European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 15, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Saturday january 15, 1994 commentary the stars and stripes Page 13 Clinton aides lacking vital weltansghauung7 William Safire nothing is More contemptible Joseph a Alsop told me when i took up this line of work than a columnist without a a coherent worldview is Tough to come by these Days because the main threat to Freedom has shifted from militant communism to what John Leo has named eth Tomania More tribalism than nationalism. It is exploding around Bosnia and Herzegovina the test nato is failing and is advancing in what used to be the communist bloc. Does Bill Clinton have a worldview he May be Tak ing one from the former time Magazine columnist Strobe Talbott translator of Nikita Khrushchev s memoirs a longtime Friend of Bill gaining pre Eminence in foreign affairs. Judging from the presi Dent s interviews with Little help from a Muddy speech in Milwaukee read for him last week by vice president Gore the Clinton Talbott Weltanschauung includes a View of a new Russia whose foreign policy can be shaped benignly by evidence of Western Trust. If we reassure Moscow goes this View that it has nothing to fear from the nearness of nato then Russia As it regains its strength will be less Likely to feel the need to reassert control of its former Empire. Contrariwise if we were to seize this moment of russian weakness to incorporate the newly freed Eastern european nations into the nato de sense we would Only encourage the old paranoia and play into the hands of resentful russian Revanche its. This is the diplomatic attitude that produced the partnership for peace scheme. To Warsaw Prague and Budapest eager to join the West s Mutual Protection Alliance it says maybe someday. Your Security affects America s Security but it is not As vital an in Terest As Germany s or Turkey to russian military leaders Clinton s nato Waffle says Don t get Ner Vous we Only said maybe to the Buffer states and made no Promise about when someday would i think this seeming Compromise is self deception. That s because i see Russia resource Rich with an educated populace no longer Hamstrung by collectivist ideology returning to superpower Hood and even if democratic dominating its neighbors. That s Why i asked the president in a recent Sanhedrin of savants whether anybody in his administration was presenting the opposing View. Was anyone saying that if you do not bring Eastern Europe into nato now when Russia is weak that you will never be Able to bring it in when Russia is Strong and refuses to let it come in did anyone near him present the Case that he might be making a great historic Blunder no one in the administration has he admitted,4 which is dismaying even Lyndon b. Johnson had a High level dissenter. But Clinton said he has tried to understand the contrary position and i think my re was challenged by the columnist t in t it Likely that at that time spouse would be Bill that that development would not occur overnight. We will have a couple of years to make the judgment you just outlined. And it won t be where Well Wake up one morning and it will be too late. I think there will be several mornings when Well have the Chance to take a different course that easy out Richard Cohen but in the same arguments will be raised that you will Only encourage russian paranoia that you will push them Over the Edge and you will be in the same Box whenever you make a new Start Clinton responded. You always have these judgment Calls and in the end Only history can Render a verdict is it a risk of course it is in the sense that any change you make like this is a risk. I believe the risk is smaller with the course we Are taking than it would be if we tried to Western Wea Kness Madeleine k. Albright the us. Delegate to the United nations went last week to a garbage dump outside Vukovan in serbian occupied Croatia. At that site serbian forces Are believed to have buried the bodies of 200 croatian Hospital patients they killed after capturing Vukovan. The mass grave was a Symbol of the yugoslavian War s inhumanity Albright said. But Vukovan is a Symbol of some thing else too the american and euro Pean weakness that has encouraged the serbs in their Campaign of serbian forces attacked Vukovan in 1991, reducing the City to rubble intervention by a Small nato Force would have stopped the aggression that went on to genocidal killing in Bosnia and Herze Govina. That is not just my belief. It is the judgment of retired army Gen. John r. Galvin the former nato supreme Allied commander in told the House armed serv ices commit the last May that there were two Points when the United states and nato could have persuaded the serbs to Call off their aggression. The first was when they bombarded Dubrovnik Croatia s port on the Adriatic in 1991. The second was the onslaught on Vukovan. In the destruction of Dubrovnik Galvin testified i believe we could have sent the . 6th Fleet or we could have sent the standing naval Force Mediterranean into the Adriatic and with very Little military action we could have shown the determination of Western nations and indeed the United nations that this did not get out of at Vukovan he said if we any lesson it is that racist dictators feed on the outside world s weakness. Anthony Lewis had put a relatively Small amount of forces on the ground at that time we could again probably have stopped what has grown into an enor Mous but there was none of the determination that Galvin said could have been shown. The american president George Bush showed Only weakness. European leaders were equally feeble. The predictable result was to encourage the demagogue who leads Serbia Slobodan Milosevic in his Appeal to extreme serbian nationalism. If history has the american and european fail ures in 1991 were As grave policy mis judgments As any in the 40 years of the North Atlantic Alliance. Yet none of the principals has had the courage or decency to admit responsibility for actions that allowed genocide to flourish not prime minister John major not Bush his Secre tary of state James Baker or his National Security adviser Brent scowcroft scowcroft had a piece on the new York times of cd Page last week writ ten with Richard Haass laying out what american foreign policy should be. In it he dismissed Bosnia As a place where . Interests Are less than does Brent scowcroft Sec the pictures of civilians slaughtered in Sarajevo does he know that serbian gunners have intensified their shelling As if to thumb their noses at this week s nato Summit meeting does he believe it is of Little consequence that nato promised to bomb the serbs if they went on Strang Ling Sarajevo but has done nothing at present the greatest threat to stability and order in Europe is in Bosnia sen. Robert Dole of Kansas said last week. He added that the serbian attacks push to immediate membership that s a false Choice a less risky alternative would be earned membership with published criteria and a reasonable timetable. The president who sees himself As a Force for optimism later sketched his vision of tomorrow s rus Sia i believe if they continue As a democratic Market oriented reformist no interventionist nation they will become in a More traditional sense then a very great nation hot an Empire. Their whole history and Char Acter and texture of Russia argues for i think Russia s whole history and character and Tex Ture argue for the opposite. That s what makes Weltanschauung. C the now York times aggression on Sarajevo were a direct Challenge to nato to Back its rhetoric with can anyone really fail to perceive the truth of those statements one state department official who had a part in the Bush policy on Yugoslavia has had the courage to Recagni a the disaster. That is Warren Zimmer Mann a foreign service officer for 33 years who was the . Minister in mos cow and ambassador to Yugoslavia. Zim Herrnann like his chiefs in the Bush administration thought it was Best to try to hold Yugoslavia together. But by late 1991 he saw that the policy had encouraged the worst in Milosevic and was bankrupt. Last week Zimmermann resigned impart in disgust at this country s failure to act against the Slaughter in Bosnia. He was the filth and by tar the highest rank ing foreign service officer to quit on that Issue. To make a grave mistake in foreign policy is bad enough. To repeat it i worse. How Long will president Clinton like Brent scowcroft go on pretending that the destruction of american and nato credibility in Bosnia does not matter c to o new York tunes
