APUSH: UNDERSTANDING THE CLINTON YEARS/ 1993-2001
We are perhaps too close to the Clinton era to have a clear perspective on how he will be
judged as a leader. The following narrative account of the Clinton years is largely drawn
from the PBS series on the American Presidency.
CLINTON: THE "NEW DEMOCRAT"
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THE ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Bill Clinton, whose father died a few months before he was born, always wanted to be
president. Born in 1946, he attended public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, after moving
there from Hope. As a boy he was obsessed with politics, winning student elections at
high school and later at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Working on the staff
of Arkansas Senator William Fulbright and attending Oxford University as a Rhodes
scholar strengthened his resolve for a political career. After graduating from Yale Law
School, Clinton taught law at the University of Arkansas prior to running for state
attorney general and then for Arkansas governor; thirty-two years old at that time, he was
the youngest governor in the nation and in Arkansas history. After losing his bid for
reelection, Clinton came back to win four terms, positioning himself for a shot at the
Democratic nomination for president in 1992. Clinton defeated President Bush in 1992
after besting a field of fellow Democrats for the nomination. As president, Clinton vowed
to focus on economic issues like a "laser beam," especially the high deficit and sluggish
growth of the American economy. He also vowed to remake the Democratic Party by
advocating for issues supported by the middle class such as government spending to
stimulate the economy, tough crime laws, jobs for welfare recipients, and tax reform that
burdened the rich. At the same time, Clinton stood firm on certain traditional liberal
goals such as reduced military expenditures, gun controls, legalized abortion, affirmative
action programs, national health insurance, and gay rights.
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WHO IS BILL CLINTON?
William Jefferson Clinton, the young president from Hope, Arkansas, succeeded where no
other Democrat had since FDR: he was reelected to a second term. Clinton also defied his
critics by surviving an array of personal scandals for infidelity, turning the greatest deficit
in American history into a surplus, effectively using American troops to stop the
murderous "ethnic cleansing" civil wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and presiding over the
greatest level of economic prosperity since the early 1960s. Clinton achieved these
successes despite unrelenting personal attacks from the right-wing of the Republican
Party, the loss of Congress to the Republicans for the first time in forty years, and a
humiliating but unsuccessful impeachment trial by the U.S. Senate. He fashioned himself
as a "New Democrat" and has frequently been referred to as the "Comeback Kid." Few
presidents have suffered more humiliating public abuse, caused more damage to the
prestige of the presidency, or presided over a longer period of sustained prosperity.
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CONTROVERSY, SCANDAL, AND SUCCESS
Clinton stumbled badly in his first term when his complex health care reform initiative,
spearheaded by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was overwhelmingly rejected by
Congress. By 1996, Republicans had launched an aggressive attack on Clinton—funded by
right-wing political action committees—that delivered Republican majorities in both
houses of Congress for the first time since 1955. Clinton fought back by capitalizing on
Republican blunders and the nearly fanatical attacks lashed at him by his conservative
opponents. When Clinton refused to sign a highly controversial budget passed by the
Republican-controlled Congress, he looked strong and resolute. Congress then forced a
shut down of government to pressure Clinton to back down, but Clinton remained firm,
and the opposition caved in. Most Americans blamed Congress for the gridlock rather
than Clinton, and decisively reelected him to office in 1996.
Clinton suffered two major setbacks during his administration. The first was his failure to
obtain health care reform. The second, and much more damaging to his place in history,
was his impeachment by the House of Representatives on charges of having lied under
oath and having obstructed justice in the attempted cover-up of his affair with a White
House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The impeachment issue grew out of an independent
counsel’s so-called Whitewater investigation of Clinton's financial dealings in Arkansas. It
peaked just prior to the midterm elections in 1998. The American people cared less about
the president's marital affairs or his long-ago financial dealings than it did about his
success in reducing deficits and obtaining economic prosperity. The Republicans lost
seats in the House, and the Senate thereafter failed to convict Clinton on the
impeachment charges. Nor was the special prosecutor able to link either the president or
the First Lady to criminal activities in the Whitewater investigation.
