When President Clinton arrives in Brussels Sunday at the beginning of his first trip to Europe since taking office, he will find a continent that is dispirited, short on leadership and unsure of where it is going.
It is also a continent that feels somewhat slighted by his administration. Both Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher have talked at times as though the focus of American interest in the world has shifted from a Europe in decline to a more robust Asian partnership.
A key institution in the American-European relationship, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is in a state of drift. It has lost its former mission-defense against a nuclear-armed Soviet Union-and has yet to define a new one.
The disarray in NATO reflects the failure of Western leadership to formulate a coherent strategy for dealing with new and sometimes dangerous conditions in the post-Cold War world. Former President George Bush’s so-called New World Order has proved a chimera, and nothing has come along in its place.
None of these large issues is likely to be resolved during Clinton’s week in Europe. But his visit, which will include stops in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Russia, Belarus and Switzerland, will provide Europeans with an opportunity to take the measure of a president who, unusually, let a year go by before coming to call.
The Europeans will be looking to Clinton for reassurance about America’s commitment to the Atlantic relationship and for at least the first signs of U.S. leadership in dealing with emerging problems on more than an ad hoc basis.
Europe’s confidence in its ability to handle its own problems has been shaken badly during the year Clinton has been in office. In that time, the Europeans have proved impotent to deal with the war in former Yugoslavia and have suffered major setbacks in their drive toward a united Europe with a single currency and a common set of foreign and defense policies.
Their governments also have mostly floundered in coming to grips with recession and an alarmingly high level of chronic unemployment.
“Europe is going through a hard time,” a Western diplomat in Brussels said. “The atmosphere is very sour. The European Union is astonishingly self-involved.”
He said Europeans were losing confidence in their ability to come up with policies that address the central problems before them. In Italy, Germany and France, leaders also are preoccupied by upcoming elections.
At the same time, European confidence in American leadership has been eroded by U.S. wavering over Bosnia and backtracking in regard to crises in Somalia and Haiti. To the Europeans, this suggests the lack of a clear global vision in policy formulation in Washington and a failure to define the nation’s vital interests.
Public perceptions of Clinton’s visit will be shaped primarily by how he handles the issue that will be paramount at a NATO summit on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels.
The U.S. and its NATO partners have agreed in advance that they will not admit to their exclusive club, for the time being, the East European states clamoring to join. Instead they will offer them joint military maneuvers and other forms of cooperation as a prelude to eventual membership.
There is no serious dispute within NATO about this, but the Europeans will be counting on Clinton to sell it to the East Europeans when he goes to Prague. Clinton’s task was made easier last Thursday when officials of four of these countries-the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary-gave grudging acceptance to the plan.
Some influential voices in Western Europe are urging immediate membership for these nations. But NATO leaders are more concerned at the moment not to disturb the evolution toward democracy in Russia and are afraid that a positive response to the East Europeans would only reawaken Russian paranoia about isolation and encirclement.
These concerns have been heightened by the recent strong showing in Russian elections of an extreme nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who could become a serious contender for power.
“There have been some simplistic and naive statements made recently about the need to bring the Central Europeans into NATO because of a security vacuum in Central Europe,” said Col. Michael Dewar, deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“But the security vacuum in Central Europe has not mattered since 1989, and it won’t matter for the future because Russia is not going to fill it. Clinton needs to spell this out to the Central Europeans.”
The Russian dilemma highlights the West’s failure to indicate what kind of role it wants that vast country to play outside its own borders: actively involved in Europe, or pushed to the margins until its democratic credentials are firmly established. If he wishes, Clinton could begin to address that question during his visit to Moscow.
On another NATO issue, U.S. officials had hoped at one point to draw France into more active involvement in the alliance. France left the military wing of NATO in 1966, and has shown no eagerness to return, but French officials have decided to offer a minor concession to Clinton.
They said in the future France would allow its defense minister or armed forces chief of staff to attend meetings of the NATO Council or the military committee when peacekeeping operations involving France are discussed.
On the broader question of U.S. relations with Europe, some Western diplomats and other experts say that European concerns of a U.S. tilt toward Asia are exaggerated.
A reduction of U.S. military forces in Europe is under way, but Europeans have known that was coming since the end of the Cold War and the cuts will soon reach a floor, Dewar said. Beyond that, he said the U.S. has cultural, political and trade interests in Europe that it cannot afford to neglect.
A diplomat said increasing American attention to Asia was natural because, for the U.S., three major conflicts in this century-World War II, Korea and Vietnam-began in Asia.
“The Europeans should be happy that the U.S. has interests there and is tending them,” he said. “It is a mistake to suggest that the U.S. is dancing to Asian music now, and not to Europe’s any longer.”
On the subject of Bosnia, where NATO’s will to act has been stymied by the reticence of the alliance’s member governments, nothing of significance is likely to emerge from the summit.
The reluctance of Britain and France to support NATO intervention last year was a sore point with the Clinton administration and remains so to a degree, according to some sources. They said this greatly worries British officials, since is the first time that the U.S. and Europe have faced a dangerous security problem in Europe and have disagreed about how to handle it.
But both sides recognize that the time for intervention has passed and the war has entered a different phase. Britain and Canada have been warning that they may withdraw their military forces from Bosnia if the parties to the conflict are unable to resolve their differences soon. But France has played down reports that it might follow suit.
These nations, and others, have troops in Bosnia to safeguard food convoys and other humanitarian supply lines. One source said he thought Western nations might keep forces there until the end of 1994, but not beyond.
The U.S. at one point talked of sending 50,000 troops to help police a cease-fire if a peace agreement were reached.
But congressional opposition to such a plan makes it unlikely that Washington would send more than a token contingent of troops, and that rankles with some of the European leaders with whom Clinton will be meeting in the coming week.
