Secretary Of Shhhhh!

By J.F.O. MCALLISTER WASHINGTON

Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State are an odd couple. The President has never met a crowd he believed impervious to his smarts and charm; he is never more alive than in front of the cameras as the Oprah of health care and unemployment. Warren Christopher, a natural introvert old enough to be Clinton's father, glides into a room as silently as a monk. His gravelly monotone and wrinkled poker face give nothing away, his mobile eyes are friendly but curiously unreadable. His Establishment-lawyer virtues come not from the era of MTV but from the days of Father Knows Best: diligence, discipline, modesty, probity. "Very finely made," says a foreign minister of Christopher, "like an English suit." But Clinton and Christopher share one crucial characteristic: neither displays many strong convictions about what American foreign policy should accomplish, except to please voters. On the bridge of the world's only superpower, neither the captain nor the executive officer knows precisely what course to set.

U.S. foreign policy looks "passive and unbelievably amateurish" to nervous allies in Europe, says a senior U.S. diplomat. That is downright scary to leaders of client countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which must be able to count on Washington in a tight spot -- and an opening for those, like Saddam Hussein, who would love to make Clinton's life harder. Last week the appearance of disarray only heightened when Christopher had to disavow lunchtime remarks made to reporters by Under Secretary Peter Tarnoff, the State Department's chief operating officer. Tarnoff's principal sin appeared to be telling unpalatable truths: that the end of the cold war and economic troubles at home required a smaller world role for Washington, which would expect more from its allies and not give the world so firm a lead. This approach "is not different by accident but by design," said Tarnoff. Moving with uncharacteristic speed, Christopher promptly telephoned Washington reporters to insist that the U.S. world role is undiminished. "When it is necessary, we will act unilaterally to protect our interests," the Secretary later elaborated in a Minnesota speech. "Where collective responses are appropriate, we will lead in mobilizing such responses. But make no mistake: we will lead." A disgusted U.S. diplomat observed, "This proves that not even the grownups in this Administration know what they're doing."

The Administration has enjoyed some successes. Clinton's team pulled together a sizable U.S. aid package for Russia, galvanized the G-7 industrialized countries to follow suit, backed Yeltsin during his referendum campaign and recently eased tensions with Ukraine. After a rough start, Christopher has revived the Middle East peace talks.

But critics have much evidence to make the case that Clinton conducts a feckless foreign policy. As a candidate, Clinton promised he would send a peace envoy to Northern Ireland; renew most-favored-nation trading status for China only if Beijing met tough conditions on human rights; and reverse the practice of sending back all Haitian boat people, including refugees entitled to asylum. He has bent or broken all three vows.

That vacillation fits a pattern. On the main foreign problem of his short tenure -- what to do about Bosnia -- the President has lurched forward and backtracked, leaving friend, foe and U.S. diplomats frustrated and angry. He began his term promising to help the Bosnian government fight Serb aggression. Then he agreed to use U.S. ground troops to enforce the Vance-Owen peace plan, which he and Christopher had previously denounced as a reward to the Serbs. Then, after weeks of public hand-wringing over Serb gains and promises to get tough, he settled on "lift and strike": lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government that keeps it outgunned 10 to 1 by Serb and Croat forces, and bombing Serbian artillery that is pounding Muslim towns filled with refugees. But he did nothing to sell this plan to the Congress or the public -- he did not even publicly admit adopting it until after it was rejected -- and he dispatched Christopher with orders to "consult" the Europeans rather than securing an agreement with them in advance. The U.S. then backed down when the Europeans balked.

Clinton seemed to hold his finger to the wind before deciding what to do. When polls showed that Americans were uneasy about deeper U.S. involvement, he acceded to a French proposal to create U.N.-monitored "safe havens" for Bosnian Muslims, protected by mostly European troops backed by limited American air power. Only the day before, U.S. officials had likened the havens to big concentration camps, and Clinton himself had called them "shooting galleries" for lightly armed peacekeepers. Last week neither NATO nor the U.N. could even agree on how the safe areas would be run and how much protection they would need.

A retired U.S. ambassador argues that "if Clinton succeeds domestically, this won't make any difference." He is probably right, but it is still costly to Clinton to appear unreliable to foreign countries. His lack of resolve will hardly inspire them to join in future risky ventures with the U.S.

The main blame for all this lies with Clinton, who treats foreign policy as the spinach he must swallow to enjoy the rest of his job. In early May, when the Serbs refused to follow the U.S. peace script, the President even whined that "I felt really badly because I don't want to have to spend any more time on ((Bosnia)) than is absolutely necessary, because what I got elected to do was to let America look at our own problems . . ."

A President who would rather be elsewhere can delegate authority to subordinates. Clinton, however, has meticulously designed his Administration to answer to him, not to the Cabinet barons who plagued his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter. He personally approved every State Department official ranked Assistant Secretary and above, some 30 people. "He's his own foreign policy guru," says a senior adviser. Having laid down power lines of authority that all lead to the White House, Clinton does not know how to set them humming.

Christopher is the obvious standby generator. But "the idea that you're going to get independent thinking from Warren Christopher is ridiculous," says a Clinton adviser. He is a perfect No. 2, having served President Johnson as Deputy Attorney General and Carter as Deputy Secretary of State, where his main job was to negotiate the intricate deal releasing U.S. hostages in Iran. Christopher has spent the past 12 years running a large Los Angeles-based law firm and has had to scramble to learn his current brief. Clinton picked him as a virtuous graybeard who looked the part and could work collegially with the rest of the national-security team, confident he could make up for Christopher's debits as leader and advocate.

So far the strategy is not working. On his European trip to sell a tougher Bosnia policy, "Christopher's delivery was monotone, almost machine-like, leaving the impression that he had no views one way or the other," says a senior British diplomat. "He appears to be a conveyor of information, not a decision maker," an opinion echoed by U.S. legislators about his Capitol Hill performances. A subordinate likens Christopher's role on the top-level principals committee, which has met frequently to set policy on Bosnia, to that of a "good fielder, lousy hitter" -- sound but uninspired. Richard Haass, a National Security Council official under Bush, argues that the fundamental problem is Christopher's lawyerly world view: "He's a mediator, used to a game with rules. He believes that if you look hard enough, you will find a common denominator out of which you can gradually construct some kind of edifice." That approach is producing some results in the highly structured Middle East peace talks, but elsewhere "it's very reactive," says Haass. "It's also easily overwhelmed by evil, and there is evil in this world."

The conundrum for an Administration that considers foreign affairs a sideshow is that its policies require deeper thought and more salesmanship now that the communist menace has evaporated. Clinton is still looking for an easy grade on international studies: that the U.N. will coalesce around U.S. preferences, that there will be obvious connections between his foreign forays and voters' wallets, that foreign crises won't mess up his watch. But at home ^ and abroad, as Bosnia shows, consensus on hard problems means tough choices and firm leadership. The world expects and wants that from Washington, a legacy Clinton must live up to or risk squandering.

With reporting by William Mader/London and Bruce van Voorst/Washington