Foreign Policy in the Clinton Administration

PRESIDENCY IN THE UNITED STATES

FOREIGN POLICY IN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services.

PRESIDENCY IN THE UNITED STATES Additional books and e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website under the Series tab.

PRESIDENCY IN THE UNITED STATES

FOREIGN POLICY IN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

ROSANNA PEROTTI EDITOR

Copyright © 2019 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher.

We have partnered with Copyright Clearance Center to make it easy for you to obtain permissions to reuse content from this publication. Simply navigate to this publication’s page on Nova’s website and locate the “Get Permission” button below the title description. This button is linked directly to the title’s permission page on copyright.com. Alternatively, you can visit copyright.com and search by title, ISBN, or ISSN. For further questions about using the service on copyright.com, please contact: Copyright Clearance Center Phone: +1-(978) 750-8400 Fax: +1-(978) 750-4470 E-mail: info@copyright.com.

NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.

Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Perotti, Rosanna, editor.

Title: Foreign policy in the Clinton administration / editor: Rosanna Perotti, Ph.D. (Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US).

Description: Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2019. | Series: Presidency in the United States | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018059346 (print) | LCCN 2018060265 (ebook) | ISBN 9781536147988 (ebook) | ISBN 9781536147971 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: United States--Foreign relations--1993-2001.

Classification: LCC E885 (ebook) | LCC E885 .F675 2019 (print) | DDC 327.73009/049--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059346

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

CONTENTS Introduction

Reassessing “Practical Internationalism” in the Era of “America First” Rosanna Perotti

I. The Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy Chapter 1

Practical Internationalism: The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration as Viewed from Europe Richard N. Gardner

Chapter 2

Doing the Right Thing in a Pragmatic Way Madeleine K. Albright

Chapter 3

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration: The Pursuit of Order in the Post-Cold War Era Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

II. Defense Policy Chapter 4

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization of National Security Policy Melvin Goodman

ix 1

3 11

17 31 33

vi Chapter 5

Contents US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration Donald H. McNeill

III. Asia: Economic and Security Issues Chapter 6

Chapter 7

75

Japan’s Dual Challenge: A Democrat in the White House and the Growing Shadow of China Takashi Kanatsu

85

Engaging with North Korea: Clinton’s Legacy Mikyoung Kim

Chapter 9

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations under President William Jefferson Clinton Arthur G. Rubinoff

IV. Iraq and Anti-Terrorism

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

109

131 145

US Foreign Policy toward the Iraqi Kurds during the Clinton Administration Michael M. Gunter

147

Slouching towards Baghdad: Clinton’s Policy towards Iraq Stefanie Nanes

159

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush Michael D’Innocenzo

173

V. Northern Ireland Chapter 13

73

Clinton and China: From Confrontation to Engagement Jeffrey A. Bader

Chapter 8

Chapter 10

55

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

199 201

Contents Chapter 14

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000 Catherine B. Shannon

VI. The United Nations and Multilateralism Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Private and Public Diplomacy: The US Permanent Representative to the United Nations in the Clinton Years Meena Bose The Clinton Administration and the United Nations: From “Assertive Multilateralism” to “Burden Shifting” and Rediscovery Stephen F. Burgess Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo: The “Maturing” of the Clinton Administration’s UN Policy Jerry Pubantz

vii

219 247

249

263

285

About the Contributors

307

Subject Index

315

Name Index

321

Related Nova Publications

327

Introduction

REASSESSING “PRACTICAL INTERNATIONALISM” IN THE ERA OF “AMERICA FIRST” Rosanna Perotti Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

Like his three successors, Bill Clinton came to office with the intention of focusing on domestic policy. Also like his successors, however, he was forced to cope almost immediately with vexing international crises and at the same time forge a coherent foreign policy for the world’s preeminent democracy. In short order, Clinton would have to deal with war and genocide in the former Yugoslavia, a military takeover in Haiti, and an increasingly dangerous humanitarian intervention operation by US forces in Somalia. In fashioning his own unique approach to the Middle East, Asia, weapons proliferation, terrorism, and a host of other issues, Clinton and his team would have to steer the ship of state between two superpower “myths,” the myth of isolationism and the myth of world policeman.1 President Clinton chose a path of unabashed internationalism. His foreign policy continues to provide a reference point for interpreting

x

Rosanna Perotti

contemporary debates in US foreign policy, particularly the explosive differences that have risen to the surface since the 2016 election campaign.

Today, populist nationalists, including President Donald Trump, have attacked free trade and internationalism as a “bad deal” for US workers, striking out not only at trade agreements, but at immigration, refugee acceptance and US intervention. Advocates of free trade and international engagement counter that the United States must continue to take a leadership role in steering the international agreements and institutions that it helped to create, as a way of advancing American prosperity and security as well.

Because these current conflicts had their roots in the forty-second president’s decisions about America’s role in the world, it is essential to look more carefully at the foreign policy record of the Clinton administration.

This volume aims to contribute to that continuing reevaluation. Was there a coherent US foreign policy during Bill Clinton’s presidency? What were the administration’s greatest successes and failures? This collection represents the thinking of a diverse group of scholars who assembled just five years after Clinton left office to offer early assessments. Their papers were originally presented at a Hofstra University conference entitled “William Jefferson Clinton: The ‘New Democrat’ from Hope.” President Clinton gave the keynote address at the Long Island, NY campus and outlined what he considered to be the main themes, successes and failures.2 Dozens of members of his foreign and economic policy team attended, offering discussion and commentary. In addition, scholars from a variety of disciplines, from business to history to rhetoric, presented original papers on key aspects of the administration’s foreign policy. As we continue to reevaluate the merits and consequences of the globalization and international engagement of the 1990s and early 2000s, these essays and commentaries provide an insight into the thinking of the principals.

A COHERENT FOREIGN POLICY? In the years during and immediately following Bill Clinton’s tenure as president, there were considerable differences of opinion about whether

Introduction

xi

there had been any coherence to the president’s foreign policy program.

