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WASHINGTON -- Diplomacy. Sanctions. Bombs. There isn't much the Clinton administration hasn't tried to rid itself of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Now, suddenly, Congress is handing the administration tens of millions of dollars and demanding that it to do more.
And so the administration has responded by offering one of the things it does best: mounting political campaigns.
In Iraq and Serbia, American taxpayer dollars have begun flowing into the campaign coffers of opposition political parties that, at best, are sharply divided and even, in the case of the Iraqis, were at war with one another not long ago.
As it would in America, the money is paying for the nuts and bolts of campaign organizing -- from office space to telephones to high-priced consultants. In Serbia, money has gone to that staple of American politics, polling.
The United States has long lent moral support and money to political parties overseas, but the scale and ambition of the efforts in Iraq and Serbia are staggering. In each case, the administration and Congress are talking about spending as much as Vice President Al Gore (or Senator Bill Bradley) is expected to spend (more than $100 million) running for the most powerful political office in the world.
Since NATO's air war over Kosovo ended, the administration has spent nearly $12 million to support Milosevic's political opponents in Serbia, as well as to nurture independent media and labor unions. On Thursday, the Senate approved a bill (introduced by the staunchly anti-interventionist Jesse Helms) to spend up to $100 million more over the next two years.
What does this kind of money buy?
In its support of Hussein's fractious opponents, the administration has spent $8 million this year, most of it just in trying to get the opposition leaders to work together, let alone work together against Hussein. Among other things, it has hired the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller USA and has paid a Virginia-based firm, Quality Support Inc., to organize conventions, including a gathering of some 300 opposition leaders in New York last week.
The administration also announced that it would give the groups the first $5 million of $97 million in military equipment and training that Congress authorized last year to speed the overthrow of Hussein. But instead of surplus weapons and gear like boots, as Congress called for in the Iraq Liberation Act, the Pentagon is sending desks, computers and fax machines needed to equip an office and begin spewing out pronouncements.
The administration's approach has evoked ridicule on Capitol Hill and disappointment from those it is supposed to help. Representative Benjamin A. Gilman of New York, the Republican chairman of the House International Relations Committee, derided the idea that Iraqi exiles "brandishing fax machines" could topple Hussein; he has called for genuine military, not just political, support.
"We can only conclude the administration is not very serious about the policy President Clinton announced with regard to replacing Saddam's regime," he said.
Officials concede that political support alone is unlikely to topple two rulers who have tight grips on their countries. American assistance, after all, can be a double-edged sword, providing help to opposition politicians but also exposing them to anti-American backlash. Last week, officials in Serbia and Iraq denounced opponents who were meeting with American officials, calling them puppets of the United States.
In both cases, the opposition leaders are divided, often bitterly so. Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said he would offer this advice to Milosevic's opponents in Serbia: "Maybe you can have a pause in your macho behavior" until after elections. "Then you can hate each other again in a democratic society."
Behind the strategy is a political bind: The administration has been forced to respond to growing frustration in Congress, particularly among Republicans, that two demonized foes have managed to survive and, potentially, to pose new threats. At the same time, though, there is no Congressional or public support for using the American military to do the job, the officials say.
That means political support may be the only option left. "What else can we do?" one State Department official asked.
Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said he supported the efforts to aid opponents but warned that the United States risked setting itself a dangerous trap: supporting the opposition leaders, without having the will to support them militarily if Milosevic or Hussein turn on them violently.
That is exactly what happened in 1996 when Hussein's forces crushed a cell of dissidents in northern Iraq who were supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Big nations can't bluff," Biden said.
Nevertheless, administration officials hope that openly supporting what amount to political campaigns could lead to peaceful, political transformations. "In the case of Yugoslavia, from 1991 on, that assumption has been that politics in some form would probably be the device that would bring about change," James F. Dobbins, the president's special envoy to the Balkans, said.
Iraq is another question. Few officials expect American assistance to have an immediate impact. Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, a Democrat, said that the internal divisions in the Iraqi opposition and Hussein's ironclad control over the country's political system and security apparatus, were formidable barriers to change.
"No one," Kerry said, "should have unrealistic expectations about what this can accomplish."