In foreign affairs, Clinton scored high marks for his role in brokering peace negotiations
in Northern Ireland between warring Catholics and Protestants, for overseeing peace
talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and for his decisive steps
to end a murderous military dictatorship in Haiti. His leadership of NATO bombings in
Bosnia and Kosovo—and his willingness to send ground troops as soldiers and peace
keepers—forced the government of Serbia to end its murderous attacks on Muslims in
Bosnia, as well as on ethnic Albanians within the borders of its Kosovo region.
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Clinton's presidency, despite having greatly tarnished the office, did succeed in achieving
most of his promised goals, especially on the economic front and in the remaking of the
Democratic Party. Future history books may well begin by noting that William Clinton
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POLITICAL PARTNERSHIP
Clinton's partner in his political career and marriage, Hillary Rodham Clinton, emerged as
a key player in his administration. A brilliant woman who supported and advised the
president on most issues of his administration, her popularity had plummeted after her
failure to achieve health care reform in Clinton’s first term. However, she emerged from
the Monica Lewinsky affair with very high popularity ratings in his second term.
was the second president to have been impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.
However, they will also note his amazing ability to survive and to substantially impact the
politics, policies, and programs of the United States for most of the 1990s.
OVERVIEWING DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
Bill Clinton began his presidency promising to focus "like a laser beam" on the economic
needs of the nation: unemployment, the runaway deficit, the health care crisis, and
welfare reform. On all fronts but one—health care reform, he succeeded significantly but
not completely.
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Hoping to move dramatically on all fronts, Clinton made several decisions early on in his
presidency that tarnished his image among supporters and opponents alike. Fulfilling a
campaign pledge, Clinton issued an executive order ending the exclusion of homosexuals
from military service. When a storm of protest emerged and Congress threatened to pass
a law restoring the ban, he backed off. The president came up with a compromise military
policy of "Don't ask, don't tell," meaning that the military services would not ask the
sexual orientation of service personnel, and these personnel in turn would not have to
volunteer information. This halfway policy alienated liberals and gays who felt that their
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FULFILLING CAMPAIGN PROMISES
By the end of his first term, Clinton had battled Congress to secure adoption of an
economic package that combined tax increases (which fell mainly on the upper class) and
spending cuts (which hurt mainly impoverished American). This economic policy
lowered the deficit from $298 billion in 1992 to $203 billion by 1994. By the end of his
second term, surging tax revenues due to a booming economy had cut the deficit to $25
billion in 1999. A massive budget surplus was predicted in the year 2000—a reality no one
in the nation would have thought possible in 1992, and surpluses amounting to $1.5
trillion were projected for the first decade of the 21st century. Equally important were the
pace of economic growth and low inflation. Combined with historically unprecedented
low interest and unemployment rates, these factors positioned America's economy as the
strongest and most robust in the world as the nation prepared to enter the new century.
On many issues, like passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
which cleared Congress in 1993, Clinton essentially had endorsed Republican programs,
and benefited from Republican support. On others, like welfare reform, the Republican
controlled Congress accepted Clinton's lead in publicizing the issues, but dominated the
writing of the bills creating the actual programs. In the summer of 1996, Congress passed
a sweeping reform bill that fulfilled Clinton's 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as
we know it." The legislation replaced the long standing Aid for Dependent Children
program with a system of block grants to individual states. It also dropped the eligibility
of legal immigrants for welfare assistance during the first five years of their residency.
Furthermore, Clinton won an increase in the minimum wage to $5.15 per hour, the first
hike since 1991. The president blocked Republican attempts to bar public education to
children of illegal immigrants.
rights were not protected but also upset much of the officer corps that did not want gays
to be allowed to serve.
