Clinton Broadens His Foreign Policy Horizons

In 1992, a fresh-faced President-elect Clinton came to office convinced that in a post-Cold War world, foreign affairs were really all about economics--a matter of opening markets and freeing trade to create jobs for Americans.

Today, four years wiser in the wake of several messy international crises and some stinging criticism about his lack of preparedness, the newly reelected president’s view of foreign affairs has expanded dramatically.

Certainly Clinton will keep a strong economic dimension in his second-term foreign policy. In a news conference last week, he directly tied the country’s success at creating more than 10 million new jobs to expanded foreign trade and the economic opportunities it creates.

But he also talked of other goals, such as expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, solidifying relations with Russia, pushing efforts to build peace in the Middle East, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland and countering new security threats arising from international crime and terrorism.

Last month in Detroit, in his only major speech of the campaign devoted to foreign affairs, Clinton sketched an exceptionally broad vision of the United States’ goals and responsibilities over the next four years.

“At the end of the Cold War, the United States truly is the world’s indispensable nation,” he told his audience. “Through our size, our strength, our relative wealth and also through the power of our example, America has a unique ability to shape a world of greater security and prosperity, peace and freedom.”

White House advisors fill in this vision with a concrete set of priorities for Clinton’s second four years. Among them:

* Completing the first phase of a planned eastward expansion of NATO, reviving the Middle East peace process and building strong, stable relationships with Russia and China.

* Preparing for future humanitarian crises. Here, the proposal of an African Crisis Response Force, an idea floated well before the current wave of fighting erupted in eastern Zaire, is a model. It would be a force drawn from countries in the area, trained and equipped with the help of richer nations, including the United States. But it would deploy under international and regional--not American--auspices.

* Emphasizing the United States’ role as a peacemaker. Whether it is in Bosnia, the Middle East or Northern Ireland or among feuding Kurdish factions, the United States is capable of bringing warring factions together around a table in a way no other nation can. Recognizing this, Clinton is expected to be more active in offering American mediating help.

* Countering growing unconventional security threats. These range from new terrorist groups, rogue nations and weapons proliferation to drugs and organized crime. Here, action already launched by the administration--including attempts to isolate countries such as Iran, Libya and Cuba with trade embargoes--appears to have brought few visible results aside from heightening tension with key allies in Europe. Still, there seems no let-up planned.

* Pushing for freer trade and more open markets.

Nancy Soderberg, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, set out specific targets in remarks last week. “We must now work to set forth the blueprints to achieve the ambitious goals of free trade areas in Latin America by 2005 and in Asia by the year 2020,” she said.

In part, Clinton’s expanded interest in foreign affairs stems from first-term successes. In his first four years, he has personally engaged in work for a Middle East peace, establishing a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before his assassination last year.

Elsewhere, Clinton has told aides that his day in Northern Ireland in December, when he was cheered by both Roman Catholics and Protestants at a peace rally in central Belfast, was the best day of his presidency.

And as Clinton is increasingly targeted by investigations into areas such as campaign finance and Whitewater, international statesmanship may look even more inviting to him.

Despite Clinton’s ambitious second-term foreign policy agenda and prospects that he will devote more of his own time to it, making genuine progress will not be easy. Many of those issues already perceived as first-term achievements--the peace agreements in Bosnia and the Middle East or the establishment of democracy in Haiti--remain extremely tentative.

If they unravel, the administration’s energies could be consumed more by trying to recoup lost gains than by making breakthroughs.

Perhaps an even greater danger to his foreign policy plans, however, lurks closer to home, in the composition of the newly elected Congress, a body that veteran members believe will be even more resistant to Clinton’s agenda than its predecessor.

A number of global-minded lawmakers such as Sens. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), William S. Cohen (R-Me.) and Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) are stepping down, leaving much less support for foreign policy initiatives that cost money.

“Congress must understand that achieving our foreign policy objectives will require more money and additional talented personnel,” warned Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), one of the Senate’s most respected voices on foreign affairs. “Our international operations are now underfunded and understaffed.”

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World View

The Clinton administration’s foreign policy goals include:

* Completing first phase of plans to expand NATO, reviving Middle East peace process and building strong relationships with Russia and China.

* Preparing for future humanitarian crises.

* Emphasizing the U.S. role as a peacemaker.

* Countering growing unconventional security threats--from new terrorist groups and weapons proliferation to drugs.

* Pushing for more open markets.