Foreign policy of the Bill Clinton administration
[16][17] He led delegations of entrepreneurs, businessmen and financiers to South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, China and Hong Kong, Ireland India and Senegal.
Clinton's highest priority was to maintain trade with China, boost American exports, expand investment in the huge Chinese market, and create more jobs at home.
It removed many restrictions of trade in agriculture, textiles, and automobiles, provided new protections for intellectual property, set up dispute resolution mechanisms, and implemented new labor and environmental safeguards.
[35] The end of superpower rivalry had freed the UN and NATO and regional security institutions from their previous Cold War mind-set, and created new opportunities for them to play a more active, collective role.
These debates were not new, with the struggle over war powers being a constant feature of American foreign policy, especially since WWII when it first gained superpower status, joined international organizations, and signed its first mutual defense treaty in more than 150 years.
[47][48] This intervention, called Operation Restore Hope, saw U.S. forces assuming the unified command in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 794 with the intent to facilitate airlifted humanitarian supplies and prevent the items from falling into the hands of regional warlords.
Following Clinton's assumption of the Presidency, his administration shifted the objectives set out in Operation Restore Hope and began pursuing a policy of attempting to neutralize the Somali Warlords, in particular Mohamed Farrah Aidid, as part of the second phase of the United Nations’ intervention in the country, known as UNOSOM II.
Following a national security policy review session held in the White House on 6 October 1993, Clinton directed the Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral David E. Jeremiah, to stop all actions by U.S. forces against Aidid except those required in self-defense.
The Bosnian Serbs, who were supported by Serbia, were better equipped than the Muslims and the Croats; as a result, they populated and controlled much of the countryside in ways including besieging cities, such as the capital of Sarajevo.
Mitchell returned to the region and arranged yet another blueprint for a further peace settlement that resulted in a December 1999 formation of the power-sharing government agreed the previous year, which was to be followed by steps toward the IRA's disarmament.
[87][88] On 20 September 1993, during the War in Abkhazia, Clinton sent letters to Boris Yeltsin and Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze, noting his support for the Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereignty and condemned the military offensive by Abkhaz separatists.
[93] Secret negotiations mediated by Clinton between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat led to a historic declaration of peace in September 1993, called the Oslo Accords.
[102] In October 1994, Baghdad once again began mobilizing around 64,000 Iraqi troops near the Kuwaiti border because of their expressed frustrations of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation's wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
However, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei refused to accept the offer for dialogue unless the U.S. formally withdrew its support for Israel, lifted the '95 sanctions imposed on the country, stopped accusing Tehran of attempting to develop nuclear weaponry, and officially ended its policy of considering Iran a "rogue state that sponsors terrorism."
[131][132][133] In July 1993, the Yinhe incident occurred, in which the US Navy stopped a Chinese container ship en route to Kuwait in international waters, cut off its GPS so that it lost direction and was forced to anchor, and held it in place for twenty-four days.
[147][148] In its first two years, says Robert Pastor, the Administration worked to restore democracy in Haiti and secured Senate approval of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that Bush had negotiated.
[150] The 1991 Haitian coup d'état, led by Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras, had ousted the country's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who barely escaped to the United States.
Vice President Gore and advisor Anthony Lake strongly agreed, while Sandy Berger, Strobe Talbott, Warren Christopher and Defense Secretary William Perry went along.
Clinton tried to rally public opinion with a forceful televised address that denounced the military junta as armed thugs engaged in "a reign of terror, executing children, raping women, killing priests.
Similar evidence led to the arrests of other plotters behind the attack, including Nidal Ayyad, Mahmoud Abouhalima, Ahmad Ajaj, and Ramzi Yousef—who was identified as the key player in the bombing.
"[170] Clarke reviewed the plans for Sandy Berger, the National Security Director, and told him that it was in the "very early stages of development" and stressed the importance of only targeting bin Laden, not the entire compound.
On August 20, Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, where bin Laden was suspected of manufacturing biological weapons.
[citation needed] Near the end of 1999, the Clinton administration, working with the government of Jordan, detected and thwarted a planned terrorist attack to detonate bombs at various New Year millennium celebrations around the world.
[168] As Clinton's second term drew to a close, the CSG drafted a comprehensive policy paper entitled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al Qida: Status and Prospects.
[181] Clinton acknowledged that, following the bombing on USS Cole, his administration prepared battle plans to execute a military operation in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and search for bin Laden.
The plans were never implemented because, according to Clinton, the CIA and FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible for the bombing until after he left office and the military was unable to receive basing rights in Uzbekistan.
[188] Clinton had vetoed similar measures in the past, but he agreed to the restrictions when faced with the prospect that the United States would lose its vote in the UN General Assembly for nonpayment of dues.
According to Harvard Professor Stephen Walt:[196] Critics on the right argue that he is too eager to accommodate a rising China, too blind to Russia's corruption and cronyism, and too slow to use force against states like Yugoslavia or Iraq.
On the left, liberals bemoan Clinton's failure to prevent the genocide in Rwanda, his tardy response to the bloodletting in the Balkans, and his abandonment of his early pledge to build a multilateral world order grounded in stronger international institutions.