Clinton also looked weak and indecisive when he withdrew the names of two female
nominees for attorney general because they had violated immigration laws in hiring
household employees. The president's image problem was further compounded when he
retracted the nomination of Lani Guinier, an African American law professor and an old
personal friend, to head the Civil Rights Commission. Guinier's nomination was
jeopardized when it was discovered that she had written an essay defending a complex
"multiple vote" system that would ensure the election to legislatures of more members of
minority groups, rather than the one person, one vote doctrine.
CABINET AND STAFF APPOINTMENTS
In his campaign in 1992 Clinton had promised to form a cabinet "that looked like
America." On the road to fulfilling this pledge, the president stumbled badly with the
attorney general nomination and quick withdrawal of a Connecticut lawyer named Zoe E.
Baird. Baird came under criticism for having failed to pay taxes for a Peruvian couple that
she had hired as domestic workers. He then attempted to win confirmation of federal
judge Kimba Wood, but she too had not handled her domestic help properly. Clinton
finally settled on Florida prosecutor Janet Reno for that position. Clinton named three
other women to cabinet level positions: Madeline K. Albright (appointed in 1997 to
replace Warren M. Christopher) as secretary of state—she had first served as Clinton's
ambassador to the United Nations; Donna E. Shalala, chancellor of the University of
Wisconsin, as secretary of health, education, and welfare; and African American Hazel
O'Leary as secretary of energy.
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Included too in top administrative posts were several minority males. Clinton appointed
several African Americans to high level posts, including Democratic National Chairman
Ronald H. Brown, as secretary of commerce; former Mississippi Congressman Mike Espy
as secretary of agriculture; Jesse Brown, a disabled Marine veteran who ran the Disabled
American Veterans office in Washington, as secretary of veterans affairs; and Clifton
Wharton, Jr., chairman of the $112 billion Teachers Insurance and Retirement Equities
Fund, as deputy secretary of state. Latinos were also appointed in more substantial
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The president also put women at the helm of sub-cabinet posts. His campaign media
manager Dee Dee Myers was appointed as press secretary and California economist Laura
D'Andrea Tyson became chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers. Florida
environmental official Carol Browner—also Al Gore's one-time legislative assistant—was
appointed to the top position of the Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, Dr.
Joycelyn Elders, an African American who was serving as the Arkansas health director,
became U.S. surgeon general. And when Supreme Court justice Byron White retired in
1993, Clinton named Ruth Bader Ginsberg as his replacement; Ginsberg was a federal
appeals court judge who had taught at Columbia Law School and pioneered litigating
cases of sex discrimination.
numbers than in previous administrations, including former San Antonio, Texas, Mayor
Henry G. Cisneros as secretary of housing and urban development and Federico Peña as
secretary of transportation.
HEALTH CARE REFORM
Along with the political scandals that plagued his presidency, Clinton failed to achieve
what he had promised would be the major goal of his administration: affordable health
care insurance for every American in the nation. Clinton felt passionately about the fact
that 41 million Americans did not have health insurance. The United States was the only
developed industrial nation in the world without a universal health care system. Also,
health care costs had skyrocketed since the 1970s, consuming one seventh of the nation's
goods and services—far more than that of any other modern country in the world.
Winning a national health package would enable Clinton to have an enormous impact on
the course of the nation, in much the same fashion as Franklin D. Roosevelt had in
initiating Social Security and unemployment insurance. In the minds of many, Clinton's
health care proposals would be the most massive, important social legislation in all of
American history.
Politically, the consequences of health care reform were simply enormous. If health care
costs could be controlled, a major part of the nation's staggering economic deficit would
be harnessed. Equally important, universal health care would link the middle class and
the working class to the Democratic Party for at least another generation. Republicans, of
course, understood this fact, and they were united in their determination to deny Clinton
victory on this issue. Many Americans, while wanting health insurance, worried, too, that
national health insurance was communistic in character, a socialized step that would
deny Americans the right to seek a doctor of their choice while placing physicians in the
service of a government bureaucracy.