Early critics called his foreign policy reactive and argued that the president had subordinated foreign policy to his domestic policy agenda. Clinton came under fire for inaction and indecisiveness (primarily regarding Bosnia) and for his reliance on public opinion polls. Quoted in a popular article, Henry Kissinger complained of “a series of seemingly unrelated decisions in response to specific crises.”3 William Hyland noted that Clinton was too quick to delegate foreign policy decision making to subordinates early on, and that he squandered the opportunity to remake the world order in the aftermath of the Cold War.4 A spate of memoirs by former staffers, and later Clinton’s own memoir, My Life, attempted to correct the record and highlight not just the coherence in the administration’s policies, but specific successes.5 Yet even My Life itself, though it called attention to many of the successes of Clinton’s foreign policy, did not fully clarify the link between these successes and the president’s overarching vision. Organized chronologically, it was a sprawling work whose sheer length failed to concentrate the reader’s attention on particular coherent themes.

The passage of time, however, has provided us with interpretations offering a clearer picture of the “integrating foreign policy purpose” or “grand strategy” of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy. Though Clinton represented some degree of continuity with his predecessor, it was left to his administration to flesh out the meaning of George H. W. Bush’s New World Order. Recent chroniclers have found that, in large part, he did so in a coherent way. “All was not mere reactive and random confusion,” John Dumbrell wrote in a 2009 assessment.6 There was an arc to the development of Clinton’s foreign policy that illustrated where vision met pragmatism. The administration sought to chart out a new internationalism, a new post-Cold War posture. The central goals of Clinton’s first term, according to Dumbrell, were free trade, democracy promotion, pragmatism, military retrenchment and a “neo-Carterist” commitment to human rights or “assertive humanitarianism.” Some of these goals were attenuated in the second term, as multilateralism gave way to unilateralism in the domestic negotiations over the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and in US

xii

Rosanna Perotti

military actions in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. But it was newer, bolder, and more ambitious than the vision of his predecessor.

In a more recent assessment, James Boys pored exhaustively and systematically through speeches, National Security Strategy Reports, National Security Council documents, Presidential Decision Directives, Presidential Review Documents, and newly declassified materials at the Clinton Presidential Library to search for coherent themes. Clinton did have a “grand strategy,” Boys concluded. Replacing containment with the concepts of engagement and enlargement, terms initially expressed in speeches by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake (“enlargement”) and Secretary of State Warren Christopher (“engagement”) in September 1993, represented a significant departure. Three elements, which Clinton himself had first espoused at a campaign address at Georgetown University in December 1991,7 formed the basis for this strategy: enhanced security, prosperity promotion and democracy promotion.

There was an important and overlooked link between these elements that remained in place throughout Clinton’s presidency: by stressing the need to enhance US national security, the administration sought to prove that Democrats could be trusted with security issues, reduce global tensions and as a result, cut the defense budget; the promotion of prosperity sought increased exports to new overseas markets, higher wages, lower unemployment, and rising confidence on Wall Street, all vital for a successful 1996 reelection campaign; finally democracy promotion ensured the United States would “stand up for democracy,” promised open markets and reduced global tension, building on the benefits of the first two initiatives.8

Bill Clinton pursued an internationalist vision in order to attain economic and political renewal at home, these authors contend. The internationalism was not new, but Clinton was faced with a unique challenge: he inherited a post-Soviet world in which the United States was the only superpower and might not be so forever. With the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall torn down, the US had no “clear and present dangers requiring great sacrifices but dim and distant dangers calling for

Introduction

xiii

small sacrifices.”9 This offered new opportunities to pursue trade agreements that would boost US prosperity and national security. Nations that trade with one another, Clinton reasoned, would not go to war with one another. Moreover, the absence of global threats would allow for reductions in military spending. At the same time, even as democracy appeared to be thriving in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the United States could not retreat from its position of global responsibility. It would have to “engage the world, avoid a return to isolationism, and enlarge the democratic peace.”10 Thus the enlargement of NATO, engagement in a relationship with a democratizing Russia, and Clinton’s encouragement of free trade have been increasingly depicted as all of a piece, as evidence of the “engagement and enlargement” themes of Clinton’s foreign policy. During the Clinton administration, these more recent accounts depict the United States leading the world, with the assistance of others when possible, but acting alone when necessary. The Clinton administration’s overall pattern was to use force selectively to achieve the ends of engagement and enlargement, these accounts stress. During its first term, the administration refrained from using force in Rwanda and Somalia, but later, in his second term, the US did use force against Serbia and against an alleged terrorist factory in Sudan.

As President Clinton’s foreign policy legacy gained more coherence through the lens of the foreign policy literature in recent years, it figured more in contemporary debates over US foreign policy. Even during the 1990s, populist isolationists – primarily Pat Buchanan, but also to an extent Ross Perot – had challenged George H. W. Bush’s internationalism with calls for protectionism, immigration restrictions, and more restricted use of military intervention.11 Their voices had been muted as the Clinton administration went about its internationalist agenda. But in the nearly twenty years that followed President Clinton’s departure from office, it became apparent to many analysts that the globalization Clinton had embraced had led to increasing economic inequality, not just between wealthy and poor nations, but within wealthy nations themselves, primarily the United States.12 Moreover, Clinton-era military actions in Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq had provided a precedent for unilateral intervention in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration, which grew enormously

xiv

Rosanna Perotti

unpopular at home, alienated inhabitants of Iraq, overburdened the US military, and strained US alliances. Clinton’s strategy had been to encourage democracy and freedom throughout the world through trade and selective military engagement; George W. Bush had taken that strategy further, to advance liberty through massive intervention against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

In this way, Clinton’s internationalism can be seen as having sown the seeds of isolationism, nationalism and protectionism in the United States in the current period. The pressures of globalization and overextension increased the likelihood that disaffected US voters would support the populist, nationalist, isolationist agenda later pursued by President Donald Trump, who during his first 18 months in office announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, called for US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, NAFTA and the TPP, suggested the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, imposed a dramatic decrease in US refugee admissions, and advocated dramatic additional cuts in legal immigration. In our popular discourse, there is little question today whether President Clinton had a coherent foreign policy; the argument is whether Clinton’s internationalism can be blamed for the overextension and economic inequality that the United States is experiencing currently, and whether a US retreat from global engagement would improve the nation’s prosperity and security.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES At the 2005 Hofstra conference, Clinton and his staffers asserted not only that there were coherent themes in his foreign policy, but that there were notable foreign policy successes. In his keynote address, the former president recalled that, in his first term, he and his administration had succeeded in getting NATO allies to agree to use military force in Bosnia.

