Commander in Chief Blair
BARNES, FRED
Commander in Chief Blair by Fred Barnes AN AMAZING THING HAS HAPPENED on the NATO side in the war against Slobodan Milosevic. The American president, Bill Clinton, has declined to lead, and...
...This hasn’t worked...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The Iranians knew Carter’s limits, but they had no idea how far Reagan would go to free the hostages...
...Ronald Reagan, for one, never set public limits like this...
...Instead, he allowed it to be developed in Brussels and bent over backwards to accomodate the wishes of all 19 nations...
...Of course, the military knew it wasn’t supposed to ask...
...Clinton hasn’t...
...Later in 1990, there was political opposition to expanding the American force, but Bush increased it to 500,000 anyway...
...He created favorable public opinion by acting...
...Officers wince, however, when they hear Clinton talk about defense and foreign policy as if it’s a subsidiary of domestic policy...
...Asked why he hadn’t considered ground troops, Clinton said the military hadn’t asked for them...
...Also, they’ve watched Clinton allow military spending to decline alarmingly...
...Thus, the hope that bombing Milosevic would scare him out of Kosovo...
...Clinton, on the other hand, didn’t establish the objective for the alliance in fighting Milosevic...
...Not as a commander in chief who dominates the alliance, the role American presidents have played since NATO was formed in 1949...
...Clinton announced what he wouldn’t do, namely use ground troops...
...Surveys show some American support for ground troops, but it shrinks if casualties occur...
...Blair has staged a kind of return engagement of Winston Churchill, who visited America in 1946 and braced the country to fight the Cold War...
...Clinton hasn’t...
...He searched for a general who would fight...
...Meanwhile, he prodded the Clinton administration to consider the use of ground troops in Kosovo...
...The officer corps will unflinchingly take orders from any president...
...He’s neither hands-on with the military, nor firm in establishing his control...
...The Clinton administration has insisted this was chiefly because European allies wouldn’t go along...
...Success in this could be declared at any moment Clinton chooses...
...One result was the frantic effort by Iran to release American hostages in 1981 before Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter...
...In other words, he could put everything—his career, his poll ratings, his presidency, Al Gore’s future—on the line...
...At times, he’s said it is to “degrade” Milosevic’s military...
...In any case, he hasn’t tried...
...Many believe Clinton sent forces to Haiti only after a friend likened this to Eisenhower’s dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock in 1957 to integrate Central High...
...Clinton sometimes acts as if the military is setting the goals...
...Awkward in talking about the war, uncomfortable as commander in chief, Clinton may simply lack the ability to arouse public opinion on the issue...
...In the end, though, Clinton probably could pull it off...
...Certainly Blair has been, and he’s finally bringing Clinton around...
...By changing the facts on the ground, he generated public backing for deployment...
...Blair is said to be privately disturbed with Clinton’s super-cautious approach, one that’s based at least partly on the president’s adherence to polls...
...Both worked with coalitions, but Bush’s leadership was bold, Clinton’s hesitant...
...Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush led when there was a crisis...
...Nation after nation, even Syria, fell in line, eager to be on what they saw as the winning side...
...Where does all this leave Clinton...
...Both Lincoln and Reagan were effective commanders-in-chief because they relied on the expertise of the military but didn’t let generals decide strategic goals...
...The American president, Bill Clinton, has declined to lead, and British prime minister Tony Blair has filled the vacuum...
...Clinton hasn’t tried this...
...Still, the military craves firm and steady leadership by the White House, which Clinton hasn’t delivered...
...The truth is England, France, and even Germany have been more amenable from the beginning to land forces than Clinton has...
...As American commander in chief, he’s expected to lead the alliance boldly, set strategic goals to guide the military operations with a firm hand, and rally the public...
...Other presidents have shown such selfless devotion to duty and not always been rewarded for it...
...Clinton’s relationship with his own military is anything but secure...
...There was little backing for sending American troops, but Bush sent them anyway...
...Ground troops were ruled out...
...Public indifference isn’t a problem now, but it might become one if the war drags on inconclusively or if American casualties mount...
...In the Gulf War, Bush was leading public opinion rather than following it...
...The same occurred in 1991 when Bush first began the air campaign against Iraq and then the land war...
...Once more, support jumped in the polls...
...Finding one, he still set the overall objective as defeating Lee’s army rather than merely taking territory...
...His first defense secretary, Les Aspin, claimed the military was a “winnable constituency” for the president, if only he’d work at it...
...Also, Clinton has been fuzzy about his goal...
...Contrary to conventional wisdom, Clinton’s draft-dodging isn’t a big problem for him with the military...
...And this man who cares so much about the judgment of history might just have a legacy, beyond scandal, after all...
...And yes, many, many Americans would be slow to trust in something so uncharacteristic of Clinton...
...Blair arrived early in Washington for the weekend NATO summit, met with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, appeared often on TV, and delivered a strong speech in Chicago, all the while making to the American audience a forceful case for combating Milosevic...
...Clinton could commit himself, in public, to deploying an overwhelming ground force in Kosovo, winning the war, and ousting Milosevic...
...The most immediate comparison is with George Bush in the Persian Gulf war...
...But there’s another tack that might work...
...As the war against Milosevic deepens, the sad fact is that the American people aren’t engaged...
...Nor has he given European allies the confidence that he’s committed to defeating Milosevic, or frightened Milosevic into believing resistance is futile...
...Clinton has come up short on all three...
...In contrast, Abraham Lincoln was both close to his generals and in control...
...Ronald Reagan lavished weapons on the Pentagon, but also brushed aside its reluctance to fight (Grenada, Libya) and to build SDI...
...Bush decided on a strategic goal—ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait—and then organized an alliance of nations around that objective...
...Now, Milosevic thinks he knows Clinton’s limits...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 31
