Everyone has weighed in on whether the United States should have led NATO in the military operation against Serbia and its autonomy-seeking province of Kosovo. Since we are already there, that subject is moot -- this time around. But what about future use of the U.S. military in foreign conflicts?

Our national ambivalence about intervention in Kosovo underscores the fact that the Clinton administration has provided no leadership in foreign policy.

In a world growing smaller through technological advances and expanding economic and strategic interdependence, it is time that this nation begins a more thoughtful dialogue about foreign affairs. While the electorate may have compliantly yielded to the exclusive mantra "It's the economy, stupid" in recent elections, it shouldn't afford itself that luxury in 2000.

With nuclear weapons proliferating among Third World nations like wildfire and tensions growing between this nation and Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Yugoslavia and others, the globe may be more unstable and volatile than it has ever been.

Under Clinton's leadership, this nation has no intelligible foreign policy. He has drifted from situation to situation with the consistency of a chameleon. Even if there were justifications for our decisions to intervene in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo but not in Rwanda they have certainly not been articulated by this president. No distinctions have been made or even offered.

Before presuming to send our troops to their potential deaths in foreign lands, our commander-in-chief should define our policy aims, our strategic mission and our exit strategy. These matters, if feasible, should be determined by the consent of the president and Congress and then communicated to the American people.

What Clinton unmistakably has accomplished, though, is his paradoxical defunding of the military while multiplying its money-sucking commitments. This defunding would at least have been logical if he had carried his war-protesting mentality into the White House. But how does it make sense that the most trigger-happy president in recent memory has consistently blocked funding for guns and bullets?

It is as though he views military weapons as water guns that he can fire at his pleasure at any perceived enemy in the global neighborhood and just freely reload at the faucet when the next bully appears.

In this increasingly dangerous world, we can ill afford to elect anyone as president who lacks a foreign-policy vision and a healthy respect for the military.

As an electorate, we should demand that the upcoming presidential campaign features extensive discussion and debate over the foreign-policy prerogatives of our government. At a minimum, we need to hear from the candidates as to:

-- What factors will govern their decision to use military force in the future. Will humanitarian reasons alone be sufficient?

-- Whether as a nation we should be willing to fund the military, and our defenses including SDI, commensurate with the role we expect it to play.

-- What are the respective constitutional roles of the president and Congress in declaring, administering, funding and conducting war. There has long been a legitimate debate over the respective constitutional roles of the president and Congress. This president has displayed such arrogance by unilaterally unleashing our instruments of war that a casual observer might conclude that he views himself above the law. Surely not.

-- Whether our national interest must be at stake as a condition precedent to foreign military intervention.

-- How we shall define our national interest for that purpose.

-- Whether NATO's role should be limited to defending member nations.

-- Whether and how we should allow China's espionage and civil-rights infractions to influence our trade policies with her.

-- Whether we are going to continue to support the territorial and political sovereignty of Israel or begin to pressure her to accommodate nations committed to her destruction.

As a nation, we can no longer pretend that our good intentions, economic strength and technological and military superiority will permit us to meander aimlessly in foreign policy matters. Even though travel, communication and other technology have reduced many barriers between the nations, just as many will always remain, which will ensure persistent international tensions. As such, we must begin to determine the role we want to play into the next century as the world's foremost superpower.

The campaign for the 2000 presidential elections, featuring candidates ranging from isolationists to internationalists, should serve as the vehicle to begin this overdue national dialogue.

~David Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.