They had helped to unseat a military dictator in Haiti, made substantial progress toward peace in the Middle East, and launched the Northern Ireland peace process. They had made a commitment to expand NATO. They had begun to deal seriously with the issue of terrorism by pursuing Osama bin

Introduction

xv

Laden (albeit unsuccessfully). They had modernized training and technology in the nation’s armed forces. In his second term, they had supported the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders group and the Summit of the Americas, expanded NATO and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and supported the inclusion of China in the WTO. They had supported the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The idea, Clinton said, was to establish a network of global cooperation while reserving the use of force to protect the United States’ most vital national interests. “(W)e will not forever be the only military, economic, and political superpower,” Clinton told a packed arena, as dozens of scholars and former administration officials prepared to assess the administration’s accomplishments in subsequent panel discussions. “ ... (W)e need to be working to create a world we would like to live in when we are no longer the largest dog on the street.”13 In the area of foreign economic policy, Clinton said, his administration had expanded trade, steering the passage of a 2000 Africa trade bill aimed at stimulating economic development, reducing poverty and ultimately strengthening democratic governance. It had engineered Congressional approval for separate trade bills with Jordan and Vietnam, marking the United States’ first free trade agreement with an Arab nation and ending a nearly twenty-year embargo with the latter nation. In its final months, the administration had secured Congress's approval for $435 million in debt relief, fulfilling a 1996 US pledge by the United States to join the world’s other richest in contributing to the Debt-Relief Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).

In December 1998, President Clinton had authorized the bombing of Iraq “where we thought their supplies of biological and chemical materials were.” In spring 1999, the president, under the auspices of NATO, had intervened in Kosovo to end ethnic cleansing by the Serbs against the Kosovar Albanians. The administration had reconciled with India. It had obtained an extension of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). It had supported the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and Kyoto climate change accord.

xvi

Rosanna Perotti

In sum, the administration had employed “practical internationalism,” a philosophy that Richard N. Gardner, the administration’s ambassador to Spain, describes in this volume as “working with other countries in bilateral, regional, and global institutions to advance the common interests of mankind, in peace, welfare and human rights.” As early as 1988, Gardner had argued that the next president would have to understand that “neither dogmatic unilateralism nor utopian multilateralism is an appropriate policy for a superpower in a complex and dangerous world.” Rather, the president would need to blend unilateralism and multilateralism, “acting alone where multilateral solutions are unavailable, developing multilateral options where they represent a better means of achieving our national objectives.”14 If these were the successes, the failures were also evident, both to former administration officials and also to scholars at the conference. One early such failure came in Somalia in 1993. Somalia had been brought to a state of crisis in 1992 by the ouster of its president, which set into motion a catastrophic competition for power between warlords, destruction of the nation’s agricultural resources, and ultimately a nationwide famine.

Clinton’s predecessor George H. W. Bush had offered US troops to protect UN humanitarian efforts to alleviate the famine, and Clinton had continued those efforts. But in October 1993, eighteen US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed in a long gun battle sparked by an American attempt to capture one of those warlords. The incident, which came to be known as “Black Hawk Down,” alluding to the two American helicopters shot down during the battle, provoked bitter criticism about the administration’s failed efforts at “nation building.” The administration withdrew American troops from Somalia the following year.

A second failure came in the former Yugoslavia with the United States’ sheer slowness to respond to the Serbs’ seizure of territory in Bosnia and the extermination of thousands of that breakaway nation’s Muslim inhabitants.

As a presidential candidate, Clinton had refused to rule out air strikes against Serb positions or the lifting of the arms embargo on Bosnia. As president, however, Clinton was much less certain about how to proceed. He sent his secretary of state to seek European support to both initiate air strikes and lift the arms embargo. When the Europeans failed to take the lead to do this, the

Introduction

xvii

administration took nearly two years to articulate a political and military policy featuring American leadership. Nearly 100,000 people died in the brutal civil war between 1992 and 1995, eighty percent of them Bosnian Muslims.15 Ultimately, in summer 1995, the United States pledged its support for sustained offensive military action by NATO against the Bosnian Serbs, while at the same time putting pressure on the Bosnian Serbs to agree to a ceasefire, and on the Serb leadership in Belgrade to enter a peace process. The Dayton Accords, capping negotiations led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, ended the war and set the terms for peace, and that was counted by the administration as a success – but it failed to avoid an enormous toll in human lives and on US credibility.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which brought so much hope, also brought disappointment. It started with with optimism in September 1993 with a mutual recognition pact between Israel and the PLO known as the Oslo Accords. Though Clinton did not facilitate the accords, he did agree to a joint Israeli-Palestinian suggestion that the agreement be signed formally at the White House, and further agreements between the two parties led to Palestinian autonomy in Gaza in 1994 and in parts of the West Bank in 1995.

Clinton became more committed to the process, first following the assassination of his close personal friend Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, in November 1995, and then again through 1998 as Congress weighed impeachment charges against him. Clinton signaled that the US would support the creation of a Palestinian state, and he visited Gaza. He convened Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Yassir Arafat, respectively the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian National Authority president, at the Wye River summit in Maryland in October 1998, where the Palestinians agreed to outlaw and combat terrorist organizations and prohibit illegal weapons, and where both parties agreed to cooperate on security issues, criminal matters, economic issues and human rights. But Clinton failed to bring Palestinian and Israeli officials to an agreement on final status issues at a summit he convened at Camp David in 2000. Clinton had fashioned the contours of a final deal, had expended enormous personal political capital, had asserted the US national interest in the process, and had achieved a milestone in US relations with Israelis and Palestinians alike. But

xviii

Rosanna Perotti

time simply ran out. Though many, including Clinton, blamed Arafat for the failure of the process, scholars attributed the breakdown to a number of factors. Exhaustion set in, and American negotiators were partial to the Israeli perspective on the talks. “We became part of the furniture,” peace negotiator Robert Malley recalled at the conference.