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In hindsight, the appointment of Hillary was a serious mistake for the short run goals of
health care reform. It immediately placed the First Lady in a position of being a major
policy and political power that deviated significantly from all precedent, thus allowing
health care critics to attack her as well as the program. She also blundered in several
important ways. Her decision to recruit a task force of 600 experts to work in secret on
thirty-four issues—such as health care premiums, managed competition, and health care
alliances—looked too much like policy by cabal and fiat. A federal court forced her to
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To push through a health reform bill in his first hundred days in office, Clinton named his
wife, Hillary Clinton, head of the task force to develop the program, and his old friend
from Oxford, Ira Magaziner, as its director. Hillary Clinton, a brilliant, hard-driving,
forceful and committed feminist with a distinguished legal career, was Clinton's closest
political confidant—his partner actually in his political career. The president appointed
her to head the task force, which would be administered by Magaziner, because he knew
that she cared deeply about the issue, and that "if anybody had a chance to do it, she had
the best chance."
open up some of the proceedings after health care providers and journalists sued for open
access. Most importantly, the process left Congress out of the picture, thus eliminating
the political insiders that actually made "the political system" work. Clinton wanted to
present to Congress a finished package, which meant that the participants in the
congressional committee process were not involved in its drafting. Nor were key
members of the administration closely involved, such as Secretary of Health and Human
Services Donna Shalala and the Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen. Clinton’s
economic advisers wound up opposing the task force’s plans and were skeptical of its
economic assumptions, and the task force disbanded without completing its work, which
was given over to several White House agencies.
REPUBLICAN AND PUBLIC BACKLASH
The end product was a massively complicated and sophisticated measure, completely
beyond the reach of the average citizen to comprehend, let alone understand. Nearly 1,350
pages long, the proposal had taken much longer to produce—a full year—than originally
imagined. Everyone immediately complained that the president had misstepped in not
going to the public with the broad outlines of the plan that then could have been worked
through the congressional committee process. Everyone who was not included but who
should have been voiced criticism, even many of the proposal's supporters. Although
Clinton's national health care speech in September 1993 was one of the best he had ever
delivered, the euphoria soon vanished as the Republican opponents lashed out at the
plan's size, incomprehensibility, and threat to small business and individual choice with a
series of sophisticated negative TV ads.
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Although Clinton in his January 1994 State of the Union address threatened to veto a
Republican health care measure, it was an empty threat. By summer of 1994, despite a
brilliant series of congressional hearing appearances by Hillary Clinton, health care
reform was doomed, and congressional leaders dropped consideration of it in August. The
public supported the general principles involved, but support dropped forty points in the
polls once Clinton’s name was attached to it. It would be a devastating set back that
nearly derailed the Clinton presidency before it even got started. In the minds of many
political analysts, it was a botched opportunity of gigantic proportions.
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The coordinated Republican attack was greatly assisted by the outbreak of the
Whitewater investigation, numerous alleged sex scandals, and the suicide death of White
House aid Vincent Foster—all of which put the Clinton administration on the defensive.
No extreme seemed out of bounds in attacking the president and First Lady. The health
care industry poured tens of millions of dollars into the campaign. Conservative talkradio host Rush Limbaugh daily ridiculed the president and linked Whitewater and his
alleged sexual affairs to health care, suggesting even that there may have been a tie
between Foster's death and the White House. Bumper stickers proclaimed: "Where is Lee
Harvey Oswald now that we need him?"
SCANDALS AND IMPEACHMENT
Unlike any president in history, Clinton was besieged by attackers with a determination
and a vehemence that bordered on outright hatred by his opponents, especially on the far
right-wing of the Republican Party. The nation had never seen anything quite like this
display of vitriol. By the end of his term, Clinton found himself, his staff, and the First
Lady the subject of numerous special investigations. By the end of 1999, no indictment or
specific charges of criminal activity by the president or Hillary Clinton had resulted from
these investigations, although several of their Arkansas associates have been indicted,
tried, convicted, and imprisoned—including Clinton's replacement as governor of
Arkansas.
