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 | CLINTON'S WORLD ORDER
SEPTEMBER 18, 1996TRANSCRIPT |
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Although candidate Bill Clinton campaigned under the slogan "It's the economy, stupid," President Bill Clinton has had to deal with a number of international hotspots. From peace negotiations in Bosnia, the Middle East and Ireland to rising tensions in North Korea and China, the Clinton administration has faced a number of foreign policy challenges. Before leading a policy debate, Margaret Warner looks at the past three and a half years.
MARGARET WARNER: Bill Clinton is the first President in nearly 50 years who hasn't been engaged in a Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. But he has had to react to many disconnected conflicts and crises around the world.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have spent so much of your time that you gave me these last four years to be your President worrying about the problems of Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi. What do these places have in common? People are killing each other and butchering children because they are different from one another.
MARGARET WARNER: Republicans have criticized the President's handling of many of these conflicts. They also accuse him of failing to develop an overall strategic vision for this new post-Cold War age.
SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: With the end of the Cold War, we should be building firm foundations for a century of peace, fulfilling the promise of a new future for Europe. Instead, Bill Clinton's policy of indecision and vacillation and weakness is making the world, in my view, a more dangerous place.
MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Clinton has overseen the use of American force in
several parts of the world. He inherited the first troop engagement in Somalia. President Bush had sent troops there to end widespread hunger and restore civil order. But on Mr. Clinton's watch, U.S. troops got involved in trying to hunt down one particular warlord. Somali gunmen ambushed a group of U.S. soldiers, killed them, and dragged their bodies through the streets of Mogadishu. The President faced harsh criticism of his decisions and those of Defense Secretary Les Aspin.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I asked Secretary Aspin why the extra armaments weren't sent to Somalia, and he said to me that when they were asked for, there was no consensus among the Joint Chiefs that it should be done and he normally relied on their reaching a consensus recommendation on an issue like that, a military question.
MARGARET WARNER: Within months, U.S. troops were withdrawn and Aspin was forced to resign. In Haiti, it was President Clinton who sent in troops in September of 1994 to force the country's military government to leave and to reinstate elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti has since held a new round of peaceful elections, but some U.S. troops still remain.
The third troop engagement has been in Bosnia. The bloody conflict there has preoccupied the President since his very first days in office. Early in 1993, he called for bombing the Serbs and ending the arms embargo against the Bosnian Muslims, but he backed down in the face of resistance from the European allies. Two years later, the Clinton administration managed to bring all sides to Dayton, Ohio, and to negotiate an end to the fighting. The President sent 20,000 troops to Bosnia as part of a NATO force to keep the peace. Many Republicans have been critical.
SEN. JESSE HELMS, Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Committee: (1995) I certainly agree that the President has the constitutional right to send the troops there. There's no question about that. He also has the constitutional right to make other mistakes.
MARGARET WARNER: The President avoided a potential military confrontation in
Asia over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. In 1994, the administration got North Korea to agree to end its nuclear weapons development in return for international help with its civilian nuclear program.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Through all appropriate means I will keep working to ensure the security of South Korea, the safety of our troops, the stability of the Asian Pacific, and the protection of our nation, our friends, and our allies from the spread of nuclear weapons.
MARGARET WARNER: But that agreement too has been criticized by Bob Dole.
SEN. BOB DOLE: Now the President's policy toward North Korea seems to be a dialogue for the sake of dialogue, not strategic vision, no operational plan, and no tactical coordination. He is following an old adage: If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there.
MARGARET WARNER: In China, President Clinton has adopted policies he initially criticized in President Bush. After threatening to use trade sanctions to pressure Chinese leaders on human rights, the Clinton administration de-linked the two issues and moved ahead on trade.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have decided to extend unconditional Most Favored Nation trade status to China.
MARGARET WARNER: As part of America's ongoing effort to sponsor a lasting peace in the Middle East, President Clinton hosted the signing of the historic 1993 accord between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chief Yasser Arafat. But the implementation of that accord suffered a setback recently with Rabin's assassination and the election of a new Israeli prime minister who had opposed the agreement.
Relations with Russia and its president, Boris Yeltsin, have also been at the top of Mr. Clinton's agenda. He has enthusiastically supported the Russian president in his
struggle against Communists and nationalists in his parliament, and while President Clinton has criticized Yeltsin's handling of the conflict in Chechnya, he has stood by his Russian counterpart nonetheless.
Currently, Iraq is preoccupying the Clinton administration. For the third time in his presidency, Mr. Clinton has used military force to contain Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Republicans have been critical of the President here too.
JAMES BAKER, Former Secretary of State: I think we should have made greater efforts to monitor and, if possible, to shape developments in the North. Consistent, intensive, and creative diplomacy might have prevented the factionalism that split the Kurds into two warring groups, and I think this represents a defeat for U.S. policy that like the demise of the coalition is attributable at least in part to a failure of leadership.
MARGARET WARNER: This latest crisis has given foreign policy more prominence in the presidential campaign than either side initially expected.
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