AMERICA’S WORLD ROLE: DIVIDED WE STAND : The White House : Clinton’s Zigzag Diplomacy Worries American Allies : * Many blame his secretary of state. But other nations are also adrift and tentative.

Like a lasting but rocky marriage, relations between the United States and its main allies have always had their ups and downs.

America’s aggressive pursuit of the Vietnam War in the 1960s unsettled its friends as much as the Carter Administration’s tentative uncertainty a decade later.

When President Ronald Reagan bombed Libya, then almost negotiated away Western Europe’s nuclear umbrella within a period of a few months in 1986, alarm bells went off throughout the Old World, and worried voices questioned whether America was fit to lead.

Today, less than a year into Bill Clinton’s accident-prone presidency, a new chorus of critical voices from abroad is questioning the wisdom of an American President’s foreign policy.

After a pause during the George Bush-James A. Baker III years, when America and its allies presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire and celebrated victory in the Cold War, politicians and pundits from London to Tokyo are worried again, talking with growing concern about the Clinton Administration’s inability to establish a coherent foreign policy and develop consistent strategies.

But there is a new dimension to the present unsettled mood abroad that sets it apart from previous times of tension.

For the first time ever, these differences fester in an unstable, uncertain global environment in which not just the actions, but the very roles of the United States and other important nations have come into question.

In Europe, for example, criticism of the Clinton team is at least partially dampened by two far larger worries: that a President increasingly consumed by America’s internal problems may abandon the chaotic field of foreign affairs; and that in the post-Cold War world, America’s key allies are also directionless and tentative in addressing the new challenges.

“We’re all wallowing around trying to figure out what our foreign policies should be,” noted Oxford University historian William Wallace. “Criticism from some bright young men at the Economist (magazine) is all well and good, but they don’t know what to do either.”

Added Karsten Voigt, a Social Democrat member of the German Parliament and his party’s chief spokesman on foreign affairs: “We Germans can’t ask for a policy of ‘partners in leadership’ and then blame the Americans for not showing us the way.”

But despite these factors, foreign policy specialists in Europe and Asia interviewed for this article sketched a mood of growing impatience, exasperation and worry about Clinton’s actions.

It is a mood that seems to be gradually eroding any sense of understanding.

Many, for example, admitted that the young President and his new team are still learning, but they went on to express dismay about Clinton’s zigzag diplomacy in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Haiti and the signals those missteps send to an uncertain world.

“You can’t label (Somali warlord Mohammed Farah) Aidid a wanted criminal one day, then turn around the next and call him an important player in any settlement,” cautioned Josef Joffe, foreign affairs commentator of the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. “Both are probably true, but if you are thinking strategically, then you don’t start off by declaring him your enemy.”

Daniel Kroupa, vice chairman of the Czech Democratic Alliance, said, “To me, (Clinton) seems indecisive even in matters where he should take a decisive stand.”

Although generally less critical of the President’s handling of the crisis in Russia and his tough, but consistent stance on the delicate issue of world trade talks, Europeans and Asians still speak in worried tones of the prospect that the United States might lose its way completely.

These specialists also decry what they see as a lack of conceptual thinking within the Administration.

Some noted that even Clinton’s single truly great foreign affairs moment during his first 10 months in office--nudging Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin into the handshake with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn last September--was largely an unearned triumph.

The dramatic Israeli-PLO breakthrough that led to that handshake was achieved in Norway, not in Washington. It came in talks so secret that Secretary of State Warren Christopher only learned of them once the basic framework was in place.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, fearful at having cut the Clinton team out of the deal, quickly suggested to Christopher that the United States announce the agreement and claim the credit.

Instead of being the key player, the United States is now cast in an auxiliary role in Israel’s negotiations with the PLO, helping to raise funds and lobbying for broader Arab support.

But Christopher has managed to open a channel betwen Israel and Syria, the other key Arab player in the Middle East conflict, and will try to revive it when he returns to the region later this month.

“The U.S. is the one effective honest broker and channel for the two sides,” said Uri Savir, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “No one else, not in Europe, not in the Middle East, can do it.”

While the importance of the American role is often undisputed, the Administration’s actions are not.

In Tokyo, Japanese diplomats are disturbed by their view that Clinton still has enunciated no clear-cut Asia policy.

They voiced concern that the new Administration has stressed the human rights issue in its dealings with China instead of striving for a stable Washington-Beijing axis that the Japanese consider vital for regional stability.

On the crucial issue of trade relations, Japan’s minister of international trade and industry, Hiroshi Kumagai, warned last month that if Washington took what he called “a zero-sum attitude” or an approach of “I win, you lose,” the outcome of bilateral trade talks would be “unfortunate for both sides.”