Because we wanted the process to continue, because we felt that it was absolutely critical that we maintain the confidence of both sides, we were not prepared to hold either side accountable and we became enablers of negative attitudes and behaviors.16

A third area of unfulfilled promise was in the area of denuclearization.

Though the Agreed Framework (AF) negotiated with North Korea during the Clinton years traded a promise of denuclearization for internationally supervised construction of light-water reactors, the AF implementation lagged. Even as it planned for Clinton to visit Pyongyang for a summit meeting with Kim Jong-il, the administration failed to secure a specific agreement whereby North Korea would scale back its long-range ballistic missile program. The summit did not take place, and Clinton’s successor took little time in accusing North Korea of violating the AF and proclaiming it a part of an “axis of evil.” Indeed, nuclear proliferation continued apace elsewhere in the world. And even as relations with China and India improved thanks to stepped up economic ties, relations with Japan suffered.

THE PLAN OF THIS BOOK This book of essays, drawn from papers and commentary delivered at the 2005 Hofstra conference, seeks to illustrate how the Clinton administration put “practical internationalism” into practice and how the administration’s foreign policy paved the way for many of the foreign policy challenges and decisions that followed in subsequent administrations.

The first section of the book outlines the general contours of the administration’s foreign policy. In chapter one, Ambassador Gardner fleshes

Introduction

xix

out the concept of practical internationalism, a foreign policy, he says, “which avoids the twin errors of an impractical isolationism and unilateralism on the one hand, and a utopian globalism on the other.”

Gardner evaluates the administration’s accomplishments in foreign economic policy, transatlantic relations, the Balkan Wars, US-Russia relations, and peacemaking, finding that the administration managed impressive achievements, given the constraints of an unpredictable international system and a hostile post-1994 congressional majority. In chapter two, Madeleine K. Albright further outlines the administration’s ambitious goals and its pursuit of practical internationalism: the United States under Clinton resisted the temptation to withdraw from the world even though the president had entered office intending to focus on “the economy, stupid.” Among the many successes she recounts are the United States’ support of European integration and security, peace in the Balkans, a path to Middle East peace, integration of China into the world economy, and containment of North Korea’s aims to develop nuclear weapons. Albright’s account discusses failures as well: the slowness to action in Bosnia, inconsistency in Somalia, and inaction in Rwanda. Among the greatest frustrations was the failure to apprehend Osama bin Laden, a task that would elude Clinton’s immediate successor as well. But on the whole, Albright expressed pride in US leadership in the world during the Clinton years, particularly the president’s embrace of “globalization with a human face,” and his promotion of a European “continent whole and free.”

For the administration and its supporters, these successes came as a result of commitment to a roughly unified philosophy, an assertion of US leadership that found its expression in the encouragement of global trade, the protection of US national security, and the promotion of democracy across the world. The policymakers saw administration actions through the lens of their intentions. To some scholars, however, the Clinton administration pursued its policies not out of a commitment to a particular intellectual orientation, but as a reaction to international challenges as they arose. In chapter three of this book, political scientists Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz argue that, despite a series of early speeches in which administration officials outlined the logic of pragmatic

xx

Rosanna Perotti

interventionism, as events unfolded President Clinton acted more like a “reluctant home remodeler” than an “architect” or a “general contractor.”

That is, instead of drawing up plans, devising solutions, and creating new structures, as architects like Nixon and Kissinger had done in pursuing détente, or coordinators who help implement a broad project, such as George H. W. Bush had done in the Gulf War, Clinton and his advisers worked on the margins of existing policies, as President Dwight Eisenhower had done by executing the existing policy of containment. Where administration officials see pragmatic interventionism as a forward-thinking philosophy, Hastedt and Eksterowicz see it as an inherited intellectual framework: the continuation of a policy that had been pursued under the leadership of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon. Clinton was a tinkerer, Hastedt and Eksterowicz argue; his uncertain handling of the Haitian refugee crisis, his withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, and his reluctant embrace and subsequent abandonment of a “lift and strike” policy in the former Yugoslavia are examples of what Hastedt and Eksterowicz call the home remodeler approach. Though in some areas Clinton sought to articulate and implement a broader vision, as in the effort to adopt a new policy to counter terrorism, domestic constraints and international challenges made it difficult for him to act as a chief architect, they argue.

This view recognizes the overall plans the administration was trying to implement, but sees Clinton continuing the world view of his predecessor.

Unlike more recent scholarly work, it focuses more on the instances where reality fell short of rhetoric. Hastedt and Eksterowicz are also less inclined to see a learning curve, a shift in architectural plans from the first to the second term.

Section II of this book deals with defense and nuclear policy. Though Clinton is often seen as having been consumed with domestic policy, his administration’s legacy in national security policy is rich and complex.

Though the administration shifted its focus from multilateralism to unilateralism over time, it remained committed to US primacy and engagement in the world from day one. Clinton pledged to continue the United States’ strategic partnerships in the world, and early on, the administration importantly set out to expand security and democracy

Introduction

xxi

through an expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Over time, the administration paid increasing attention to threats by non-state actors throughout the world, focusing more resources on counterterrorism and the detection and elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Clinton from the beginning of his time in office committed to continuing the arms control efforts of his predecessors. To that end, the Senate ratified the Start I and II treaties, and the administration won indefinite extension of the Nonproliferation Treaty. Moreover, Clinton continued the highly successful Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction effort, which safeguarded nuclear materials from the former USSR in a variety of ways to increase security and stability.

