NOTEBOOK

Bosnia, Somalia: It is a little absurd, as Russia, the Balkans, the Middle East and South Africa are all in the middle of their historical crucibles, that the foreign policy crisis that most exercise the administration is Somalia. The sentimentalization of foreign policy that occurs every time an American soldier anywhere is taken prisoner seems to be occurring again. The president would be wise not to listen to talk radio this week. Mogadishu, of course, is a problem. In Somalia, the initial decision to intervene to save hundreds of thousands of lives was a prudent, moral and modest goal. But the overweaning ambition of the U.N. to expand the Somalian mission into something more extensive and political was something that the United States should have resisted. If that meant ending the operation, so be it. We were never in a position to promise that we would leave behind a country in which the political conditions for famine would never again appear. And the trap that now ensnares the administration in Somal

ia casts light on the responsability that should have ensnared it in Bosnia. The administration-in practice, if not in theory- has abided by the notion that it has two options in foreign policy: inaction or ambitious multilateralism in Somalia. It was the wrong choice in each case. And so now Clinton is faced with a cruel choice in Somalia: to surrender to the isolationism of the public and the opportunism of the Republicans in Congress, or to become more implicated in a political and military sinkhole. We think that he should extract our captives and punish Aidid with appropriate force, and then, without undue haste, withdraw.

We will meet our interventionist responsibilities elsewhere.