AN AMAZING THING HAS HAPPENED on the NATO side in the war against Slobodan Milosevic. The American president, Bill Clinton, has declined to lead, and British prime minister Tony Blair has filled the vacuum. Blair arrived early in Washington for the weekend NATO summit, met with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, appeared often on TV, and delivered a strong speech in Chicago, all the while making to the American audience a forceful case for combating Milosevic. Meanwhile, he prodded the Clinton administration to consider the use of ground troops in Kosovo. Blair has staged a kind of return engagement of Winston Churchill, who visited America in 1946 and braced the country to fight the Cold War.
Where does all this leave Clinton? Not as a commander in chief who dominates the alliance, the role American presidents have played since NATO was formed in 1949. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush led when there was a crisis. Clinton hasn’t. As American commander in chief, he’s expected to lead the alliance boldly, set strategic goals to guide the military operations with a firm hand, and rally the public. Clinton has come up short on all three.
The most immediate comparison is with George Bush in the Persian Gulf war. Both worked with coalitions, but Bush’s leadership was bold, Clinton’s hesitant. Bush decided on a strategic goal — ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait — and then organized an alliance of nations around that objective. Nation after nation, even Syria, fell in line, eager to be on what they saw as the winning side. Clinton, on the other hand, didn’t establish the objective for the alliance in fighting Milosevic. Instead, he allowed it to be developed in Brussels and bent over backwards to accomodate the wishes of all 19 nations. Thus, the hope that bombing Milosevic would scare him out of Kosovo. This hasn’t worked.
Ground troops were ruled out. The Clinton administration has insisted this was chiefly because European allies wouldn’t go along. The truth is England, France, and even Germany have been more amenable from the beginning to land forces than Clinton has. Certainly Blair has been, and he’s finally bringing Clinton around. Blair is said to be privately disturbed with Clinton’s super-cautious approach, one that’s based at least partly on the president’s adherence to polls. Surveys show some American support for ground troops, but it shrinks if casualties occur.
In the Gulf War, Bush was leading public opinion rather than following it. There was little backing for sending American troops, but Bush sent them anyway. By changing the facts on the ground, he generated public backing for deployment. Later in 1990, there was political opposition to expanding the American force, but Bush increased it to 500,000 anyway. Once more, support jumped in the polls. The same occurred in 1991 when Bush first began the air campaign against Iraq and then the land war. He created favorable public opinion by acting. Clinton hasn’t tried this.
Nor has he given European allies the confidence that he’s committed to defeating Milosevic, or frightened Milosevic into believing resistance is futile. Clinton announced what he wouldn’t do, namely use ground troops. Ronald Reagan, for one, never set public limits like this. One result was the frantic effort by Iran to release American hostages in 1981 before Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter. The Iranians knew Carter’s limits, but they had no idea how far Reagan would go to free the hostages. Now, Milosevic thinks he knows Clinton’s limits. Also, Clinton has been fuzzy about his goal. At times, he’s said it is to “degrade” Milosevic’s military. Success in this could be declared at any moment Clinton chooses.
Clinton’s relationship with his own military is anything but secure. His first defense secretary, Les Aspin, claimed the military was a “winnable constituency” for the president, if only he’d work at it. Clinton hasn’t. He’s neither hands-on with the military, nor firm in establishing his control. In contrast, Abraham Lincoln was both close to his generals and in control. He searched for a general who would fight. Finding one, he still set the overall objective as defeating Lee’s army rather than merely taking territory. Ronald Reagan lavished weapons on the Pentagon, but also brushed aside its reluctance to fight (Grenada, Libya) and to build SDI. Both Lincoln and Reagan were effective commanders-in-chief because they relied on the expertise of the military but didn’t let generals decide strategic goals.
Clinton sometimes acts as if the military is setting the goals. Asked why he hadn’t considered ground troops, Clinton said the military hadn’t asked for them. Of course, the military knew it wasn’t supposed to ask. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Clinton’s draft-dodging isn’t a big problem for him with the military. The officer corps will unflinchingly take orders from any president. Officers wince, however, when they hear Clinton talk about defense and foreign policy as if it’s a subsidiary of domestic policy. Many believe Clinton sent forces to Haiti only after a friend likened this to Eisenhower’s dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock in 1957 to integrate Central High. Also, they’ve watched Clinton allow military spending to decline alarmingly. Still, the military craves firm and steady leadership by the White House, which Clinton hasn’t delivered.
As the war against Milosevic deepens, the sad fact is that the American people aren’t engaged. Public indifference isn’t a problem now, but it might become one if the war drags on inconclusively or if American casualties mount. Awkward in talking about the war, uncomfortable as commander in chief, Clinton may simply lack the ability to arouse public opinion on the issue. In any case, he hasn’t tried.
But there’s another tack that might work. Clinton could commit himself, in public, to deploying an overwhelming ground force in Kosovo, winning the war, and ousting Milosevic. In other words, he could put everything — his career, his poll ratings, his presidency, Al Gore’s future — on the line. Other presidents have shown such selfless devotion to duty and not always been rewarded for it. And yes, many, many Americans would be slow to trust in something so uncharacteristic of Clinton. In the end, though, Clinton probably could pull it off. And this man who cares so much about the judgment of history might just have a legacy, beyond scandal, after all.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