WHITEWATER AND PAULA JONES
The most serious attacks on the president were those which charged him with a White
House cover-up of financial impropriety in his Arkansas investments prior to becoming
president. The issue involved a failed savings and loan company operated by Clinton
business associates, James and Susan McDougal, who had questionable business dealings
in real estate on the Whitewater River in Arkansas. Once the charges of a possible coverup were made, Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, called for a special prosecutor to be
named. When the first special prosecutor, Republican Robert B. Fiske, Jr., turned up no
evidence of crimes or cover up, Republicans demanded his removal. Under the
Independent Counsel statute, a federal court replaced Fiske with Kenneth Starr, a
conservative attorney and former federal judge also retained by various right-wing clients
and anti-Clinton corporations, namely tobacco firms.
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Although the Clintons weathered the storm for the most part, it is clear that much of
their time was spent dealing with their defense. His first major setback came in May 27,
1997 when the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 in Clinton v. Jones that the sexual harassment
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Searching for evidence of crime and cover-up, Starr began an open-ended inquiry into
every corner of Clinton's life, both before and during his presidency. No stone was left
unturned, including an unprecedented subpoena of the First Lady to testify about the
surprise appearance of subpoenaed but lost billing records from the Rose Law Firm (in
which she had been a partner in Arkansas) that mysteriously turned up on a table in the
White House. Any personal or business associate of the Clintons, past and present
members of his political staff and administration, and just about anyone who might have
knowledge of their private and public actions were subject to subpoenas as witnesses to
be questioned. Any criminal actions uncovered in the search for evidence against Clinton
were subject to prosecution regardless of their links to Whitewater or to the president.
This open-ended use of the special prosecutor's office marked a new step in how the
political opponents of an incumbent president might use the law to target the chief
executive and then determine if he might have committed a crime. (This inverted the
normal presumption of due process, which is to find evidence of a crime and then
investigate to see who might have committed it.)
suit brought against the president by Paula Jones could go forward while he was in office.
Faced with the likelihood of a civil trial, Clinton agreed to a settlement in the case, paying
Jones nearly $1 million but without making an apology or admission of guilt. Later he was
ordered to pay a fine ordered by a federal judge for his misleading testimony in the early
stages of the case.
LEWINSKY AFFAIR AND IMPEACHMENT
Just as the Jones sexual harassment case seemed to be over, the news broke in January of
1998 that a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky had had a sexual
relationship with the president. Clinton denied the charges on national TV. Starr then
expanded his Whitewater investigation, alleging that Clinton had lied under oath in the
Paula Jones case when he had denied having had sex with Lewinsky. The special
prosecutor was convinced that Clinton had lied, that he had tried to cover up the affair,
and that he had instructed others to obstruct justice by lying on his behalf.
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The Senate, charged under the Constitution with judging the evidence, opened its trial in
mid-January 1999, and it became immediately clear that a two-thirds majority vote to
convict Clinton and remove him from office would not emerge. Those voting against
impeachment argued that these were private matters, involving "low" and tawdry actions,
and not "high crimes and misdemeanors" involving offenses against the state. Those
voting against Clinton argued that even in private matters, a president who commits
perjury and obstructs justice is subverting the rule of law, and it is that subversion that
becomes the "high crime," and not the original offense. He was acquitted on both counts
on February 12, 1999. Forty-five Republican senators voted guilty while forty-five
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The next seven months found the American public consumed by the Lewinsky affair,
following every nuance of the investigation by Starr and debating the merits of the case.
