Think Again: Clinton's Foreign Policy

Views on William Jefferson Clinton's record as a world leader have been sharply divided. Where supporters see pragmatic leadership and bold innovation, critics see improvised initiatives that have left America adrift. In preparation for the coming rash of retrospectives, FP's editors look at which aspects of the conventional wisdom are likely to stand the test of time.

BY FP EDITORS | NOVEMBER 1, 2000

Clinton's Foreign Policy Lacked Vision

He offered a vision, but nobody paid any attention. "I long for Bush's 'vision!'" Harvard professor Jorge Domínguez declared sardonically, expressing the mood of many critics who have routinely accused President Bill Clinton of "strategic incoherence" and "tactical ad hocery."

Yet for all this critique's popularity, it has two flaws: First, Bill Clinton did indeed have a clear vision of the United States' role in the post–Cold War world, one that he articulated frequently. Second, the essence of that vision was not so different from the one offered by his predecessor, President George Bush.

Few people remember that even before the Berlin Wall fell, Bush delivered a keynote speech arguing that the West had to move beyond a "grand strategy ... based on the concept of containment" of communism, and that it was incumbent upon the United States to encourage a "growing community of democracies anchoring international peace and stability, and a dynamic free-market system generating prosperity and progress on a global scale." How did contemporary pundits rate this new blueprint for U.S. foreign policy? A "vacuity" was the assessment of the New York Times, while others derided it as "too cautious" and lacking "vision."

Likewise, as a candidate in 1992, Clinton chastised his opponent for failing to enunciate a "new American purpose." But one year later, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake delivered a speech outlining Clinton's agenda for the post­–Cold War world, declaring: "The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement -- enlargement of the world's free community of market democracies." As it did for Bush, this grand vision largely fell flat (Yale political scientist Gaddis Smith called it "banality on stilts"), but the notion of expanding the community of free-market democracies emerged as the central tenet of the Clinton administration's foreign policy. At the beginning of the second Clinton term, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger put forth a set of goals -- from building a united, peaceful Europe to strengthening the security and economic architecture in the Asia-Pacific -- that, while perhaps not exactly visionary, were firmly within the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy. A fairer critique of the Clinton administration's foreign policy might focus less on a lack of vision and more on a lack of attention.

 SUBJECTS: U.S. FOREIGN POLICY