselves to be bogged down in the bureaucracy of multilateral diplomacy if our national interests were directly threatened.

Q: So would the kind of regional conflicts that may be characteristic of the post-Cold War world be a lower priority and demand multilateral rather than unilateral action?

A: We have to look at each one of those. Some of those might engage our vital national interests, but, in most instances, I would agree with you that they would call for an aggressive force, an aggressive exercise of preventive diplomacy. I would expect, over time, that we will be increasing our capability to do that in connection with the new independent states in Russia (the former Soviet Union). Those are matters of great humanitarian concern to us, but they are also matters of where our interests are primarily of a humanitarian character.

Q: Several weeks ago (Undersecretary) Peter Tarnoff gave a speech on the limits of American power that produced some controversy, but his premises were ideas you and the President had also spoken of. His premises were that the Clinton Administration has taken as a first priority the revitalization of the domestic economy, and there are resource limits on what you can do in foreign operations. What consequences do you draw from those premises?

A: I do not draw from those premises that the United States will be handicapped in protecting its vital interests or fulfilling those responsibilities as a world power. I cannot imagine a situation where we would not gather up resources to respond if our vital interests were threatened. It’s entirely possible to talk about the costs or expenses of a peacekeeping mission which has primarily a humanitarian purpose 8,000 miles away; that requires actively weighing the scales. But I can’t think that the cost of rescuing American citizens or the cost of protecting our vital interests if one of our treaty allies were seriously threatened, that that would hold us back. The United States can stand up to that.

I also think the United States will have --and exhibit--the capacity to deal with middle-level dictators around the world when and if they threaten our vital interests. I think our strength as a country is undiminished in that regard.

It’s clear we’re going to have to husband our resources carefully, as to how we spend our money. But that leads me into one of the themes that I would like to be able to turn to, and that is the importance of economic growth, and then work on the improvement of the economic structures in the free world.

Q: In the past, the U.S. has been accused of bludgeoning other countries to go along on some things in the guise of multilateral action. Is this Administration acting instead in the sense of being one of 15 equal members of the U.N. Security Council?

A: No. I think it’s a flawed perception. There is a fine line between what you’ve described as bludgeoning and what might be described as proper leadership . . . . We certainly have not reached the point where the United States feels that we are only one of 15. That has an attractive kind of self-effacing quality about it, but I don’t think that’s the right stance for the United States.

We are the most powerful nation in the world, and where our interests are engaged, we should lead.

There’s been sort of a paradox among our allies that if you lead too hard, they complain about the bludgeoning; if, on the other hand, we consult or try to persuade in a collegial way, then they complain about the lack of leadership. So I think we have to take that as sort of one of the paradoxes of our time and deal with these matters one by one.

Q: You have also talked about the promotion of democracy as one of your objectives.

A: That is one of four or five areas of future emphasis of the State Department-- . . . the global issues. One of the most important is the promotion of democracy--not just because it’s some abstract value that we inherited from the Greeks, but rather because it serves our national interest . . . .

Among the others are the environment, . . . population .. . . (and) non-proliferation. Non-proliferation will be the arms-control issue of the 1990s. How are we going to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction?

Q: Is there a single theme or focus that knits all these pieces of your new agenda together?

A: We are entering the period in which we are defining what those themes of interest will be. History is always so clear when you look back on it. It’s very messy and confusing when you’re going through it. It took Harry Truman and Gen. Marshall and Dean Acheson not just a month, but two or three years to develop the programs we now call so glibly “containment.” So I wouldn’t pretend that we have all the answers at the present time.

But the things that I see as critical to us now are first, global economic development--global growth--which will then affect the United States as well as others.

. . . Preventive diplomacy is the second major topic--to grasp these crises before they overcome us.

Third, redesigning the military and economic structures for the world. Does NATO have the right concept? Do we need a new military structure in Asia? . . . Can we achieve a Uruguay Round or a NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)--that whole cluster of issues on the economic structure.

Fourth, I think we need to deal very effectively with the big-power relationship. We can’t ignore the fact that there’s something special about the relationship between the United States and Russia and the United States and China, and the United States and Germany, United States and Japan.

Finally, the global issues I mentioned.

I’m not yet able to extract a single, over-arching theme, but I can tell you that those are the five areas that I intend to try to work on.