Nothing like this had so captured the attention of the American public since Watergate
and Nixon's resignation from office. Startling revelations came out, including taped
interviews in which Lewinsky described details of the affair as well as a dress that
contained samples of the president's DNA. On August 17, 1998, Clinton acknowledged in a
televised address to the nation his "inappropriate" conduct with Lewinsky, that he had
lied about it to the nation, and that he had misled his wife. But he refused to admit
having ever instructed anyone else to lie or of trying to orchestrate a cover-up involving
anyone else. A stunned nation fully expected his resignation or impeachment. Starr then
sent his report to the House of Representatives alleging that there were grounds for
impeaching Clinton for lying under oath, obstruction of justice, abuse of powers, and
other offenses. After a vitriolic series of House hearings, all of which were televised, and
the release of thousands of documents about the matter and their posting on the
Internet, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that an impeachment inquiry
commence on a strictly partisan vote. The televised House inquiry riveted the American
public to their televisions. The House adopted two articles of impeachment—charging
the president with perjury in his grand jury testimony and obstructing justice in his
dealings with various potential witnesses.
Democrats and ten Republicans voted for acquittal. On the second article of obstruction
of justice, fifty Republicans voted for conviction while forty-five Democrats and five
Republicans voted for acquittal. Thus, the second president to have been impeached in
U.S. history (Andrew Johnson was the first) remained in office, acquitted and with two
years left in his second term.
IMPEACHMENT FALLOUT
In the process of pursuing an impeachment of the president, the Republicans had
seriously overplayed their hand. This was because the impeachment attempt had actually
strengthened Democratic unity as the party moved to protect Clinton and to deny the
Republicans a victory in the 1998 congressional elections. The outcome should have been
obvious to them when the Republicans actually lost five seats in the House while gaining
no seats in the Senate in the November elections. Traditionally, the opposition party
gains thirty to forty seats in the off-year elections of a president’s second term, and so the
Republican loss was unprecedented.
At the end of the impeachment proceedings, Clinton's ratings in public opinion polls
were at an all-time high, ranging between 65 and 70 percent. Each time Starr or the
Republicans in Congress provided fresh evidence for their charges, Clinton’s popularity
increased. Most Americans believed him to be guilty of lying to the nation, and gave him
low marks for character and honesty. But, they gave him high marks for performance, and
a majority wanted him censured and condemned for his conduct, but not impeached and
removed. A majority viewed key Republican attackers as mean-spirited extremists willing
to use what was a personal scandal for partisan goals. In the end, voters were happy with
Clinton's handling of the White House, the economy, and most matters of public life.
Incredibly too, Hillary Clinton's public opinion poll ratings actually exceeded the
president's, in large measure because of her dignified demeanor during those trying
personal times, thus lifting her popularity to among the highest ever given any First Lady
in history.
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THE REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION
The Republican offensive led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia that captured
both houses of Congress in 1994 ran out of steam by 1998. Not only did the Republicans
lose the presidential election of 1996, but they also lost much public support by
overplaying their hand in the impeachment of a popular president during times of
prosperity. As a result, the nation settled in for compromise or deadlock in the last two
years of the Clinton presidency. Major new social initiatives were rare, and the
Republican Congress continued to cut and chip away at post-New Deal programs, while
substituting programs aimed at business and defense contractors. Needed reforms of
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and health care were not enacted because of the
deadlock between the two parties and the weakness of the embattled president.
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CLINTON AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Bill Clinton came into office with little experience and little interest in foreign affairs. The
collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of the Bush administration to put in place a
cohesive plan for dealing with a post-Cold War world produced a number of foreign
policy decisions that initially were poorly handled by Clinton.
