NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Zigzag on Balkans May Underscore His Unease

Last Wednesday, as Air Force One carried President Clinton through clear skies to Colorado for a speech at the Air Force Academy, his aides worked feverishly at a typewriter aboard the plane to draft a last-minute statement of U.S. policy on Bosnia-Herzegovina.

That morning’s newspapers reported that Clinton was considering putting ground troops in Bosnia to help move U.N. peacekeeping troops out of danger. Members of Congress, taken by surprise, were calling the White House in alarm. “We had to say something to answer the inquiries . . . to make it clear what the policy was,” one aide recalled.

But the statement Clinton made that day--saying he would consider “a temporary use of our ground forces” to help the United Nations “reconfigure” its force--was anything but clear. It frightened members of Congress, confused the public and dismayed some of Clinton’s own aides--including Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, several officials said.

Three days later, stung by congressional criticism and the downing of a U.S. jet over Bosnia, Clinton made a new policy statement--this time making clear that he would send troops only “as a last resort” if the United Nations needs “an emergency extraction.”

“That was our policy all along,” a senior Pentagon official said, relieved.

But the damage to Clinton’s credibility had been done. “The American people have been hearing from this Administration not any clear and steady signal, but the wavering notes of an uncertain trumpet,” said Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), the panel’s senior Democrat and a key Clinton ally, agreed: “Not everybody was singing from the same hymn sheet. I think there is some confusion.”

And the episode exposed embarrassing rifts in the Administration. On Monday, in a classic example of Washington finger-pointing, several officials outside the White House deliberately identified White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake as the principal author of the Colorado statement that flopped. “It was being handled by Tony and it was drafted by Tony,” one official said.

But others defended the national security adviser. “Everybody’s piling on Tony . . . but there were plenty of cooks for that paragraph,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. “To listen to some people, you’d think it was produced by immaculate conception.”

Indeed, he noted, Lake was handicapped by an odd fact: He was not at the meeting where Clinton decided on the conditions for offering ground troops and so was not completely conversant with the nuances of the policy he was writing about.

But Lake’s pen was not the last to touch the Bosnia statement. Clinton’s was.

As the President and his national security adviser shuttled to the air academy aboard a Marine helicopter, Clinton was still tinkering with his speech, as he habitually does.

And Clinton, unlike Lake, did attend the meeting last Tuesday where he approved the idea of offering ground troops in case of emergency.

As a rule, White House officials do not criticize the President. Asked whether Clinton was responsible for the mistake, McCurry and others stoutly insisted that it was not a mistake. It “was a very clear articulation of the President’s policy . . . and it encouraged the Europeans to keep their troops in Bosnia,” McCurry said. “That was not a bad piece of diplomacy.”

But that was not how Christopher and Perry saw it at the time, other officials said. Christopher, traveling in Europe last week, telephoned Lake aboard Air Force One to argue that Clinton should avoid making any statement about troops, lest it seem to commit the United States to too much. “That was just unrealistic,” a White House official said. “We had to say something.”

Perry, who did not see Clinton’s statement until after it was made, thought the speech was imprecise and failed to say that the United States would offer ground troops only to help U.N. units in danger, another official said.

And senior members of Congress weren’t warned what the President would say. Hamilton, who wanted to lend Clinton some public support, asked the White House for a copy of the Colorado speech the day it was given--and never got one, an aide said.

Clinton’s embarrassing zigzag on Bosnia points to a longstanding problem: The President still has something of a tin ear for foreign policy. “He just doesn’t feel sure of himself the way he does on domestic issues,” an aide acknowledged.

As a result, the President has inflicted a series of wounds on himself on Bosnia and other issues, making major policy pronouncements only to reverse course within days.

“The problem is inconsistency,” said Hodding Carter III, who served as State Department spokesman in the Democratic administration of President Jimmy Carter. “This is a situation where the public is up for grabs, but it requires you to sustain a steady conversation about foreign policy, even though you may be taking considerable heat. But Clinton gets spooked by events or by poll results and pulls the plug on his own policy.”

An Administration official argued that Clinton labors under the handicap of shaky public confidence in his ability to handle foreign policy, because his experience in the field is scanty. In a crisis, “there’s no reservoir of credibility,” he said.

In the case of the Bosnia policy, the immediate political crisis for the White House now appears over: Clinton has wrestled his policy back to where his aides say it was supposed to be all along.

The use of U.S. ground troops is “a remote, indeed highly unlikely, event,” the President says.

Although Clinton has stepped back from a precipice, he is no closer than before to a successful long-range strategy in the Balkan war--leaving him hostage to events, a reactive position that could deal him one crisis after another.

“The problem is the same problem we’ve had on Bosnia since the [George] Bush Administration: You cannot keep peace in an environment where people want to make war,” a senior official complained. “The world community isn’t going to go to the Bosnian Muslims and tell them: ‘Tough luck, you lost.’ So we have to make do with half-measures, and hope for the best.”

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Clinton on Bosnia

A review of some of President Clinton’s statements on Bosnia over the past three years:

“I would be guided [in the Balkans] . . . by what our European allies think and what kind of consensus we could get through the United Nations. I wouldn’t rule out [committing U.S. troops] if it were part of the United Nations peacekeeping force and if it were to enforce a cease-fire.”

June 4, 1992

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“We had said we would act if requested to do so. We have now done so and will do so again if we are requested.”

April 11, 1994... after U.S. jet fighters participated in NATO air attack on Bosnian Serb targets

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“Let me be clear about our objective. Working with our allies, the Russians and others, we must help the warring parties in Bosnia to reach a negotiated settlement. To do that, we must make the Serbs pay a higher price for continued violence so it will be in their own interest more clearly to return to the negotiating table.”

April 21, 1994

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“If what we are doing doesn’t work, then I will consider other options. . . . The Bosnian Serbs should not doubt NATO’s willingness to act.”

April 23, 1994

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“We cannot solve every such outburst of civil strife or militant nationalism simply by sending in our forces. We cannot turn away from them. But our interests are not sufficiently at stake in so many of them to justify a commitment of our folks.” In Bosnia, the interests are not weighty enough to “warrant our unilateral involvement, but they do demand that we help to lead a way to a workable peace agreement if one can be achieved.”

May 26, 1994

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“We have obligations, commitments to our NATO allies and I do not believe we should, we must not, leave them in the lurch. . . . So if necessary, and after consultation with the Congress, I believe we should be prepared to assist NATO if it decides to meet a request from the United Nations . . . for help in a withdrawal or in a reconfiguration and a strengthening of its forces.”

June 1, 1995

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“I have decided that, if a U.N. unit needs an emergency extraction, we would assist after consulting with Congress. This would be a limited, temporary operation.”

June 3, 1995