Contempt for Foreign Policy Is Showing : The Administration’s actions belie its rhetoric and U.S. credibility suffers.

One key point has been missing in the criticism of President Clinton’s foreign-policy ineptness. This Administration does not merely regard foreign policy as secondary to domestic renewal--a view that rightly commands widespread public support--but in fact holds it in contempt.

Evidence may be found in a little noticed speech at Yale Law School earlier this month in which Clinton lamented the fact that today there are no “quick and easy theories like containment” to guide foreign policy. It is a sad commentary that rather than put in the hard mental grind necessary to develop a coherent strategy for America’s role in the world, Clinton should allege that his predecessors had it easy.

Foreign policy cannot be reduced to buzzwords such as enlargement that can be smoothed like whipped cream in dollops across the fissures of inadequate thinking.

This slogan-led approach appeared last month in a series of speeches delivered by Clinton and his top national-security team that were billed as representing the distillation of the Administration’s foreign policy. Rarely can four major speeches have sunk so quickly into oblivion. Events in Russia and Somalia blew them away like autumn leaves. The reason is manifest. A theory is meant to explain the real world, not conflict with it.

Thus, if U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright is really articulating policy when she identifies ethnic conflict as among the “principal threats to world peace,” the implication is that the United States should be robustly championing American involvement in the Bosnian settlement, not, as is the case, hedging with restrictive conditions. When National Security Adviser Anthony Lake says that the occasions for U.S. armed intervention overseas will be “relatively few,” he owes the Americans an explanation for why two weeks later significantly more troops were on their way to Somalia and a naval blockade operating against Haiti.

The Administration shrugs off these embarrassments, calculating that foreign concerns are so peripheral to most Americans that a success would bring only fleeting advantage, much as George Bush’s Gulf War victory was unable to rescue his presidency. By the same token, short of a major disaster, a foreign-policy mistake will incur a minimal penalty.

Clinton is thus quite happy with a foreign-policy team that is short on glamour and vision but can at least be counted on to keep a low profile. And if critics in the foreign-policy community point out the inconsistencies between rhetoric and performance, so be it. The voters are not listening. In Lake’s vivid description, the critics are all “neo-know nothings.”

As a political strategy, this approach is hard to fault. The electorate has low expectations for the Administration’s foreign-policy expertise and, barring a drastic deterioration in world affairs, will not judge it on its performance in this field.

A huge demolition job on American international credibility is in progress with the President playing the role of crew chief. On issue after issue--Bosnia, Somalia, China, Haiti, to name but a few--there has been a cavernous gap between the Administration’s soaring rhetoric and its much more judicious actions. On NAFTA, U.S. credibility to negotiate and ratify an international treaty is at stake. Yet, Clinton seems complacent and ambivalent.

Consequently, the United States has emerged as perhaps the most unpredictable nation in the world community. Keeping your opponent guessing may be good tactics on the football field, but it is thoroughly undesirable in the international arena. Unpredictability from a country of the United States’ weight in world affairs is especially destabilizing.

If friends are unsure that U.S. commitments will be honored and adversaries do not believe that threats will be made good, reliable calculation becomes impossible. The outcome will usually be inimical to American interests if, for example, despairing of the American partnership, Japan lurches into nuclear rearmament, Europe retreats behind a high-tariff rampart and Haitians set sail en masse for Florida.

It is now apparent that the Administration places little value on consistency, good analysis or reliability. Haiti, where the immigration issue represents a definable American interest, is treated with the same indifference to detail and lack of subtlety as Somalia.

Predictability does not mean no change. With the end of the Cold War, major changes in America’s overseas commitments are desirable. But these should be executed through a directed, honest process, not a cynical and haphazard sleight-of-hand. That is the way to damage American interests and leave its credibility in tatters.