US Faces Global Challenges, Nitze Says

AMBASSADOR Paul Nitze, a former arms-control negotiator and preeminent foreign policy thinker, always knew life after the cold war wasn't going to be easy.

As the sole remaining superpower, ``whatever happens in the world is of some degree of interest'' to the United States, Ambassador Nitze told a Monitor breakfast yesterday. But that doesn't mean that the US has to jump in on every troubled situation.

Take Somalia. ``I guess I, along with everyone else, regret that we ever went in there,'' since the US doesn't know how to deal with the circumstances in war-torn Mogadishu, Nitze says. ``But now that we're in, it's a different matter. The question is, how the hell do we get out?''

He doubts that, at this point, there's a way to withdraw from Somalia without embarrassment. But the situation there cannot be stabilized by an outside force, so ``I'd like to see us get out.''

The former Yugoslavia is a different matter. Nitze agrees with suggestions that the Serbs be pacified with air power, then tanks sent in to occupy Belgrade, and Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic removed from power. ``The world would be better off if we could get rid of Milosevic,'' Nitze says.