While the Japanese complain of inflexibility, Europeans accuse Clinton of indecision and vacillation. They fret that Clinton seems prepared to give up America’s role as the first among equals within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, just as the alliance is searching for new direction.

“Clinton doesn’t appear to be leading, particularly when it comes to the Western Alliance,” said Andrew Duncan, spokesman at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “I think a lot of people are worried that if he is not careful, the alliance will go up in a puff of smoke.”

Joffe talked of what he termed a Clinton-Carter school of diplomacy, in which the new Administration’s thinking seems to be driven more by moral values, compassion and humanitarian intervention than by hard-nosed strategic interests.

“If you listen to (U.N. Ambassador Madeleine) Albright, (National Security Adviser Anthony) Lake or Christopher, you won’t hear a word about strategic interests,” he said. “They want to see the world as a moral place, but then they get hit over the head because the world isn’t that way. Like anyone who gets hit unexpectedly, the response is confusion.”

Despite this unfavorable assessment abroad, Clinton seems to maintain a remarkable degree of personal respect overseas--especially among those who have watched television footage of him discussing domestic issues such as health care reform, where he exhibits a great depth of understanding.

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In sharp contrast to Presidents Carter and Reagan, both of whom were considered by Europeans to be in a job well over their heads, Clinton is viewed as well-intentioned and a faster learner, despite what is seen as his Administration’s poor start.

Instead, blame for the Administration’s confused foreign policy has been dumped at the feet of a single individual: Christopher. Indeed, rarely has a political figure whose every instinct favors discretion and careful diplomacy generated such obvious alienation in otherwise friendly countries.

A front-page commentary in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for example, referred to Christopher as a “dust-dry administrator devoid of imagination whose overriding maxim is to avoid political damage,” while the Economist of London said he “brought to foreign policy all the instincts, for good and bad, of the corporate lawyer he used to be.”

Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French Institution of International Relations in Paris, argued in an interview that Christopher’s low-key, uncertain style merely accentuates present U.S. foreign policy weaknesses.

“You have a young President, there’s a vibrant wife and an energetic new America, but a cold-fish lawyer with no charisma at all steering American foreign policy,” he said. “The appearance of the man reinforc es the problem.”

Among Europeans, Christopher’s image has generated nostalgia for his predecessor, Baker.

“Baker was a force in himself,” a German official noted. “He had a sense of where he was going and transmitted that sense well.”

Yet, amid all this criticism, there is an admission among foreign policy specialists abroad that the demise of the Cold War’s long-established ground rules has, in many ways, made Clinton’s task as leader of the world’s lone superpower far more complex than that of his predecessors.

“Events have left the United States as the only real global power, but ironically, they have also left the U.S. with less influence, not more, in dealing with the new set of problems,” said German Parliament member Karl Lammers.

Another German official said: “We’ve won the Cold War, so the barriers to intervention have gone. There’s no one left to say, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ One of the major tasks Clinton faces is defining the limits of American power on his own.”

One area where Clinton gets some praise is his swift, consistent and unequivocal support for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s efforts to win the power struggle in Moscow.

His early meeting with the Russian leader in Vancouver, Canada; his push to get Japan more involved in financing Yeltsin’s reconstruction efforts, and appointments of knowledgeable advisers like Strobe Talbott, ambassador at large, have also won applause abroad.

“He’s handled Russia well,” said Mark Palmer, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary and now a Berlin-based businessman.

But even here, demands remain.

“The current Russian leadership awaits something slightly more serious than just words and assurances of support from the Clinton Administration,” said Yeltsin adviser Andranik M. Migranyan in an interview.

Russia’s leadership is also suspicious of U.S. efforts to function as a guarantor of peace among the former Soviet republics--a role Russia reserves for itself.

Glimmers such as the Administration’s unwavering support for Yeltsin, together with Clinton’s relatively undamaged personal image abroad, combine to nurture hope abroad that Clinton can still be a strong foreign policy President.

There is even some understanding for Clinton’s emphasis on domestic affairs, with one expert noting that “if the U.S. can’t get its debt and deficit problems corrected, there’ll be no need for the Americans to have a foreign policy.”

“This is the first change of power in 12 years, and a lot of people have forgotten just how messy the transition can be,” noted historian Wallace.

Commentator Joffe said: “One of America’s great strengths is that it is a country with a steep learning curve. I just hope this Administration is a fast learner.”

Times staff writers Michael A. Hiltzik in Moscow, Sam Jameson in Tokyo, Michael Parks in Jerusalem and William Tuohy in London, and Times special correspondent Iva Drapalova in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed to this article.