Shaken by Vote, Bill Clinton Turns to Yeltsin

Humiliated by the elections, and with the new Republican majority in Congress starting to encroach on his foreign policy prerogatives, President Bill Clinton needs all the help he can get. And is looking to Boris Yeltsin to provide it.


Although he originally signaled he would not attend, Clinton is now to fly to Budapest next month for the CSCE summit. The CSCE, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, has been the orphan of the post-Cold War world. Established with the Helsinki Treaties of 1975 as a vehicle to continue the dialogues of detente, it was supposed to become something much grander after the fall of the Soviet Union.


But this plan for a European version of the UN never got very far, largely because the various members of NATO saw no reason to shift their loyalties from a tight-knit club that worked to a vague agglomeration that had yet to prove itself.


Excluded from NATO, and unhappy at its continued survival as a military alliance that still seems aimed against them, the Russians have been trying to keep the CSCE mechanism alive. And Clinton's decision to attend the summit next month means that the effort has not been entirely in vain.


Two new factors persuaded Clinton to attend. The first is that NATO is no longer what it was even a week ago. Clinton's announcement that the United States would cease enforcing the arms embargo against Bosnia has driven a coach and horses through NATO solidarity. NATO says it will continue to enforce it, but will have to do without American ships, intelligence and satellites.


The other new factor is Senator Jesse Helms and the U.S. Congress' new Republican majority, with its isolationist instincts. Remember the Republicans' election manifesto, the 10-point "Contract with America," with its insistence that U.S. troops never come under UN command, and that the United States take no part in any UN peacekeeping operation unless there had first been a debate and a vote in the U.S. Congress.


The Republicans cannot enforce this so long as they do not control the presidency. But with speeches, votes and congressional hearings, they can constantly rack up the domestic political price that Clinton will pay for temporizing on NATO's expansion. The Republicans have the power to act out a self-fulfilling prophecy, provoking Russia into exactly the kind of hostility that would justify NATO going back into its defensive crouch.


Clinton's response is to blur the edges between NATO and CSCE. His decision to infuriate his French and British allies by lifting the arms embargo weakens alliance solidarity. The new high profile he gives to the CSCE process makes this talking shop look much more important that it has so far proved to be.


There is a danger here of exchanging the shadow of CSCE for the substance of NATO. Clinton needs the help of Yeltsin to make that CSCE look more serious than it is, as well as Yeltsin's help in trying to reassure eastern Europeans and American Republicans alike that the Russian "threat" is being unrealistically inflated.


And Yeltsin must therefore assess how far he wants to help "my friend Bill," who looks far less powerful in the wake of these elections. This week, Yeltsin told his generals that it was time to reach out to the Republicans and "level our relations with Washington." Suddenly, it starts to look as if Bill needs Boris rather more than Boris needs Bill.