Despite the administration’s achievements in these areas, two authors in this volume criticize the Clinton legacy and suggest that, in important ways, the administration failed to reduce threats to national security and hampered US standing in the world. In chapter four, defense policy scholar Melvin Goodman takes aim at the Clinton administration’s role in the militarization of US foreign policy, which he contends continued through the presidency of George W. Bush. The United States in 1993 had a unique opportunity to create a new strategic environment on the heels of the Soviet Union’s fall, Goodman argues. Instead, the Clinton administration gave in to military pressure, weakening or abandoning the International Criminal Court, the land mine ban, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Chemical Weapons Convention. In all cases, Goodman argues, US credibility and working relationships in the international community suffered. Goodman faults the Clinton administration not only for a lack of vision, but for internal conflict and management problems. “No member of this team could be considered a conceptualizer for grand strategy,” Goodman argues, and the President himself, because of his vulnerability on having evaded the Vietnam-era draft, was inclined to bow to military pressure, Goodman writes. In chapter five, Donald H. McNeill takes a similar tack: President Clinton, though he decided in 1993 to extend a moratorium on nuclear testing and despite the successful Nunn-Lugar effort, ultimately did little to stem the rates of horizontal and vertical proliferation, which McNeill calls “the most international of political problems.” India and Pakistan conducted

xxii

Rosanna Perotti

nuclear tests and threatened war during Clinton’s tenure, in developments examined later in this volume. In addition, though Clinton signed an Agreed Framework with North Korea promising to eventually replace nuclear weapons with light water reactor facilities, the agreement deteriorated by 2002. Clinton failed in his efforts to have the Senate ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, McNeill writes. And the president’s “passive acceptance” of a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system increased the possibility of an arms race with Russia or China.

The third section of the book looks more closely at the Clinton Administration’s activities in Asia, and the scorecard is mixed. In Asia, President Clinton faced significant challenges that continued long after his tenure. The administration weighed whether to punish China for its human rights abuses or to open up trade and cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation in hopes that China might thereby be integrated into international economic, military and environmental institutions. Ultimately, Clinton chose the latter strategy. In chapter six, “Clinton and China,” scholar Jeffrey A. Bader chronicles how President Clinton, who came into office critical of his predecessor’s tepid reaction to China’s use of violence in Tiananmen Square, soon found that China was unlikely to yield to pressure on human rights. Once the administration changed course and de-linked human rights from China’s trade status, President Clinton tried to build a new American consensus for cooperation with China, including a “strategic dialogue” between the US national security adviser and his Chinese counterpart and an exchange of visits by the US and Chinese heads of state. Clinton’s own attitude toward China evolved during the time he served as president, Bader writes. The president’s efforts culminated in the conclusion of a bilateral trade agreement with China as well as, ultimately, Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization, clearly the central, lasting element in the administration’s China legacy. China became a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, supported an indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, supported the UN’s rebuke of nuclear testing in South Asia, and continued to quietly restrain North Korea from testing and developing nuclear

Introduction

xxiii

weapons. China also took steps to cooperate with the United States on climate change, water resources, energy, and air pollution reduction.17 Success with China came at the expense of the US relationship with Japan, Takashi Kanatsu writes in “Japan’s Dual Challenge,” chapter seven of this book. As the Clinton administration pressured Japan to reduce the bilateral trade deficit, Japan slid toward economic stagnation, which prompted painful political and social transformations. These transformations in turn made it harder for the United States and Japan to conclude successful trade negotiations, Kanatsu writes. In the area of security, while the United States, Japan and South Korea strengthened security ties in the face of threats from China and North Korea, the Japanese developed an abiding resentment of the United States’ newly intensified attention to China during the 1990s, fueling popular support in Japan for a more assertive strategic posture that continues today.

Nor did Clinton’s efforts have a lasting effect on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea had first signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1985 and had negotiated periodically with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over admitting international inspectors for verification. But Clinton’s predecessors had done little to engage the North Korean government regarding compliance, and by the time the former Arkansas governor assumed the presidency, North Korea’s compliance with its NPT obligations was becoming a serious issue. Barely three months into the Clinton administration, North Korea announced it intended to withdraw from the NPT and cease cooperating with IAEA inspectors. The United States dragged its feet in responding to this provocative action. In chapter eight, Mikyoung Kim details how US Defense Secretary William Perry initiated talks on denuclearization and how a visit by former president Jimmy Carter to North Korea in summer 1994 produced a breakthrough, which Clinton and his surprised staffers learned about from live CNN coverage. American and North Korean negotiators then hammered out an Agreed Framework aimed at limiting the DPRK nuclear program in October 1994. The framework provided for the freezing and eventual dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear programs and facilities. In exchange, North Korea would get fuel oil deliveries and ultimately light-water reactors for

xxiv

Rosanna Perotti

producing nuclear energy, constructed under international supervision. But implementation of the agreement lagged, and ultimately North Korea continued pursuing its weapons program. In the waning days of the Clinton administration, Kim writes, optimistic prospects for settlement of the North Korean nuclear issue took a backseat to Clinton’s efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East and to stem the damage from his impeachment. The Clinton administration had wasted a precious opportunity, Kim suggests. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, famously diverged from the Clinton approach, rhetorically including North Korea with Iraq and Iran in a so-called “axis of evil.” Though Bush ultimately continued along the Clinton framework, the United States has been unsuccessful at further efforts to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons.

The administration scored more success in its policy toward India, Arthur G. Rubinoff writes in chapter nine. Though the administration had neglected India at the start, a nuclear crisis made India a priority in Clinton’s efforts to stem nuclear proliferation. On May 12 and 13, 1998, India conducted a series of thermonuclear explosions at Pokhran, India, followed by detonations by Pakistan on May 28. In short order, President Clinton announced sanctions against both nations. What followed, Rubinoff recounts, was the “longest bilateral dialogue in history.” The Clinton administration was able to engage New Delhi in a constructive manner, culminating in President Clinton’s historic visit to India in March 2000 and in deepened economic, cultural and scientific ties. This transformation in bilateral relations later paid dividends in prosecuting the war against alQaeda in Afghanistan, reducing conflict between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Kashmir, and later countering China’s aggression in the South China Sea, resisting climate change and promoting mutual economic growth.

