NATO crisis: a GOP primer - Editorial

AS THE Bosnia debacle poisons the North Atlantic Alliance, and as Republicans prepare for a new leadership role, it is time to reflect on the place of NATO in U.S. foreign policy. Long before last week's collapse of U.S. policy on Bosnia, the Clinton Administration had allowed its standing in Europe and with NATO to decay.

Bill Clinton was the first U.S. President in decades not to show the flag by a visit to Western Europe early in his term. His first key policy decision was to withdraw American troops from Europe--from 300,000 down to 100,000, one-third below the number that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell had thought the minimum acceptable. Then came the "Partnership for Peace"--the strategically muddled scheme that embraced Russia as a friend while stiff-arming the new Central European democracies, which were desperate for NATO's protection. The President plans to attend a December summit in Budapest of the pan-European Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in order to humor Boris Yeltsin--thereby playing into Yeltsin's strategy of downgrading NATO in the mushy multilateralism of CSCE. The U.S. has acquiesced in the appointment of the Belgian wet Willy Claes--who opposed NATO's deployment of Euromissiles in the early 1980s--as NATO's new secretary general. The symbolic lack of strategic seriousness could not be more obvious. No wonder the British and French have put aside their recent antagonism and are talking openly of new forms of bilateral defense cooperation, leaving NATO as well as Britain's "special relationship" with America in the shadows to which the Administration has consigned them.

The upcoming NATO ministerial meeting may move toward embracing the Central Europeans. But the value of NATO even to them has been lessened by the failure of President Clinton to stress the moral and political centrality of the Atlantic alliance.

The disarray over Bosnia has compounded all these ills. The Clintonites have taken potshots (usually deserved) at the pro-Serb policies of the West Europeans, without offering a coherent or decisive alternative. The result is a profound resentment on both sides. The pathetic ineffectuality of the occasional NATO air strike (which NR predicted from the outset) symbolizes the fecklessness of both NATO's and America's policy toward the first major crisis facing Europe in the post-Cold War world. And now we see the sinister spectacle of British, French, and Russian foreign ministers meeting in Paris--the Triple Entente Raedux--to block the United States' tentative moves toward lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia. All this might almost be designed to encourage the rise of a new American isolationism.

For Republicans, the challenge is immense. If the GOP is serious about America's defense posture and global leadership, maintaining the balance of power on the continent of Europe should be the cornerstone of its foreign policy. That means bolstering NATO; beefing up our troop strength in Europe and throwing a protective umbrella over the Central European democracies; and being realistic about the foreign ambitions of a resurgent Russia. Only an America that is seen as serious about European security will have the moral influence to exert leadership on Bosnia, or on anything else. Mr. Clinton's America is not.