LET'S HOPE TV CREWS DON'T GET TO BURUNDI

Suppose you're working in the State Department's African bureau and you pick up a dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Burundi. "All hell is breaking loose. President Melchier Ndadaye and six of his cabinet ministers have been assassinated. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to adjacent countries. Thousands of others have been killed. Democracy is in jeopardy. We wait instructions for U.S. response."

You pick up the phone. "Get me our Burundi man and the CIA materials on Burundi."

In comes the old Burundi hand with the CIA's analysis, including long-distance psychiatric profiles of Burundi's leaders, living and dead. After reading the dispatch from our embassy, the Burundi expert states, "Well, they're at it again. You know where Burundi is don't you? Prior to World War I, it was a German colony. It's about twice as big as Connecticut. It's landlocked and pretty close to the equator. It's got plenty of nothing -- except hatred that is. It's got a surplus of that."

"You see, Burundi as a viable, independent country is just a figment of a map maker's fantasy. There really isn't a legitimate nation state. There's no way to make a cohesive Burundi because the two tribes in the area despise each other with an intensity you can't believe. The majority tribe -- called the Hutu -- has a lock on the agencies of government. The minority tribe -- called the Tutsi -- has a lock on the army. Every so often the locks get unlocked and the two tribes go on a killing rampage. It's happened lots of time in the past and it will happen again in the future so long as the world pursues the fantasy that somehow the two tribes have to live side by side under one roof."

The desk officer says, "Sounds a little like Somalia doesn't it?"

The Burundi expert responds, "It's Somalia Jr. and we have no business messing with either of them."

In real life, there is a Burundi. The president and six of his ministers have been assassinated. Tribal hatred engulfs the area. According to the U.N., 575,000 people -- 10 percent of the population -- have fled the country. It's a tragedy -- but a tragedy that the United States cannot resolve. Burundi isn't on our interventionists beat.

On the other side of Africa is Nigeria. With its abundant oil, it was once considered a potential capitalist democracy that the rest of Africa might copy. It didn't work out that way. As one Western diplomat puts it, "Nigeria is an unworkable mess." Some observers estimate that as many as a million people have starved to death beginning with the Biafran secession in the late 1960s and continuing to the present time. According to one recent news report, "Thousands of people die every year in Nigeria in ethnic or religious based conflicts. The economy has collapsed. Corruption and incompetence rule." It's a tragedy -- but a tragedy that the United States cannot resolve. Nigeria is not on our interventionist beat.

But somehow, Somalia ended up on our beat. The compelling difference was television. The ugliness of the Somali civil war was brought into our living rooms. Something that wasn't in our geopolitical sphere became an American concern simply because of the happenstance of where television camera crews were assigned.

There isn't anyone in the State Department who is advocating that we do anything overt in Burundi or Nigeria, except to express our sadness that conditions are so awful. Our moral concern at the plight of these two countries does not translate into action of any type.

The Clinton administration searches for a catchy definition of its foreign policy. According to Anthony Lake, President Clinton's national security adviser, our foreign policy is one of "determined pragmatism." He says, "Principles without pragmatism is posturing, and pragmatism without principles becomes rudderless opportunities." Velvet words. If they mean that we stay out of tribal, clan and religious strife in such places delineated in the atlas as "Somalia," "Burundi" and "Nigeria," then lets all sign up for "determined pragmatism" -- with or without a rudder.