Clinton at War - NATO-Yugoslavia Conflict

Richard Brookhiser

Mr. Brookhiser, an NR senior editor, is author most recently of Alexander Hamilton, American.

If history is the lengthened shadow of a man, what does the darkness over Kosovo show about Bill Clinton?

Maybe we should begin by saying what it does not show. Bill Clinton is not bungling his war because he never fought himself. Over a third of the presidents have served in the military, but their records as leaders are quite mixed. So are the records of the chief executives who led purely or substantially civilian lives. Jimmy Carter graduated from the Naval Academy and commanded a nuclear submarine. Abraham Lincoln had a fleeting, noncombatant stint in an Indian war and was a peacenik congressman during the Mexican War. But which one showed greater determination and strategic grasp? Franklin Pierce fought in battle; Franklin Roosevelt didn't.

Recriminations have begun early-days after the bombing started the Joint Chiefs let the world know that they had warned against relying on air power alone-and when Clinton himself gets going, we will hear the old cry of "bad advisors." Madeleine Albright should fear going the way of Lani Guinier. But bad advisors are not the problem either. In 1814, former president Thomas Jefferson wrote President James Madison to cheer him up, after the British had burned the White House: "Every reasonable man must be sensible that all you can do is to order,-that execution must depend on others, and failures be imputed to them alone. . . . Had General Washington himself been now at the head of our affairs, the same event would probably have happened." Probably not, because Washington wouldn't have picked the sad sacks that Madison had- or that Clinton has.

Clinton's bad performance can be traced, not to his own unmilitary life or to incompetent underlings, but to basic traits of his character-two of them somewhat surprising, one painfully well known.

Ignorance. Everybody has said of Clinton, since he appeared on the national stage, that he is intelligent and well informed. Certainly he has a wonk's delight in the details of domestic policy, and an operative's interest in polling and politicking. But his interest and his information have limits, and foreign and military affairs are outside them. Take one glaring instance. In a pre-war discussion of Kosovo with congressmen, Clinton said that air power had brought about the present balance of power in Bosnia by stopping the Serbs. In fact the Serbs were checked by a combination of air power and beefed-up Croatian and Muslim armies. This was not some arcane historical datum-a page from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West's 60-year-old classic on the Balkans, that he had unaccountably skipped. The balance of power in Bosnia had changed during his own administration. It is typical of politicians to distort the accomplishments of their predecessors. It is strange when they distort their own.

Clinton's ignorance about foreign countries, and about the military policies of his own country, did not affect his performance in Arkansas, and it seemed irrelevant during his first presidential campaign, when the collapse of Communism was being hailed as the end of history. If history was really over, why bother to learn it, especially military history? As luck would have it, the pace of history has picked up in Clinton's second term. But he still operates in his Little Rock/Primary Colors mode, in which the only foreigner is Charlie Trie, and the only violence is biting women's lips.

Ambition. President Clinton, it turns out, wants to be a great leader, maybe even a great military leader. This is an unpleasant surprise. One of the tolerable qualities of rascals is that they do not aspire above their station. Falstaff's vices trouble us only when he expects to profit by Harry's kingship: "Let us take any man's horses; the laws of England are at my commandment." If Aaron Burr had been content to be a witty spendthrift and womanizer, he would have been an interesting curlicue on the Founding. When he wanted to be a general and president, other men became alarmed.

It's time to be alarmed about Clinton, who told Dan Rather that he is like FDR. He sees more in his future than chasing script girls at DreamWorks; he wants to give speeches at ceremonies commemorating his war for humanitarianism. Partly this is the serial sincerity that Newt Gingrich and others have noted in the man-the actor's ability (founded, as it is in many actors, on inner emptiness) to switch from role to role. Partly it is the old concern for legacy: Health-care reform didn't work; triangulation is too much like inside baseball; why not war? Since Clinton's ambition is an impulse, unconnected to any preparation, pilots and Kosovars will bear the costs of its failure.

Malleability. By this I do not mean Clinton's lack of principle and purpose, but his expectation that everyone else is equally malleable, at least as far he is concerned. Like most charmers, he expects charm to carry him far. Like psychopathic charmers, he expects charm to carry him all the way. And who can say that he is wrong? Until now Bill Clinton never met anyone who was both implacable and successful. Politicians who ran against him obviously did not just grin and give up. But campaigning is a game with well-understood rules-afterwards everybody shakes hands-and Clinton has almost always won at it. Newt Gingrich once looked forbidding, as did Clinton's enemies during the impeachment crisis. But Gingrich lost his nerve after the budget standoff of 1995, and Clinton managed to evade the impeachment posse in one piece, if not unscathed. Probably the toughest person he ever dealt with was Roger Clinton, his brute of a stepfather. But the elder Clinton was tough only towards women and boys. As soon as Bill became a teenager, the old drunk backed off. Everyone else in Bill Clinton's life has responded to him (or, at least, not effectively resisted).

Until Milosevic and the Serbs. The Serbs are not the rugged Partisans of 50 years ago. Milosevic's soldiers have been most effective against unarmed villagers and lightly armed militias, such as the Croatians and Bosnian Moslems at the beginning of the Bosnian conflict. They are best at raping and pillaging, and they seem to need pre-battle infusions of drugs to accomplish even that. But Milosevic is betting the house on his war policy, and he is calling on old hatreds and insecurities to animate his people; it will take force to stop him.

What in Bill Clinton's arsenal of responses prepares him to know this? Clinton habitually relies on three tools in dealing with others. The first is genial empathy. Early in his first term, Human Events threw a big party and hired a Clinton impersonator to work the tables. I was sitting with Bill Kristol, and when "Clinton" showed up, he said that, yes, there had been hard words over health care, but (smiling) he respected Kristol for all that. What made the bit hilarious was not just that the impersonator looked and sounded like Clinton, but that the warm greeting was exactly the kind of thing Clinton would do. All right, he wouldn't go to a Human Events party. But if he found himself in an elevator full of Clinton-haters, every one of them would think better of him by the time they all reached the lobby floor.

Clinton's second tool is polls. If you take your cues for what to think from other people, then you have to find out what they think. Dick Morris was merely his instrument, not his Svengali. Clinton polls to find issues (tobacco). He polls to find non-issues (school uniforms). He probably got Buddy because polls showed that Socks wasn't cutting it. Poll data are different from the ward heeler's feel for his constituents, or from knowledge of human nature. But in times of peace and prosperity they can accomplish wonders of fine-tuning.

Clinton's third tool is lying. Unlike some politicians-Jefferson, for instance-Clinton does not tell occasional lies to separate the unpleasant aspects of his personality (in Jefferson's case, cunning and will-to-power) from the admirable ones (idealism and intelligence). Clinton has no personality to speak of, so his lying is all-pervasive. All that matters is this moment, this turn in the road. Lying about past statements and deeds is the quickest way to adjust his course. It leaves a spotty trail behind, like leaking antifreeze. But so long as all he had to lie about was campaign promises, or testimony in civil suits, his lies were not serious.

How will these techniques help him now? Milosevic needs conflict and killing to stay in power; charm won't make any impression there. Whom can Clinton poll? Serbia is a dictatorship, and the Kosovars don't have time for focus groups. Lying can accomplish much in wartime, but-like air power-it has to be backed up.

The president Bill Clinton turns out to resemble most is Lyndon Johnson-domestically oriented, politically skilled, little burdened with scruples or sanity. The man who began his career protesting Johnson's war will end it fighting his own.

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