Furor Could Put Foreign Issues on Back Burner

In a world with a lone superpower, the sexual misconduct furor facing President Clinton potentially endangers vital U.S. foreign policy challenges, including the standoff with Iraq, and may in turn have a ripple effect on countries around the world, say current and former U.S. officials.

“Sadly, the damage to this presidency overseas is already clear,” a senior Clinton administration official said.

The immediate problem is the showdown with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, which on Friday reached the most serious juncture since the 1991 Persian Gulf War when the chief U.N. weapons inspector admitted that the U.N. could no longer do its job of searching out weapons of mass destruction.

But the White House is also scheduled to make imminent decisions or take action on five other issues that would be endangered by a weakened presidency or a diversion of the president’s attention. They are the Mideast peace process, the Asian economic crisis, U.S.-Iranian relations, aid to Russia and fast-track diplomacy.

Anthony Lake, national security advisor during Clinton’s first term, said in an interview Sunday that the crisis need not weaken the U.S. ability to deal with Iraq or any other issue “unless we let it. He is president of the United States, and the only thing that could weaken him is if we begin to act here at home in a way that would make it harder for him to act on other foreign policy issues.”

Lake said he does not believe that Clinton’s moral or political standing has been hurt abroad. The danger, he said, is “that we could worry too much about impact on our foreign policy.”

But other officials from both parties and from current and past administrations offered a different view. The threat to U.S. foreign policy will increase the longer the controversy goes unresolved, they said.

“If he lingers and this becomes a constitutional crisis as well as a political crisis, then it’s very, very serious for American foreign policy,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a senior National Security Council director in the Reagan administration, now a senior fellow at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom.

“The bottom line is that the weaker the president, the more stymied he is going to be in taking decisive action, particularly that might involve the use of force,” Kemp said.

On Iraq, the administration is now poised to take military action unless Hussein stops obstructing U.N. disarmament efforts. This is one issue on which the White House faces no significant domestic opposition--except concern that the scope and timing of action might be affected.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who supports military action, expressed concern Sunday about the president’s mind-set. “Is he in any condition to make the right call? I’ve seen him go ahead and do things that are important to the country when he was under duress before, but you know [the uproar] has got to be a problem . . . a distraction,” he said on CBS-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

The controversy is already being exploited abroad, as demonstrated by the Iraqi media over the weekend. “To keep the media busy with something other than his sex scandal, the American president may start a foolish military action by attacking Iraq,” said Babil, a paper owned by Hussein’s son, Uday.

Although Democrats and Republicans dismiss that as ridiculous, they concede that such sentiments play on suspicions of the U.S. in the Arab and Islamic worlds--and could be used to justify subsequent anti-American actions after any military action against Iraq.

Other issues on which the president faces obstacles:

* Middle East: After years of frustration, President Clinton last week launched the strongest peace initiative with Israel and the Palestinians since he became president by offering his own proposals to break their stalemate. The United States is no longer simply playing messenger. Now, however, the president may find it more difficult to follow through.

“The current situation weakens his hand on the peace process because he’s weakened domestically,” said Richard Haas, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and a former staff member on the Bush administration National Security Council.

“He’d be unlikely to try to pressure Israel now, for example, because he can’t afford to alienate any core political constituency,” Haas said.

* Iran: Insiders fear the quiet policy review President Clinton initiated after Iran elected a reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, could be frozen without the leadership that would be critical to convince Americans and Iranians to end two decades of hostile attitudes.

“For Iranians who are more militant, it will add to their rhetoric about corruption and immorality in the West,” said John Esposito, head of Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, who plans to visit Iran soon as part of Khatami’s new cultural exchanges.

* Asia: Serious presidential persuasion is considered critical in winning reluctant congressional approval of an IMF bailout of Asia’s free-falling economies.

“A weakened president will have difficulty putting the usual heat on Congress,” said Donald McHenry, U.N. ambassador during the Carter administration. “He can’t threaten or woo them as he could in normal circumstances. Joe Congressman may no longer be as interested in currying favor with the president.”

* Russia: The House passed legislation last year cutting off economic aid to Moscow unless Russia severs all contacts with Iran on its missile program. Without presidential intervention, a similar measure is likely to pass the Senate, endangering economic assistance to Russia’s fragile democracy.

* Fast-track diplomacy: In late 1997, legislation the president badly wanted that would speed up the approval of trade pacts was deferred until this year. Now, it may be delayed further.