BOSNIA IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Changes and Illusions

(To what extent will the defeat at the by-elections influence the foreign policy of Bill Clinton's Cabinet and why is the former Yugoslavia the main ground for testing the uncertainty in the United States top leadership.)

AIM, BEOGRAD, November 15, 1994

Sensationalistic titles could have created the impression that, after last week's by-elections in the States, the whole cabinet is, so to say on the verge of collapse ("The White House in Mourning"; "Catastrophe of the Democrats"). Were he alive, the author of the major book "The American Language" and the grand master of cynical verbal mockery, H.L.Menken, might have tried to encourage the defeated and frightened by his alcoholic sour patriotism from the times of the great crisis between the two wars: "The Lord looks after children, drunks and the United States of America".

What actually happened: how much have the by-elections changed or shaken the party and state levers of the United States, and what could this mean for the world without?

The unexpectedly overwhelming defeat of the Democratic Party has undoubtedly shaken the very top of the American political pyramid. Enjoying supremacy in the past in the entire Congress (four decades in the House of Representatives and 8 years in the Senate), the party of the President whose rating is falling (at the moment only 41 percent of interviewees polled support him) lost, apparently, more than a mere parliamentary majority. Namely, it is running the risk of losing, with Clinton at its helm, in another two years, the White House as well.

Like Kennedy in 1960, Clinton in 1992 won the support of large segments of the medium strata of the population by a mesmerizing vision of a faster, more balanced development of America. Now, as the first presidential half-term draws to a close, that same majority seems to be turning its back to both him and the party which has placed its trust in him. Why is that so?

Comparisons with Kennedy started, in all fairness, to fade immediately after the 1992 elections, partly also due to Clinton's unfortunate selection of associates. This gave rise to the resurgence of, for the most part, petty and stale, but extremely embarassing property related and love affairs, which the opposition, employing the yellow press, brutally dramatized.

Compounding this is, what may easily be the most important change in the more recent political culture of America - the increasingly deep mistrust in virtually all representatives of the general interest, because of bureaucratic staleness, a penchant to corruption and other vice. Obviously what could have tipped the scales is the spontaneous desire of voters radically to change the echelons on Capitol Hill, even if that meant strengthening the most aggressive right.

Nevertheless, no matter how far-reaching it may seem, the changed composition of Congress does not in itself mean that Clinton's days are numbered. If one keeps in mind the fact that the main levers of power, in particular when foreign policy is concerned, will remain in his hand for another two years, much will now depend on how successfully the chief of the executive will negotiate this unexpected "uphill" climb.

Will he, for instance, find the strength to flex his muscle in Congress, with the Democrats a minority and the right wingers from both parties on the offensive? And, not as a defiant loser, but as a statesman who has not been "punished" by his voters because of the reforms he is seeking to introduce, but because he allowed them to be detracted from, slowed or bogged down?

In other words, the reverberations on the domestic scene of the defeat at the by-elections will hinge upon the answer to the question which the voting majority put raising its voice of protest: can Bill Clinton, a Southerner from Arkansas, show the valor and far-sighted vision from Kennedy's romanticized legend, or will he continue to go down politically like his party colleague, Jimmy Carter, from Georgia, a decade and a half ago?

For those who believe the second instance more likely, the similarities are increasingly striking.Like Carter, Clinton, so they say, drew attention to himself as an unconventional orator who charged in a populistic manner, at the alienated federal bureucratic apparatus and the all too comfortable big capital. But, being a captive of the politically provincial South, he soon found out that he was not made of the kind of "stuff" that makes a statesman good enough for so big a power as America is.

Whether this is really so time will tell, namely the period that Clinton has until the expiry of his term at the helm of the White House. Meanwhile, as far as the world observing these and similar US upheavals from the wings is concerned, the most important consideration is how this by-electoral defeat will affect the foreign policy ambitions and obligations of Clinton's administration.

As historic luck would have it (with the decisive "contribution" of the domestic actors of the crisis), the first, and perhaps the principal proving ground where this uncertainty will be tested will be - and in fact already is

• this one where our own future is now being built or destroyed. In point of fact, the tragedy of the former Yugoslavia has been following Clinton from practically the very first day of his Presidency.

From the standpoint of global interests, the Yugoslav crisis could not have been qualified as one of prime importance. It, so to speak, jumped the White House queue. It forcibly imposed itself via electronic and other media with the domestic makers of hatred and war (from the brutal stranglehold of Sarajevo up to the beastly destruction of Mostar) producing an increasing "output" of toxic material.

It seems that Clinton became the more engulfed by this evil shadow the harder he tried to push it out from at least the White House, convinced that he had more pressing matters to attend to. It kept returning, as a rule, ever more ominously, notably in two ways: through the war-incensed media in Croatia and Bosnia and through Congress, in which the proclivity for abusing the Yugoslav nightmare in armchair politician fashion became ever more pronounced and ever more effective for a number of reasons.

At the beginning, immediately after the 1992 elections this was mostly due to the fact that Clinton's America, as for that matter, most of its European allies, were caught unawares by the flaring up of aggressive national chauvinism in the European South-East. Convinced with reason that they had won the struggle for power primarily by their programmes of domestic economic and social recovery, the new team in the White House seemed to be consciously relegating to the side-track all of the outside world, including the dangerously burning Balkans.

For too long this team was and, apparently still is, lacking both in terms of programme and staff to be able to more effectively cope with the "Yugo-virus" epidemic. Its measures were more of a "stop-gap" nature than forward looking. Hence, the obvious lack of an in-depth strategy, and the multitude of tactical, make-shift inconsistencies, and its maladroitness and impotence.

For instance, Washington repeatedly demands that UNPROFOR adopt a more decisive posture in Croatia and Bosnia, while making it clear at the same time that no "blue helmets" are to be expected from America (excluding the 550 in the North of peaceful Macedonia). Or: although it voted in favour of the UN decision banning the export of arms to the former Yugoslav republics, under pressure from Congress the White House is ever putting the cart before the horse, making the job of all those who see a chance for themselves in eroding the Contact Group Plan, easier.

Washington, first, demanded by way of an ultimatum the lifting of the ban, only to, later, failing to receive support at the New York "horseshoe table", one - sidedly withdraw its money and its warships enforcing the jointly established control mechanism. Thus it killed with one stone three wrong birds, antagonizing the very factors which it cannot do without: Yeltzin's politically half-baked Russia, practically all of the European Union (in particular France, Spain and Britain), and finally, as if possesed, NATO Headquarters in Brussels itself.

It is without a doubt that the White House itself finds all this quite unpalatable. How indeed can such a desire to hamstring oneself be explained? Observed from the American side, the explanation reluctantly given may rest upon some logic. The whole thing, everybody knows, was concocted in Congress. First in a form of a threat, to which the White House itself subscribed, expecting to "drive sense into", the belligerent Bosnian Serbs. And then, as a kind of a parliamentary political ultimatum leaving Clinton with practically no choice. Especially not after having been routed at the by-elections.

But, even if it were more convincing than it actually is, such an explanation could hardly alleviate the unwanted consequences. Not only when it comes to America's relations with its old allies in Western Europe and its newly found "partners" in Russia, but first and foremost in respect of Bosnia, which continues to burn in a spate of national chauvinistic and revanchist fury.

It is on that fire that, by virtue of its might and responsibility American foreign policy is also burning; and to a certain extent, one could say, so is the political future of Bill Clinton. For, it is upon him, after the defeat he suffered at the by-elections, that, symbolically speaking, the early exit of Bosnia from the White House, if any, depends more than ever before.

ALEKSANDAR NENADOVIC