Part IV of the book focuses on Iraq and anti-terrorism. As a candidate, Bill Clinton had criticized his predecessor for not acting more aggressively to overthrow Saddam Hussein. By the time Bill Clinton came to office, the UN had already put into place a set of intense sanctions aimed at Saddam Hussein’s suspected development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and also at his repression of Kurds and Shiites in his own country. The UN

Introduction

xxv

placed “no-fly’ zones, enforced by US and allied aircraft, to protect the Kurds and Shiites in the north and south of Iraq. For a brief moment as president elect, Clinton appeared to entertain the possibility of normalizing relations with Iraq if Saddam were to “change his behavior.”18 But once in office the Clinton administration quickly pledged to continue support of UN sanctions and continued policing the ‘no-fly’ zones. The issues of WMD and the Kurds intensified, prompting Clinton to order air strikes on Iraq in April 1993, September 1996, and in December 1998, and the United States continued to support UN sanctions. In chapter ten of this book, Michael M. Gunter traces the history of the Iraqi Kurds in the 1990s, starting with imposition of a no-fly zone over Kurdish Iraq, through the Washington Accord of 1998 between the two Iraqi Kurd groups, the KDP and the PUK, and toward an eventual US-Iraqi Kurdish alliance that continued through the war that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Stefanie Nanes, in chapter eleven, characterizes this activity explicitly as a departure from the Clinton administration’s professed commitment to multilateralism. Clinton, she writes, took multiple measures during his presidency to confront the challenge of a re-armed Iraq, including enforcing a devastating sanctions regime, mounting a military bombardment, funding the exile Iraqi opposition, and attempting a covert coup. Clinton, Nanes argues, paved the way for successor George W. Bush to pursue a unilateral policy aimed at regime change in Iraq, ultimately leading to the 2003 invasion led by the United States.

Bush expressly (and inaccurately) linked Iraq with militant Islamist terrorism in those early years, and Bush supporters criticized President Clinton for not bring more hard-hitting his responses to the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen in October 2000. In chapter twelve of this book, historian Michael D’Innocenzo takes issue with those criticisms, arguing that it was Bush’s inattention, not Clinton’s, that kept the US from preventing al-Qaeda’s second major attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “. . . (W)ith Bush, the nation got neither words nor deeds prior to September 11, 2001,” D’Innocenzo argues. “Clinton was at least cognizant of the

xxvi

Rosanna Perotti

importance of trying to engage the media and the public on the new and changing terrorist threats.”

Part V of the book traces the initiatives that culminated in one of the Clinton administration’s greatest foreign policy successes: Northern Ireland.

Clinton had been interested in Northern Ireland since his Oxford days, and more recently during the 1992 presidential campaign, when he found support from a business-oriented group of Irish-Americans.19 In chapter thirteen of this book, John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch recount the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) 1994 cease-fire followed by Clinton’s own historic Belfast visit in 1995, culminating in the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which provided for the decommissioning of weapons that led to the “positive transformation of everyday life” in Northern Ireland. Dumbrell and Lynch find Clinton’s policy towards Northern Ireland as “fundamentally positive” and internationalist, part of the administration’s efforts at “outward-looking practical peace promotion.” Here was a dispute where the United States stood a good chance of scoring a policy success with few strategic costs, they observe; Clinton served as a vital part of the dynamic of peace, a dynamic that spread throughout Northern Ireland’s civil society. Catherine B. Shannon, viewing the American conflict resolution efforts from the vantage point of this civil society, agrees. In chapter fourteen, Shannon carefully documents how President Clinton “transformed” the pessimism, alienation and distrust of those in the Northern Irish community through speeches, through his personal visits to Northern Ireland, and through allimportant economic initiatives. She cites contemporaneous editorials and opinion pieces, interviews with ordinary citizens, and speeches by local public officials in drawing her picture of a civil society transformed.

In the final section of this book, three authors consider the Clinton administration’s approach to the United Nations and multilateralism, a key test of the professed philosophy of practical internationalism. At the UN, the United States was an active participant in discussions regarding Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and US debt to the United Nations. In chapter fifteen, Meena Bose examines how US Ambassadors to the UN Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke promoted US interests at the United Nations during the Clinton years. Albright used the term “assertive multilateralism” to

Introduction

xxvii

describe the United States’ commitment to take the lead in maintaining international peace and security through the United Nations. Holbrooke hammered out an agreement by which the UN would cut US dues and drop the American share of peacekeeping payments, thus ensuring that the United States would remain part of the United Nations in the twenty-first century.

Both these UN ambassadors, Bose argues, turned their position at the UN into a policy-making role, and both strongly advocated for the interests of the United States. In chapters sixteen and seventeen, Stephen F. Burgess and Jerry Pubantz delve more deeply into the administration’s shift away from from assertive multilateralism, which failed in Somalia and Bosnia. Burgess argues the shift was to a “burden-sharing” stance, in which the United States acted assertively, relying on states and organizations such as NATO to help maintain international peace and security. Burgess notes interventions by Nigeria in Liberia and Sierra Leone (1999-2000), Australia in East Timor (1999), and the United Kingdom in Sierra Leone (2000), to illustrate how burden sharing worked, and credits the transition from assertive multilateralism to burden sharing to domestic politics within the United States. In chapter seventeen, Pubantz, too, emphasizes the shift to a more unilateral American approach. The key moment was the development of Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25) in May 1994, just days after the start of the Rwandan genocide, Pubantz writes. In PDD-25, the administration announced an end to the altruism of “assertive multilateralism” and established sixteen criteria that would have to be met before the United States would support or participate in a new peacekeeping operation. It was this thinking that guided the United States to force the removal of Colonel Raoul Cedras in Haiti in September 1994, to threaten to commit troops to Bosnia in 1995, and to lead a sustained campaign of NATO air strikes against Serbian targets in Bosnia in August of that year that were operationally independent of the United Nations. “President Clinton opted for direct American leadership, hoping that the rest of the world would follow,” Pubantz writes of Clinton’s unilateralism he writes. “In large part, it did.”

