NEWS ANALYSIS : Foreign Policy Debate Splits GOP Candidates : Campaign: Even as Republicans try to show how they differ from Clinton, they clash over how to tackle world issues.

WASHINGTON —  After Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) lashed the Clinton Administration last week for placing too much faith in Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) slapped Dole across the knuckles for abandoning Yeltsin too soon.

“Increasingly hostile statements about Russia per se are not very helpful,” said Lugar, who said Friday that he intends to join Dole in seeking the 1996 Republican presidential nomination.

So far, international issues have drawn little attention from Republicans as they organize their presidential campaigns. But Lugar’s comments opened a window on a simmering foreign policy debate that could divide the Republican field--even as it sharpens the differences between the leading GOP contenders and President Clinton.

Lugar--the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--defines one pole of that debate, defending the traditional internationalist view of active U.S. engagement with the world and support for the United Nations. Conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, who plans to announce his candidacy for the GOP nomination this month, personifies the other--championing a bristling economic nationalism hostile toward the United Nations, free trade and U.S. military involvement abroad. In between, trying to walk a fine line between both camps while distinguishing himself from Clinton, is Dole, the leading Republican voice on foreign policy.

In what amounts to a two-front war, Dole is trying to woo conservative populists by belittling Clinton’s foreign policy as naive while avoiding the isolationist label that the President sought to tag on the Republican leadership in a speech to a foreign policy conference last week. “Dole is in the most uncomfortable place,” a senior State Department official said. “Dole is out of the party mainstream, and he is trying to find a way to appeal to Republicans without abandoning internationalism.”

The debate just beginning among the Republicans--and between the Republicans and Clinton--plays out along two axes. One runs from isolationism to internationalism--the degree to which the United States should play an active role in international affairs. The second extends from unilateralism to multilateralism--the extent to which the United States should pursue its international objectives alone or in alliance with other nations, especially through the United Nations.

Clinton is trying to parry the GOP critique of his foreign policy by painting Republicans leaders as isolationists who want to withdraw from the world--a capital offense in U.S. politics since Pearl Harbor.

The leading potential GOP candidates--especially Dole and Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas--argue that they are not rejecting U.S. involvement abroad, only seeking to define a more narrow and realistic list of American vital interests than Clinton. Almost universally, the Republicans planning to seek the party’s 1996 nomination argue that the United States should increase its military strength--and deploy it more sparingly.

“There is no isolationism in my heart and no protectionism,” Gramm said in an interview. “But part of being a great power is understanding when to use power. And the President treats foreign policy like social work. He sees something on television and (it) looks like there is some good to be done, and he makes commitments without thinking through the ramifications of it.”

In his sole address on foreign policy, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, who formally declared his candidacy last week, took a similar line, urging more spending on defense and less involvement in peacekeeping. Such a focus, he said, “will sometimes mean doing nothing--not popular when the hourly news offers pictures of atrocities from every corner of the world.”

Among the Republican contenders, it is Dole who has tried hardest to convert these principles into a foreign policy agenda. Dole is criticizing Clinton on two fronts, raising arguments that Gramm and Alexander are substantially echoing, although in considerably less detail.

From one side, Dole portrays Clinton as too soft when confronted with critical challenges to direct U.S. interests. In his speech to the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom last week, Dole not only accused Clinton of overly deferring to Yeltsin on issues such as the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into Eastern Europe and the Russian war against the breakaway republic of Chechnya, but he also derided as ineffective the agreement the Administration reached to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program.

From the other side, Dole accuses Clinton of surrendering U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations and endangering American lives in “utopian” peacekeeping operations, such as in Haiti or Somalia, that he argues don’t rise to the level of vital interests.

Dole envisions an America more willing to take action unilaterally and more forceful in pressing its will on allies and adversaries alike. The textbook example is his longstanding support for unilaterally lifting the arms embargo against Bosnia-Herzegovina--a move that could force a major break with NATO allies who believe such an initiative would widen the war there.

“The real choice is whether to allow international organizations to call the shots--as in Somalia or Bosnia,” Dole writes in an upcoming article in the journal Foreign Policy, “or whether to make multilateral groupings work for American interests--as in Operation Desert Storm.”

Dole’s denunciations of the United Nations give him a calling card with the conservative populist constituency attracted to Buchanan and Texas billionaire Ross Perot. But they also create the opening for critics to charge Dole with abandoning the principles of internationalism that have predominated within the GOP for more than four decades.

Dole appears to be carefully balancing these contending considerations. Last fall, he expressed substantial doubts about the potential threats to U.S. sovereignty in the world trade treaty known as GATT--before finally endorsing the measure widely supported in the business community, on Wall Street and in other powerful free-trade circles. When Clinton proposed massive loan guarantees for Mexico in January, Dole immediately endorsed the deal--then lowered his profile as the package came under withering fire from Buchanan and other conservative populists.

Dole now faces a similar balancing act on congressional efforts to limit U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations. Last month, the House passed legislation that would severely restrict U.S. involvement in such efforts.

With much fanfare, Dole in January introduced a peacekeeping bill similar to the House legislation. But since then, Dole hasn’t pushed the bill; aides say he remains committed to the measure but acknowledge that he is willing to soften a key accounting provision included in both the House legislation and his original bill that otherwise would create the largest hurdle for continued American participation in U.N. peacekeeping.

State Department officials believe that Dole has downplayed the issue because the House measure has drawn intense criticism as isolationist, not only from the Administration but also from Lugar--who is increasingly functioning as the voice of the traditional GOP internationalist consensus.

“From our point of view, it is a very good thing to have Lugar in there,” the State Department official said. “Lugar will keep Dole honest on these things without us having to do it.”

Lugar has condemned the House bill as both an infringement on the President’s powers and overly sweeping in its rejection of U.S. participation in U.N. operations.

The fear of being labeled an isolationist is one constraint on Dole. Another constraint on Clinton’s Republican critics is an ambivalence in conservative circles about establishing precedents that diminish any President’s freedom of action in foreign policy.

Gramm, for instance, surprised many observers last week when he indicated that, despite his reservations about the North Korea deal, he will not support congressional efforts to unravel it. “While I think it is a bad deal,” Gramm said, “I don’t think we can set about in good conscience undercutting something the President has already agreed to.”

Administration officials take those remarks as a sign not only of Gramm’s reluctance to fetter executive power but also as a backhanded admission that no one has come up with a better alternative.

Likewise, officials note that, for all his criticism of Clinton’s hesitation on Bosnia, Dole has quietly put on hold his bill to demand unilateral lifting of the arms embargo amid criticism from Lugar and others that it was ill-timed and a threat to NATO. And Administration aides point out that, despite all of Dole’s sharp words about Yeltsin last week, he offered no concrete policies for changing Russian behavior.

“He did not come out and say, ‘Cut off assistance,’ ” said one State Department official closely following his remarks. “He was tough in his talk but not in his walk.”