MISSION TO BALKANS : House Freshmen Cut Foreign Policy Class : Congress: The post-Cold War lawmakers are moved by budgets, not Bosnia. European politicians are alarmed.

In June, a visiting delegation from Europe stopped on Capitol Hill for a carefully arranged reception, one to which members of Congress had been invited to chat with top-level officials such as Malcolm Rifkind, then Britain’s defense minister.

The visitors found an empty room.

“I don’t think we expected 250 congressmen, but nobody showed up,” recalled a British diplomat.

Disappointed, Rifkind and the Dutch and Norwegian defense ministers representing the Western European Union moved on to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. All 18 senators on the panel had been invited to meet with the European delegation.

Only one appeared.

That humiliating episode underscored the changing congressional attitudes toward Europe this year. As Congress prepares to vote on President Clinton’s proposal to deploy 20,000 U.S. troops to the Balkans, one of the most important factors will be a growing skepticism on Capitol Hill about the transatlantic ties that existed during the Cold War.

These go-it-alone sentiments are strongest among the new members of the House of Representatives.

Since early this year, when many of them refused to go along with emergency aid for Mexico, the freshmen have shown an independent streak and a reluctance to follow the likes of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Dole and other veteran lawmakers are now supporting the deployment of U.S. troops to Bosnia, and that may be enough to give Clinton the congressional backing he needs.

At the same time, the Bosnia debate underscores the extent to which younger members of Congress are willing to question the principles that have guided U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II.

In recent days, the Clinton Administration has warned that if the United States does not send troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina, its action could jeopardize the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance between the United States and Western Europe.

“NATO was built on the sharing of risks and the sharing of effort,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher told members of Congress on Thursday. “We’re NATO’s largest member. We’re the core of NATO’s strength and resolve. The alliance simply cannot undertake what would be the largest mission in its history if we decline to do our share.”

Yet for some lawmakers, the Administration’s argument falls flat--because they are not sure about the value of NATO itself.

“NATO’s purpose was to fight communism, to be a counterbalance to communism,” said Rep. David Camp (R-Mich.). “And communism is not the threat it once was.”

Camp, a third-term congressman, said he has received about 100 phone calls from Michigan constituents opposed to the deployment to Bosnia and only one call supporting it.

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), one of the many freshman lawmakers who oppose the Bosnian deployment, said Thursday that she does not accept the Administration’s argument that an American refusal to send troops would jeopardize the future of NATO.

Asked whether she believes that the United States should stay in NATO itself, Myrick said, “I think that’s up for discussion.”

Alarmed European leaders view the overall climate on Capitol Hill as evidence that Congress is retreating to an era when the United States sought to avoid international involvements.

“I will not hide the fact I am very worried about the isolationism of the current American Congress,” French President Jacques Chirac said last week. “I hope President Clinton will react against this alarming tendency toward a sort of isolationism that is very dangerous for the whole world.”

The word isolationism , however, may not adequately describe Congress’ mood.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, the term referred to congressional leaders such as Sen. Robert A. Taft, who unsuccessfully opposed the formation of NATO and the stationing of U.S. troops in Europe.

But even well-known isolationists like Taft had a well-developed view of foreign policy and the United States’ role in the world.

The drift on Capitol Hill this year “is characterized neither by internationalism nor isolationism but by indifference,” said former Rep. Stephen J. Solarz of New York, who four years ago broke ranks with many of his fellow Democrats to support the George Bush Administration’s policies in the Persian Gulf War. “There’s a feeling [in Congress] now that with the end of the Cold War, there are not many vital American interests anywhere in the world.”

The changes in the approach to foreign policy are to some extent an outgrowth of the huge turnover in Congress.

More than 180 members of the House--nearly half of its membership--were elected in the last two elections. Together, they make up the largest bloc of new members on Capitol Hill since the elections of 1946 and ‘48, during the upheavals that followed World War II.

All of these new lawmakers started their terms of office after the breakup of the Soviet Union, making them the first post-Cold War generation on Capitol Hill.

“The difference between the freshmen and the people who have been here [in Congress] for a while is that we’re closer to the people,” said Myrick, the former mayor of Charlotte. “We’re more responsive to what they want to do.

“For the past two or three weeks, we have been receiving phone calls and letters” about Bosnia, she said. “Today we got our first phone call in support. Before that, there were none. People are saying: ‘Don’t do it. . . .’

“The moms of this country don’t want their kids to be sacrificial lambs.”

This year, many of the new members of Congress have become involved in foreign policy issues primarily as part of their efforts to alter the direction of domestic policy.

The new lawmakers have supported efforts on Capitol Hill to reduce foreign aid and to abolish or reorganize foreign policy agencies such as the U.S. Information Agency and the Agency for International Development. Many of them have also voted over the last few months to restrict the President’s authority to send troops to Bosnia.

Jeremy Rosner of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has studied congressional behavior on foreign policy issues, contended that the new members of Congress view foreign policy largely through the lens of domestic concerns.

“These are not people who came to Congress to work on foreign policy,” Rosner said. “If some of them are more extreme than other congressmen about foreign aid, it’s because they came to town to shrink the deficit. If some of them are more extreme about reorganizing the State Department, it’s because they came to town to shrink the size of the federal government.

“Everyone’s looking for the new strategic doctrine for foreign policy that will replace [Cold War] containment [of the Soviet Union],” he said. “Well, I think we’ve got a new doctrine. It’s called deficit reduction.”

Some members of Congress who are opposing the deployment to the Balkans have insisted that they still believe in NATO and the preservation of U.S. ties with Europe.

“I think our role in NATO is very significant, and we should continue to exercise that role. I am not one of those who feel that America should be putting the wall back up,” said California Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands).

Nevertheless, Lewis, a House member since 1978, maintained that “the Europeans have a responsibility to provide the leadership here. It is their region. If they’d have taken the responsibility early, we would not be in this position today.”

Lewis said he will vote against any U.S. mission to the Balkans.