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Democratizing the World
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11695 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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2 / 1994 |
2,567 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence T. Di Rita
Lawrence T. Di Rita is deputy director for foreign policy and
defense studies at the Heritage Foundation. |
Far from remaining passive abroad so as to "focus like a laser beam" on its domestic agenda, the Clinton administration has, in fact, had a fairly activist foreign policy. Its impulses have been internationalist, preferring action under the cover of organizations such as the United Nations, with a predilection for negotiation over decision.
This approach has thus far achieved little but to antagonize America's allies, embolden its adversaries, and highlight a nascent isolationist streak in the American public, not surprising given Clinton's strictures during the campaign that President Bush had paid too much attention to his overseas activities at the expense of urgent domestic priorities.
The civil war in the former Yugoslavia was an early test case of the administration's foreign policy mettle. That was appropriate, for it was Clinton who raised expectations of a resolute U.S. policy toward that conflict, even before he was president. In a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in August 1992 he criticized Bush for giving "short shrift to the yearnings of those seeking freedom, in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia; and ignored the warning signs that [Serb leader] Milosevic was emerging as one of Europe's bloodiest tyrants."
But he failed to deliver once elected. Instead, Clinton sent his secretary of state to Europe to "consult" with NATO allies regarding air strikes on Serbian artillery positions. Although opposed, due to the threat such strikes would pose to their own troops on the ground in Bosnia, the British, French, and other key allies reluctantly agreed.
With the allies--accustomed less to American consultation than American leadership--by then concerned about the absence of resolve toward a matter on which the United States itself had raised the stakes, the president then let it be known that he would defer to the UN secretary-general to decide which targets to strike and when these attacks should occur. Predictably, this further infuriated the allies.
This early example of the confusion that has thus far characterized the Clinton foreign policy is the result of a worldview that has been discredited in practice. The Clinton vision for most of his first year in office has been one in which the United States is seen as just one more nation in the "community of nations," no more or less entitled to act in defense of its own interests than any other. Consequently, the United States must act in concert with the community of
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