TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/122192/12219927.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 12.6 KB | 264 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 28

OPERATION RESTORE HOPE

Today, Somalia ...


. . . Tomorrow, why not Bosnia? The success of Bush's mission
could put pressure on Clinton to intervene elsewhere.

By BRUCE W. NELAN - With reporting by Michael Duffy/Little Rock
and J.F.O. McAllister and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    True to his campaign promise, Bill Clinton resolutely kept
his focus on domestic affairs when he announced the first
appointments to his Administration; they were all members of his
economic team. But much as the President-elect might have wished
it otherwise, the world outside was already closing in on him.
Like most newcomers to the Oval Office, Clinton is quickly
learning the power of international events to set the
President's agenda.

    Foreign policy has leapfrogged to the top. In Somalia, the
Marines are moving more slowly than expected to extend their
security zone. Relief workers in the hinterlands are clamoring
for rescue from attacks by armed gangs. At the U.N.,
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali made new demands on the
U.S., insisting that American troops remain in Somalia until
they have disarmed the warring clans and restored some central
authority. And in Brussels, the NATO allies are looking once
again at the possibility of using armed force against Serbian
aggressors in the remnants of Yugoslavia.

    In just a month, Clinton will be expected to have not only
solutions to these specific problems but also a full-blown
foreign policy that begins to define the post-cold war role of
the U.S. "He knows that he's going to do that, for better or
worse, by what he does or doesn't do," says a Clinton adviser.
The startlingly new way American forces are being used in
Somalia -- for humanitarian purposes, with no national interest
at stake -- has instantly opened the debate about where the new
President, with his activist conception of government and
criticism of Bush for holding back on Bosnia and Somalia, will
be inclined to take the country. Rather than inoculating the
U.S. against having to do something in Bosnia, the Somalia
venture has only intensified the pressure to apply the same
moral approach there.

    From the beginning of the 1992 campaign, Clinton
challenged certain aspects of George Bush's foreign policy but
chose to concentrate on the economy. He has followed the same
pattern during the transition, publicly approving Bush's
decision to send U.S. troops to Somalia. Bush is still in office
and Clinton without responsibility, so that seemed the proper
path and the safest one politically. Nevertheless, the accretion
of decisions in Somalia and the Balkans may already be serious
enough to box in the new Administration from the day it takes
office.

    Clinton's foreign-policy advisers say they know they will
inherit unsolved issues and hot spots. But, one says firmly, "we
should not and cannot conduct foreign policy between now and
Jan. 20. The world needs to have no ambiguity about who's
President until then." Clinton and his team are regularly
informed, but not consulted, by the White House on major
decisions: a secure phone allows National Security Adviser Brent
Scowcroft to keep in contact with Clinton aides Sandy Berger and
Nancy Soderberg. There are no complaints on either side about
the one-way dialogue. "There's no reason why he should be in on
day-to-day decisions," says another Clinton adviser. "So long
as he can understand what the implications are for his own
Administration, he has what he needs."

    Clinton was clearly aware last week that he will be pulled
willy-nilly into foreign affairs. "The dividing line between
foreign and domestic policy is increasingly blurred," he said
at a press conference in Washington. "Our Administration will
be forced to spend a lot of time on foreign policy whether we
want to or not." In careful increments, he doled out clues to
his thinking that were consistent with his campaign posture as
a global activist but circumscribed to remain generally in line
with Bush. Clinton acknowledged that a prolonged stay in Somalia
might become unavoidable, broadening the mission from merely
secure to "maintainable" supply lines. He noted that
establishing a political infrastructure will take even longer.
And as the West wrestled with ways to restore some hope in
Bosnia, Clinton said that "anything we can do to try to turn up
the heat and reduce the carnage is worth trying."

    As the days go by, Clinton's team must quickly put some
detail on these bare outlines. Team members are pondering the
mess they will face in Somalia. By Washington's definition,
U.S. troops will leave when they have made the country safe for
relief efforts. In a letter to Congress last week, Bush said
American soldiers would be there "only as long as necessary to
establish a secure environment" for humanitarian efforts. "We
believe that prolonged operations will not be necessary," Bush
said.

    That position does not coincide with Boutros-Ghali's. He
has said all along that the U.S. will have to disarm the
warring clans in order to create a "secure environment." The
U.S. ducked that tricky question in writing its vague rules of
engagement, which leave it up to local commanders to decide how
much disarming to do. Now the Secretary-General is demanding
that before going home American troops not only seize the Somali
clans' arsenals but also remove the mines that have been laid
in the north of the country and set up a military police force
to preserve order.

    Only then, Boutros-Ghali says, will the U.N. provide
peacekeepers to take over. Policymakers in Washington maintain
that this is not what they agreed to and not what the relevant
Security Council resolution provides. When Secretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger first made the offer of troops to the U.N.
the day before Thanksgiving, says a senior U.S. official, the
terms were unambiguous: "a narrow, limited mandate for our
forces." Now, says the official, "Boutros-Ghali is moving the
goalposts."

    This will make things very difficult for Clinton. No
follow-on U.N. peacekeeping force can be put into Somalia
without Boutros-Ghali's cooperation, and an American pullout
without such a U.N. presence would be a disaster. "We may be
looking at a very long commitment, measured in years, not
months," says a Clinton aide.

