NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton’s Agility Makes Up for Inexperience

The opening session of President Clinton’s first full-scale meeting of the Western Alliance was just getting under way, and the young American leader was trying a bit of banter with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

“I was thinking of you last night, Helmut,” said Clinton, who has little experience on the crags of world summitry. He began to describe a Brussels television broadcast he had seen about sumo wrestling, the pastime of 350-pound Japanese men.

Kohl, 290 pounds and conscious of his weight, looked up quickly, but Clinton danced back from the edge of the diplomatic cliff by turning a seeming blunder into a graceful compliment. “You and I are the biggest people here, and we are still 100 pounds too light” for the practice of sumo, Clinton clarified.

Kohl laughed heartily, and the NATO alliance breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Throughout the opening rounds of the summit, Clinton has repeatedly displayed that ability to overcome inexperience with agility. In the process, he has done more than avoid embarrassment and repair his previously frayed relations with Europe.

He has summoned forth a surprisingly unified and hopeful attitude among members of the sometimes fractious alliance as they pass through a historic transition: With the Cold War over and other concerns surging to the fore, this has turned out to be the summit at which Europe for the first time emerged as a full and equal partner instead of the valued but subordinate gaggle of allies it had been for more than four decades.

The transition was laden with risks. Europeans were uncertain about Clinton’s ability and commitment, fearful that the end of the Cold War meant an end to American involvement on the Continent. At the same time, they well remembered the stubborn reluctance of past U.S. Presidents to share their pride of place at the head of the table.

Yet Clinton, in no small part through strength of personality and a knack for not rubbing his partners the wrong way, has led the North Atlantic Treaty Organization through the process of adopting new policies that recognize Europe’s new place in the alliance--even its right to take the lead--without friction or fractiousness.

And this at sessions that some predicted would be marred by open discord among NATO’s 16 members over policy on Bosnia-Herzegovina, the entry of new members from Eastern Europe and other issues.

Of course, Clinton has been eager to accommodate the Europeans because of a convergence of interests. Americans, preoccupied with domestic problems and yearning to shift defense costs, want the Old World to shoulder more of the work of collective security.

Still, others might not have eased into the Americans’ new role with as much grace as Clinton has shown, the European leaders said Monday.

At times, Clinton’s open, uncomplicated, upbeat style seemed almost visibly to pull together the 16 leaders in a way that has been distinctly lacking in an alliance prone to transatlantic strain in the past.

If there were lingering doubts before the summit about Clinton’s “Partnership for Peace” initiative offering eventual NATO membership to East European countries, the President appeared to clear them up in his comments to the opening session Monday morning.

“I haven’t heard a single critical word this morning,” said a senior German official, himself surprised by the amity of the affair.

Clinton gave America’s blessing to independent European defense planning--an idea called the European Security and Defense Identity that will permit European NATO members to plan and take military action independently of the United States if they wish.

The warmth he displayed in welcoming the initiative seemed to surprise several veteran European defense specialists who recalled the deep suspicion with which the United States once viewed such ideas.

Efforts by some of America’s NATO allies to revive the long-dormant Western European Union (WEU) defense group during the mid-1980s were actively discouraged by the Ronald Reagan Administration and, later, accepted only reluctantly by former President George Bush.

In Brussels on Monday, Clinton welcomed a strong WEU and even proposed offering NATO equipment and logistics support to independent European operations if they should be required.

“It’s a change in policy and a change in spirit that can only be welcomed,” a German official said.

Noting these developments, along with Clinton’s reaffirmation of a pledge to keep 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe for the foreseeable future, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd bubbled to reporters, “NATO is clearly alive and well and taking up a new lease on life.”

In part, Clinton has been lucky that the timing of his initiatives seems to fit well with the interests of America’s European partners. But his team also seems to have sold his policies well and his infectious optimism has worked to enhance this success.

In deferring to the seniority of elder statesmen such as French President Francois Mitterrand and Kohl, Clinton also appears to have avoided the friction experienced by some American leaders who had to overcome initial rejection by more experienced European leaders quick to sense a “we know better” attitude in Washington.

Mitterrand’s spokesman, Jean Musitelli, for example, noted that during a bilateral meeting Monday, Clinton personally thanked the French president for his cooperation during the final phases of the difficult world trade talks--a gesture that came despite the fact that the final days of those negotiations were characterized by bitter French resistance to several U.S. initiatives.

Clinton’s abilities could face a more severe challenge this week in Moscow, though that is not considered likely.

But so far, by most accounts, this President has masterfully used his abilities as a quick study, his personal charm--and the low expectations that must accompany a President who fiercely proclaims his domestic agenda as his first priority.

“To the extent summitry is brokerage and personal relationships, he can do well,” said Michael Beschloss, a diplomatic historian.

This week, as he heads into back-to-back meetings with some of his European counterparts, Clinton enjoys a relatively strong domestic position compared to the other leaders. Although in Washington questions nag about Clinton’s investments in an Arkansas land deal, the U.S. economy is stronger and Clinton’s personal popularity is higher than that of Kohl, Mitterrand or British Prime Minister John Major.

Above all, it is Clinton’s youth and his image of openness that most seem to have captivated the European public.

A Brussels taxi driver, John Callewaert, realizing he had landed an American passenger, announced that his 13-year-old son had shaken Clinton’s hand Sunday evening in the city’s majestic Grand’ Place and now wanted to write the President a letter.

“Clinton goes to the people, he has a young family, he knows my problems,” Callewaert said. He pulled a piece of paper off the dashboard of his car, asking: “Is this right? Is this right?”

Carefully printed on the paper was an address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C., U.S.A.