Clinton Wins Abroad, Takes Risks at Home

President Bill Clinton has waded through oceans of contemptuous criticism for his three years of stewardship of U.S. foreign policy. But he came to Europe this week to celebrate a blaze of diplomatic achievements.


He will take credit in Belfast for the Northern Ireland cease-fire he broke John Major's heart to deliver, and visit his troops in Germany as they prepare to board the planes to enforce the peace in Bosnia that his diplomacy has almost miraculously achieved. He will sign in Madrid a grand-sounding accord with the European Union which will be said to reinvigorate the transatlantic alliance beyond the old military ties of NATO.


As Clinton left Washington, Americans were giving him the strongest support in opinion polls since the honeymoon of his first year of office. He delivered a national television address to justify his decision to send U.S. troops to keep the peace in Bosnia and transformed American opinion.


Six months ago, almost 80 percent of Americans told pollsters they were opposed to any U.S. military role in Bosnia. In the wake of Clinton's speech, 46 percent said they agreed with Clinton that the United States should deploy troops and only 40 percent were opposed.


Immediately after the speech, and even before he had seen the poll figures, Republican leader Senator Robert Dole backed away from earlier threats that Congress would cut off the funds to stop the troops from being deployed.


The opinion polls did not reflect a blind optimism among the U.S. public. They were clear about the dangers. Although 53 percent thought that this would lead to "a long-term commitment involving many casualties," the same number, 53 percent, said they agreed with the president that the U.S. had a moral obligation to keep the peace in Bosnia.


One reason why the Republicans in Congress are not going to block the dispatch of U.S. troops is that they foresee a dismal trail of body bags coming home from Bosnia over the next 12 months of Clinton's re-election campaign.


Remember that Clinton won the White House in 1992 by sneering at George Bush as "the foreign-policy president" and promising to focus "like a laser beam" on America's problems at home. But his domestic agenda, from health and welfare reform to a promise of a college education for every qualified American, lies in wreckage. Clinton presided over the collapse of the Democratic Party, and its rout from the Congress they ruled for 40 years.


So Clinton arrives looking strangely like the man George Bush had wanted to be: a president increasingly confident of re-election, facing a parade of unconvincing campaign rivals, presiding over the world's healthiest economy, and above all, the very embodiment of global leadership.


Nothing on the planet now seems to get done without the ubiquitous Americans. Four years of Balkan war are resolved on an air base in Ohio. Israel and Palestine make peace, but only when their leaders shake hands on the White House lawn. There is a democratically elected president ruling Haiti once more, courtesy of Clinton's soldiers.


It is all hideously fragile, as unstable as the Mexican peso, as vulnerable as Yitzhak Rabin proved to be to bullets from a fellow Israeli. Even as the cheers for Clinton ring out in Bosnia, it could yet prove to be the worst disaster of all, with Clinton's re-election on the line, as the new foreign-policy president takes the biggest gamble of his career.