    At the same time, the pressure to expand U.S. attention to
Bosnia is building. The Bush Administration, which long
considered Bosnia militarily untouchable, may be moving toward
some form of action there. Powerful voices, including former
Secretaries of State Cyrus Vance and George Shultz, have been
demanding that the U.S. do something. "We have the assets," said
Shultz. "We have the bases. We should get about the task." Even
Ronald Reagan called for intervention "for humanitarian
purposes." As Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers told his
parliament, "It is downright scandalous that there is
intervention in Somalia but not in Yugoslavia."

    Pressure is also coming from the Islamic countries
concerned about their fellow Muslims. The Islamic Conference has
warned that if there is no significant international effort to
help the Bosnians by Jan. 15, its member states could break the
embargo on their own and supply Bosnian Muslims with arms. They
are also considering sending Islamic troops to fight the Serbs,
which could threaten to draw Muslim Albania and Orthodox Greece
into the struggle.

    Clinton has consistently pushed Bush to do more to help
Bosnia. Last week he said that he understood why Bush did not
want to send ground troops to Bosnia and that the operation in
Somalia was easier and cheaper. "But," he said, "there may be
other things that can be done."

    He might be about to get his wish. The Security Council
ruled last week that Serbian aggression in Bosnia threatens
"international peace and security" and thus could be subject to
military action directed by the U.N. In Brussels, NATO defense
ministers followed up with agreement to "consider positively"
any U.N. request to end the fighting in Bosnia and keep it from
spreading. `If they should turn to NATO," said its
Secretary-General, Manfred Worner, "we would not say no."

    U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney went to the NATO
meeting primed to urge armed enforcement of a no-fly order over
Bosnia issued last Oct. 9, a measure Clinton called for during
the campaign. Surveillance planes have watched ever since as
hundreds of Serbian flights violated the order. Cheney told the
allies that using air power to stop it was not so much a
military question as one requiring "political decisions about
what you would hope to achieve."

    Britain and France oppose shooting down Serbian planes for
fear of bringing retribution on their peacekeeping troops in
Bosnia. But officials in Washington predict that "an enforced
no-fly is now inevitable." Eagleburger, who is to attend NATO
meetings this week, will be putting it forward as a formal
proposal. After much discussion, it is likely to be accepted.

    Nor is it necessarily all that will be done. The State
Department is discussing a "decision memo" to rescind the
embargo on arms shipments to Bosnia's Muslims. Scowcroft may be
leaning in that direction too. The Pentagon brass, which counts
heavily in the process, opposes the idea. Once arms shipments
begin, they fear, there will be calls for the U.S. to provide
training for the newly armed fighters, which might mean American
advisers on the ground -- and that would start the U.S. down the
slippery slope. Still, says a senior official, "I could see both
of those steps" -- enforcing the flight ban and ending the arms
embargo -- "by the end of this Administration."

    NATO's own planners have drafted preliminary contingency
plans for air patrols to back up the no-fly order -- and further
military actions like air strikes on Serbian artillery. British
diplomats claim the U.S. has even floated the idea of
contributing 100,000 troops to a Western force that could be
deployed to prevent the Serbs from moving next into the former
Yugoslav segments of Kosovo and Macedonia.

    Military officers in Washington deny that, and most still
argue that putting ground troops into the Balkans is
unthinkable. One senior Defense official, however, refuses to
be absolute in his denial. If Serbs march into the province of
Kosovo, which has an Albanian majority, in an attempt at "ethnic
cleansing," says the official, "all bets are off." There is
contingency planning to handle that, he confirms, just as there
is for almost any possible crisis. But he admits that "a prudent
military leadership cannot ignore the possibility this will blow
up."

    EVEN IF THE EXPLOsion does not occur, U.S. planners, like
those at NATO, are putting together blueprints for what one of
them calls "air power to compel behavior." Such plans would
provide a way to make Serbia suffer for its aggression in Bosnia
by bombing Serbia's power plants, fuel dumps, railway lines and
bridges, the kind of infrastructure war the U.S. used to soften
up Iraq. Cheney touched on this possible course at the NATO
meeting last week. "The Secretary is not proposing going ahead
with this stuff," says one of his aides, "but he wants NATO to
know our thoughts."

    Leaders of Clinton's foreign policy team feel no lack of
confidence or preparation. Every morning Clinton receives the
same CIA briefing Bush does. Although the two Presidents have
talked only once directly about Somalia, Scowcroft's calls to
Berger are frequent. There is no give and take in these calls,
no mutual formulation of policy, no horse trading. "It's a
process of information exchange rather than consultation," says
a Clinton official. Meanwhile, Little Rock has small groups at
work in each of the national security departments, preparing
memos and outlining issues. "They're talking to people and
weighing options," says a State Department official.

    When he takes command, Clinton has indicated, he will not
shrink from using American power and influence abroad. It may
well be that although the outgoing Administration has saddled
him with foreign ventures he might prefer not to have just now,
he does not disapprove of any of the steps Bush either has
taken in Somalia or seems about to take in Bosnia. If the
President-elect objected seriously to them, he could say so --
and possibly force Bush to draw back. But whether Clinton does
so or not, he no longer suggests that domestic and economic
affairs will be able to command all, or almost all, of his
attention as President.