MISTEPS IN SOMALIA, RWANDA, AND HAITI
Weeks before Clinton took office, outgoing President Bush had sent American troops into
Somalia, a country located in eastern Africa. What started out as a humanitarian mission
to combat famine was brutally ambushed, with the bodies of dead American soldiers
dragged through the streets of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu. In an effort to prevent
the situation from getting worse, Clinton ordered an infusion of new troops, which
brought the total number of U.S. soldiers to 10,000. However, U.S. involvement in
Somalia became more unpopular with the American public, and the call for withdrawal
grew louder. Consequently, the president announced a full withdrawal of U.S. forces,
which occurred in March 1994. United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops remained in
the country until March 1995. The net result of this intervention was less than zero:
warlords remained in control and no functioning government was restored in the country
after the U.S. and UN left. The failure of American troops to be properly equipped for the
Somalia mission led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, and the initial
impression of a president out of his league in foreign affairs.
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In Haiti, Clinton personally sent in former President Jimmy Carter to conduct
negotiations with a brutal military dictatorship headed by General Raoul Cédras, which
had overthrown the Caribbean nation's democratically elected president. Accompanied
by retired General Colin Powell (one of the planners of the Persian Gulf War), Carter
threatened invasion unless the generals of the junta relinquished power. As American
planes were in the air, the generals buckled and agreed to leave. The following day the
same troops flew off again, this time invited into the country as a peacekeeping force. In
the final year of Clinton's first term, U.S. forces were withdrawn, but this impoverished
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In April 1994, a civil war broke out in Rwanda, a nation located in Central Africa. The
resulting genocide and violence forced 2 million people (approximately 25 percent of the
total population) to flee the country. When it was revealed that thousands of Rwandans
were also dying in refugee camps, Clinton was pressured to provide assistance. In July, the
president ordered airdrops of food and supplies and eventually sent 200 troops to Kigali,
the Rwandan capital, to secure the airport and protect the relief supplies. These American
troops were withdrawn in October 1994. Both Clinton and the world community were
criticized for not acting quickly and decisively to stop the violent deaths of 1 million
Rwandans who perished in the war. In 1998 the Clintons embarked on an extensive sixnation tour of Africa, during which the president briefly stopped in Rwanda to meet with
survivors of the civil war.
nation seemed no better off economically than under the generals, and its democratic
institutions remained fragile and endangered.
DOCTRINE OF ENLARGEMENT AND POLICY SUCCESSES
On the other hand, Clinton, always adept at recovering lost ground, realized that the
success of his presidency required a cohesive foreign policy. Well trained as a student at
the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Clinton understood global issues and
eventually focused on the creation of a new policy, which his advisers called the "doctrine
of enlargement." This doctrine embraced free trade, multilateral peacekeeping efforts and
international alliances, in addition to a commitment to intervention in world crisis
situations when it was practical (i.e., could be accomplished with little risk and low cost
in U.S. lives) and morally defensible. The policy promoted an activist role for the U.S. and
was designed to extend and protect basic human and civil rights insofar as it was within
the power of the U.S. to successfully achieve those goals without undermining national
security or depleting national resources. In Clinton's mind, the U.S. must continue its role
as the principal leader of the world in promoting human dignity and democracy, with the
understanding that it must never act in isolation or overextend its reach.
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ETHNIC WARS IN EUROPE
The main foreign policy demands on the Clinton administration came from the numerous
civil and ethnic wars in Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans. After two years of keeping
U.S. involvement in the conflict to a minimum, Clinton was eventually moved by Serbian
atrocities against Bosniak civilians. The president vigorously pushed NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization) to begin major bombing attacks on Serbian positions in
previously UN-protected safe areas in Bosnia. These locales had been overrun by
Christian Orthodox Serbs who were intent on carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing
aimed at driving all Muslims from the area. The Serbs wanted to carve out of the state of
Bosnia an ethnically pure Serbian homeland, and eventually divide the territory with the
Catholic Croats. After the Croats sided with the Bosniaks at America's urging, Clinton
turned a blind eye to arms shipments to the Bosniaks from Muslim nations. The president
also eventually allowed private American organizations to arm, train, and supply
intelligence to the Croat forces. This enabled the coalition of Bosniak and Croat forces to
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By 1999, the Clinton administration had achieved some important accomplishments.
