WASHINGTON -- President Clinton departs this week on the first of two back-to-back European trips in hopes of reversing his growing reputation -- at home and abroad -- as a weak or indifferent world leader.
The events this week revolve around the 50th anniversary of D-Day, providing Mr. Clinton a rare opportunity to speak to the entire world. He was not yet born when young men from all over the United States, Britain and its Commonwealth waded ashore into the line of fire of German machine guns. Nor did he serve in the armed forces a generation later, when Americans fought in Vietnam.
But as the U.S. commander-in-chief and president of the only remaining superpower, Mr. Clinton will occupy a place of honor among the bands, speechmakers and aged soldiers who will revisit the site of their sacrifice.
White House officials expect the televised ceremonies to bolster the president's sagging approval ratings. But Mr. Clinton has a second mission on his weeklong European trip: to reassure jittery foreign leaders that he cares enough about international policy to take the risks needed to conduct it successfully.
Mr. Clinton is to meet leaders in France, Italy and Britain.
In July, he plans to attend an economic summit in Naples, Italy, and then travel to Germany and Poland. One topic sure to arise, U.S. officials say, is one that has probably done the most to undermine confidence in the Clinton administration's foreign policy: the ethnic war in Bosnia.
"My government thinks President Clinton is indecisive when it comes to Bosnia," said one Western European diplomat stationed in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Personally, I think it's because he is preoccupied with his domestic policy. That's what he was elected for and, clearly, he's already thinking about re-election."
In 1992, running against an incumbent widely respected for his conduct of foreign policy, particularly of the Persian Gulf war, Mr. Clinton and other Democratic challengers needled George Bush for focusing too much on problems abroad. Mr. Clinton said that he would focus "like a laser" on the issues relating to everyday American life, particularly the economy.
Since inauguration, however, two realities have sunk in to the Clinton team. One is that foreign policy crises cannot be wished away. The second is that many of the Bush administration positions, including those singled out by Mr. Clinton during the campaign, were easier to criticize than to correct.
Mr. Clinton rebuked Mr. Bush for returning refugees to Haiti. He spoke passionately in favor of the United States' being more aggressive in stopping the Serbs' campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia. He criticized Mr. Bush for overlooking China's labor camps and other human rights abuses.
Yet as president, Mr. Clinton sent his Justice Department into court to uphold the Bush policy on Haitian refugees. He issued threats against the Serbs in Bosnia, but little more -- and the "ethnic cleansing" continued. On Thursday, he extended the favorable trade status of China, reciting a litany of reasons identical to Mr. Bush's rationale.
Liberals disappointed
The decision on China was particularly disappointing to liberals who have championed human rights since the Carter administration.
"It was with great disappointment that I received President Clinton's decision to renew China's most-favored-nation status,"
said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat.
In Haiti, too, Mr. Clinton has appeared unwilling to take risks to nurture democracy. Although he has spoken out in favor of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a U.S. Navy ship that Mr. Clinton dispatched to that nation in October with 218 lightly armed troops as the first step toward returning him to power was turned back by a band of government-sponsored thugs on the docks in Port-au-Prince.
Recently, Mr. Clinton has been whipsawed in the other direction: A hunger strike by Washington-based activist Randall Robinson prompted Mr. Clinton to order the processing of Haitian refugees aboard ships.
Those actions have not gone unnoticed in foreign capitals. North Korean leaders have shown little fear of U.S. retaliation in taking the United States to the diplomatic brink over their nuclear weapons development program.
In nations friendlier to the United States, such actions further the perception that the United States isn't up to the task of coping with Bosnia, the area for which there has perhaps been the widest gap between U.S. words and U.S. deeds during the Clinton administration.
On May 1, 1993, a stern-looking Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher stood at the White House and vowed that "the clock is ticking" on Serbian aggression.
He then left for Europe, where he failed to rally the United States' allies. One reason, foreign diplomats say, was that Mr. Christopher signaled that the Clinton administration would not act unilaterally. "He said 'the clock was ticking' on the Serbs, but when he got to Britain, he said, 'I'm in listening mode,' " said one British foreign service officer.
"He says he wants to play a role in making peace in Bosnia, but there are no American ground forces there," said a Northern European diplomat. "There are Swedish troops in the peacekeeping force. There are Danish troops, Spanish troops -- French troops, for God's sake! Yet the only Americans are in Macedonia, where there is no conflict . . . ."
Such diplomats believe the White House is paralyzed by a fear that an unpopular foreign military adventure could jeopardize Mr. Clinton's chances for re-election.
Last week, in its annual assessment of global affairs, the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies termed the Clinton administration's foreign policy "a mess" but noted that other Western powers have not done much better.
"It was a year in which the powers in the West, and indeed a number of states elsewhere, seemed to be suffering from a serious attack of strategic arthritis," said the independent think tank. "One major problem is the reluctance of global and regional great powers to provide the necessary lead. The United States, even more than usual, does not seem to be following a steady compass."
Similar criticism has been voiced at home, too, by politicians and foreign policy experts who span the ideological spectrum.
'Temptation to speak out'
"He doesn't have the slightest idea of what this country should be doing in the post-Cold War era, and neither does his staff," said Kim R. Holmes, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The president wants to avoid any kind of entanglement that can get him into trouble, but he can't avoid the temptation to speak out. So he says things on Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia -- things he's not willing to back up -- and he gets in trouble."
In a recent speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, chairman of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, echoed that point. "We have conducted ourselves abroad with an unsteady hand," he said. "In Bosnia, blustery rhetoric faded into reluctant diplomacy. On North Korea, we have been anything but decisive."
Of course, for every country complaining that Mr. Clinton is not putting the vast military might of the United States to good use, there are those that would object to his exertion of U.S. influence.
When the president so much as protested the brutal caning of an 18-year-old American who had been charged with vandalism in Singapore, he was widely criticized in Asia for promoting Ugly Americanism.
Likewise, the Clinton administration's pressure on Japan to open its markets provoked outrage in Tokyo.
"You're damned if you do and damned if you don't," said David Wilhelm, the national Democratic chairman.
At the graduation ceremonies at the Naval Academy last Wednesday, Mr. Clinton defended his painstaking, multilateral approach. "It is not quick," he said. "It is not neat, it is not comfortable. But I am convinced, in a world of interdependence, where we must lead by working with others, it is the right path."
Earlier this month, in another defense of his foreign policy, Mr. Clinton suggested that he hadn't gotten enough credit for the things his administration has done right.
One such achievement, his advisers believe, is to nurture democracy in Russia and the former Soviet republics with a gentle hand so that would-be reformers wouldn't be portrayed as stooges of the United States. Even some administration critics credit the Clinton administration in this regard.
But all this does is underscore one pitfall of conducting foreign policy: A president hardly ever gets credit for helping prevent a crisis.
Mr. Holmes, for instance, grudgingly concedes that the Clinton administration has a consistent, thoughtful approach to the former Soviet Union. "But," he added, "it would take an awful dim-witted person not to see the importance of Russia."