xxviii

Rosanna Perotti

FROM PRACTICAL INTERNATIONALISM TO AMERICA FIRST As Clinton himself wrote in 2004, and as Mikyoung Kim reminds us in this volume, Clinton was mindful of the fact that his legacy would be reexamined and reinterpreted continually in light of changing world events. “I couldn’t control what happened to my policies and programs; few things are permanent in politics,” he wrote in My Life. “. . . The history of America’s move from the end of the Cold War to the millennium would be written and rewritten over and over.”20 Bill Clinton’s foreign policy legacy will continue to be evaluated in light of the events that have followed his time in office and the way his successors responded to those events: the unilateralism of George W. Bush, the withdrawal of Barack Obama, the embrace of free trade and globalization by both presidents, and the seeming repudiation of all of this by President Donald J. Trump. Each of the major controversies in US foreign policy today has its roots in a brief historical moment when the Cold War had ended and the United States was the world’s preeminent superpower, precisely the moment Bill Clinton took the reins of foreign policy and sought to expand global trade, enlarge the scope of democratic government, and redefine global security. Clinton’s time at the helm illustrates that presidential leadership matters in foreign policy. And it illustrates that individual leadership has consequences.

ENDNOTES 1

Nancy Soderberg, The Superpower Myth (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005), 4.

Bill Clinton, “How to Evaluate a President,” in The Clinton Presidency and the Constitutional System, ed. Rosanna Perotti (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012).

3 Kissinger quoted in “It’s the World, Stupid!,” The Economist, February 19, 2000, 30. For other early critical assessments, see William G. Hyland, Clinton’s World: Remaking American Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999); Emily O. Goldman and Larry Berman, “Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy,” in The Clinton Legacy, ed. Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman (New York: Chatham House Publishers, 2000); Marc Landy and Sidney Milkis, Presidential Greatness (Lexington: University Press of Kansas, 2000).

2

Introduction

29

William Hyland, Clinton’s World: Remaking American Foreign Policy, chapter 15.

Administration officials’ memoirs include Madeleine Albright, Madame Secretary: A Memoir (New York: Macmillan, 2000); Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999); Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2003).

6 John Dumbrell, Clinton’s Foreign Policy: Between the Bushes, 1992-2000 (New York: Routledge, 2009), 27.

7 William J. Clinton, “A New Covenant for American Security,” speech at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, December 12, 1991, in Preface to the Presidency: Selected Speeches of Bill Clinton 1974-1992, ed. Stephen A. Smith (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 113.

8 James D. Boys, Clinton’s Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 3.

9 Theodore H. Moran, “International Economics and National Security,” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 5 (Winter 1990/1991): 74, quoted in Boys, Clinton’s Grand Strategy, 52.

10 Melvin Leffler, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: US Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 268.

11 John Dumbrell, “Internationalism Challenged: Foreign Policy Issues in the 1992 Presidential Election,” in US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politaics from FDR to Bill Clinton, ed. Andrew Johnstone and Andrew Priest (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017), 319; Dumbrell, Clinton’s Foreign Policy: Between the Bushes, 23.

12 See for instance Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: AntiGlobalization in the Era of Trump (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017).

13 Clinton, “How to Evaluate a President,” 21.

14 Richard Gardner, “The Case for Practical Internationalism,” Foreign Affairs 66, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 830.

15 United States Holocaust Museum, “Confront Genocide Cases: Bosnia Herzegovina,” found at https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/cases/bosnia-herzegovina.

16 Robert Malley, panel presentation, “The Middle East Peace Process: Forum I,” William Jefferson Clinton: The “New Democrat” from Hope, Conference at Hofstra University, November 10, 2005.

17 Ted Osius, “Legacy of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s China Policy,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 28, no. 3 (March 2010): 125-34.

18 Martin A. Smith, The Foreign Policies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush: A Comparative Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2018), 41.

19 John Dumbrell, Clinton Foreign Policy: Between the Bushes, 88.

20 Bill Clinton, My Life, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 951.

4 5

I. THE CLINTON FOREIGN POLICY LEGACY

In: Foreign Policy …

Editor: Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

PRACTICAL INTERNATIONALISM: THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AS VIEWED FROM EUROPE Richard N. Gardner Columbia Law School, New York, NY, US

Many people think, still, that ambassadors to a country spend most of their time on bilateral relations with that country – not so. In today’s world, an ambassador to a country, like Spain, spends eighty percent of his time on regional and multilateral issues in which that country and the United States are involved: NATO relations with the European Union, Russia, UN issues, arms control, and so on. I am going to talk about implementing the Clinton foreign policy from Platform Europe, and I am going to look at five issues which dominated my four years in Spain: first, foreign economic policy; second, transatlantic relations; third, the Balkan Wars, a problem from hell, as then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher described it; fourth, relations

4

Richard N. Gardner

with the Russians; and fifth, Clinton as peacemaker in Northern Ireland and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Let me say by way of introduction to these five major issues, what philosophy Bill Clinton brought to the presidency. It was a philosophy I would describe as practical internationalism. And that’s a philosophy with which I am very comfortable because it’s basically the philosophy of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, in whose administration I served, Jimmy Carter, with whom I served, and Bill Clinton, with whom I also served. I define practical internationalism as working with other countries in bilateral, regional, and global institutions to advance the common interests of mankind, in peace, welfare and human rights. It’s a foreign policy which avoids the twin errors of an impractical isolationism and unilateralism on the one hand, and a utopian globalism on the other. In one of his speeches during his election campaign of 1992, Bill Clinton came up with the phrase, and I made a modest contribution to this speech, “multilateral where possible, unilateral where absolutely necessary.”

This was very different from the philosophy of the subsequent administration, which turned that on its head into “unilateral where possible, multilateral only when absolutely necessary.” My rather professorial way of putting this was improved by Bill Clinton, who changed this to “with others when we can, by ourselves when we must.” It’s that kind of pragmatic approach to problem solving: not dogmatic, but pragmatic.