Russia was successfully persuaded to withdraw troops from the Baltic Republic of Estonia
in 1994. Furthermore, the administration’s emissary, former Senator George Mitchell,
brokered peace negotiations among Ireland, Great Britain, and the Irish Republican
Army's political operation Sinn Fein ("Ourselves Alone"). In the Middle East, negotiations
facilitated between Israel leaders (Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 and Ehud Barak in 1999) and
Yasir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization produced the break-through Wye
Agreements. This agreement created an autonomous Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip
and the occupied territories of the so-called West Bank. Much of these foreign policy
successes were credited to the work of Madeliene K. Albright, who first served as the
ambassador to the United Nations and then as secretary of state.
push the Serbs back, which resulted in the Dalton Accords ending the fighting. Clinton
sent a peacekeeping force of 20,000 American troops (part of a 90,000 United Nations
force) into the region to enforce a cease-fire that was to be followed by free elections in
September 1996. By 1999, however, American and NATO troops were still in place as
peacekeepers, enforcing an uneasy settlement that stabilized war-torn Bosnia with no
American casualties. Bosnia was beginning to recover economically, and the horrible
atrocities and ethnic cleansing in the area had ended.
In 1999, Clinton moved decisively in unison with NATO to begin a massive bombing
campaign against the Serbian government to force it to stop its murderous "ethnic
cleansing" of Albanians in its southeastern territory, the Kosovo region. The Serbian
policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by specially trained forces from its Interior Ministry,
along with paramilitary forces that had been active in Bosnia years before, created
hundreds of thousands of refugees. Thousands of ethnic Albanians were murdered by
Serb forces. But the bombing worked, forcing the Serbian government to withdraw from
the region. With no American battle casualties during the fighting, U.S. troops joined
British, French, and other NATO forces to occupy Kosovo as peacekeepers under an
agreement worked out with Yugoslavia. The province remained nominally part of
Yugoslavia, but the Kosovars had gained autonomy, and the possibility of eventual
independence. Serbia, meanwhile, had suffered $60 billion in damage to its industries and
infrastructure and its economy was completely ruined by the NATO bombings. Although
the outcome of this foreign policy initiative is still unfolding, it is clear that Clinton's
forceful stand in Bosnia and Kosovo greatly enhanced his reputation as a decisive and
focused leader in foreign policy matters.
PS Rykken
Page
In 1999, Clinton's support for financial aid to Russia came under attack in the face of
mounting evidence that much of the borrowed money may have been stolen by an
organized criminal syndicate that includes members of Yeltsin's own family. However,
supporters of Clinton's pro-Yeltsin policies credit his administration with an important
achievement not easily measured in dollars or in the short run: the security of the Russian
nuclear arsenal. Since 1992, not a single nuclear missile or weapon had been sold or
transferred to international terrorists or other buyers eager to provide Russia with needed
12
DEALING WITH THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
More perplexing and uncertain, however, is the aftermath of Clinton's policy initiatives
regarding the former Soviet Union, especially Russia, and its former Eastern European
puppet states. Clinton successfully lobbied for the inclusion of the former communist
states of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). To do this, he promised Russia that neither nuclear weapons nor
large numbers of troops would be placed in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the Russians
took this as an aggressive step by NATO and the United States, even though Clinton
offered the Russians the opportunity to coordinate policy with NATO. He also supported
the besieged leadership of Russian President Boris Yeltsin as well as the funneling of
billions of dollars in loans to Russia from the International Monetary Fund.
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cash. Moreover, all of the former Soviet states have accepted U.S. assistance in the
safeguarding of nuclear power plants and dismantling of nuclear weapons—an
astounding achievement in view of the animosity that once existed between the United
States and the Soviet Union. At this posting, neither side points nuclear missiles at the
other, and by the end of the Clinton presidency, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange
between the superpowers is almost nonexistent.
PS Rykken