Candidate Bill Clinton promised "to focus like a laser beam" on domestic problems. The priority was correct; the promise, unrealistic. In his inaugural address on Wednesday, President Clinton set aside the pledge and said: "To renew America, we must meet challenges abroad as well as at home."
But the chaotic world awaiting the new president will demand almost all of his attention. And that he must resist.To resist, he needs a strategy for weaning everyone off the central organizing principle of world politics - that it is up to the United States to solve all problems, especially the military ones.
Otherwise Clinton, like Woodrow Wilson, will find his nightmares coming true. "It would be an irony of fate," President-elect Wilson said in 1912, "if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs." Irony soon became reality as Europe plunged into war and his cherished domestic agenda perished in the trenches.
Clinton confronts circumstances almost as fateful but with fewer choices. Wilson could resist war pressures for a time while other great powers did battle with Germany. Today there is no alternative to Washington's leadership and no substitute for U.S. military power.
If Clinton fails to lead in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, etc., no other nation can or will. And if the trouble spots grow still more troublesome, as some surely will, he will be blamed.
The Republicans will start the attack, arguing that the world was a safer place before the Democrats took over. Soon voters will have forgotten President Bush's last two years in office, when he fiddled while all the foreign crises festered. By that time they will be Clinton's crises.
Most Americans will also blame the new president, even though they demonstrated little interest in foreign affairs during the presidential campaign and gave every evidence that they wanted him to concentrate on the home front. They will blame him either way - for committing U.S. forces and neglecting America or for staying out of harm's way and allowing foreign tinderboxes to ignite.
The trick for the new president will be to lead in ways that persuade and compel other nations to assume much greater responsibility for their own security - so that, in time, he can focus on domestic priorities.
Three elements must sit at the core of such a strategy:
First, as the sole superpower, the United States will have to continue shouldering undue burdens for a while. And Clinton will have to devote more energy to wrestling with world problems than he wants. Otherwise foreign leaders, Republicans and American opinion-makers will eat him alive. As much as they all realize that the United States needs to pay more attention to its own staggering problems, few can tolerate a world spinning out of control.
Second, other nations must be persuaded to bear far heavier burdens in confronting their own local and regional conflicts. They won't be happy with this notion. They all have a cushy deal now. They simply plead weakness and wait for Uncle Sam to do the dirty work. And they won't give up this deal unless Clinton corners them and reassures them that America will remain by their side.
Third, collective security has to be built brick by crumbling brick at the United Nations and in regional organizations. Competent international staffs like NATO's have to be developed. Countries will have to earmark forces for joint action and train them together. They must also be made to take hard decisions together - or suffer the consequences. After a transition period, collective security must be made truly collective.