Bill Clinton also understood the intimate interrelationship between domestic and foreign policy issues. He understood, as Franklin Roosevelt did, that in a certain profound sense, foreign policy begins at home. If you don’t have a strong, thriving economy and a solid domestic base, you cannot have the resources and credibility and the public support to do things in the world. The eight years of unprecedented economic growth – three and a half percent average growth in the Clinton years, twenty million jobs created – lay the basis for everything else.

Don’t forget, when Bill Clinton became president there was a widespread view that America was in decline. Time magazine asked, “Is the US in an irreversible decline as the world’s premier power?” And the answer that came from Clinton was, “No way!” In those eight years we reaffirmed

Practical Internationalism

5

our global leadership. The Clinton team reflected this philosophy of practical internationalism. They were all people with whom I was very comfortable, and they were all friends. They shared a common view of the world, even though of course, there were rivalries among them, but not the kind of deep ideological splits that you’ve seen in the subsequent administration between let’s say, a Vice President Cheney and a Secretary of State Colin Powell.

There were people like Tony Lake and Sandy Berger as national security advisers and Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright as secretaries of state, Madeleine of course, first US ambassador to the UN. There were Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, UN Ambassador Dick Holbrooke, and then in the economic area, Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin. The philosophy of those people was essentially the same. Inevitably, perhaps, they might differ on how to handle particular problems, but it was a congenial group philosophically, and I certainly felt comfortable working for them in Madrid. Here is how I would evaluate the administration’s performance on these five issues.

In foreign economic policy, I would grade the administration A-minus.

We inherited ongoing negotiations for the North Atlantic Free Trade Area and the Uruguay Round, and Mickey Kantor brilliantly completed those efforts. That wasn’t easy, given some of the domestic opposition within our own political party, the Democratic party, and some problems raised by the Republicans. We faced difficulties with rather difficult people in France and Japan on some of these issues and then again in getting the Chinese into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and giving them permanent most-favored nation (MFN) relations, equal treatment in trade. The minus: well, protests of the 1999 WTO convention in Seattle, the inability to launch a trade round, the inability also to get renewal of trade authority. But I think that on the whole, our foreign economic policy was a success.

In the area of transatlantic relations, I think under Bill Clinton, relations with our allies were excellent. Bill Clinton, in the tradition of Jack Kennedy, gave full support to the process of political, economic and yes, military integration in the European Union. We did not see the European Union as a threat to the United States as some conservatives did. We did not seek to divide and conquer, to pick off individual Europeans and play them against

6

Richard N. Gardner

one another. Indeed, there was the historic agreement, the New Transatlantic Agenda, in which I played a small part. It was signed in Madrid during the Spanish presidency of the European Union. It was an historic agreement between the United States and the European Union, not with individual countries. This document began a formal relationship between the United States and the European Union. This was our attempt to encourage the union and the European Commission to play a major role. We identified four major areas in which we could work with the Europeans: political security, transnational threats like proliferation, environment and terrorism; economic issues, and finally, culture and education. We set up a process of deep consultation in our eight years on these things.

We also supported the expansion of NATO. It was very controversial; some people in our own political party, and certainly in the press – The New York Times even – opposed it. We felt that bringing in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – and of course that went on to include the Baltics and then others – was the right thing to do. It added to enhanced security in Europe and for ourselves. That was a sensitive process. We didn’t rush into it. We started with Partnership for Peace, and to reassure the Russians, Bill Clinton, with the great help of Strobe Talbott, conceived of the NATORussia partnership so that the Russians were brought into a consultative process with NATO. When the eight years were over, in the last year, Bill Clinton received the Charlemagne Prize from the Europeans. This prize had been given to only one other American: George Catlett Marshall, for the Marshall Plan.

Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, said to Bill Clinton when the prize was given, “Bill, you are one of us.” Can you imagine the Europeans saying that to President George W. Bush? Public opinion polls showed at the end of the eight years that Bill Clinton was highly regarded and the US was highly regarded throughout the European countries.

Yes, the Monica Lewinsky scandal did put a stain on his record, and his behavior, I think, was unforgivable. It contributed to the defeat of Al Gore in the 2000 election and led to some of the subsequent tragedies, but except for that, I think the president was held in very high regard.

Practical Internationalism

7

In regard to the Balkan Wars, there were a couple of years of indecision and going back and forth about what to do about Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his attempt to create a greater Serbia and his ethnic cleansing.

I think that delay was excusable because, let’s face it, we in the Clinton administration were dealt a terrible hand by the George H. W. Bush administration with the break up of Yugoslavia. The attitude of Jim Baker, the secretary of state under President Bush, was “we don’t have a dog in that fight.” What an expression, “We don’t have a dog in that fight”! Ethnic cleansing was going on, the mass slaughter of people, and the attitude was “no, we don’t want to touch that.”

The United Nations was sent in there, so-called peacekeepers with no peace to keep. One of the lessons of that disaster was that you don’t send UN peacekeepers lightly armed to monitor a truce when there is no truce.

We discovered that, and then the attitude was in the previous administration, “well, let the Europeans deal with it.” The Europeans, however, were incapable. So, finally, the US began to use muscle, use NATO air strikes.

We forced a cease fire, and then with the support of the brilliant diplomatist Dick Holbrooke, we went to Dayton and got an agreement – not a perfect agreement, but one that stopped the slaughter. Turning to Kosovo, we stepped up to the plate and forced an end to the ethnic cleansing there, again, using NATO. Whether Kosovo would be independent was an issue pushed off to the future, but I think that was handled well, on the whole.

Regarding relations with Russia, Strobe Talbott played a major role.

You have to read his excellent book, The Russia Hand.1 Dealing with Russian President Boris Yeltsin was not easy, as he was a man who was frankly mercurial, unpredictable, very often not with it, maybe imbibing too much of the bottle, under tremendous pressure at home from recidivists, communists and nationalists, constantly complaining about things we were doing that he felt were making his domestic situation impossible. But on the whole Bill Clinton understood Yeltsin’s problem. He did finally get his acquiescence in the enlargement of NATO. We worked together to remove nuclear weapons from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus with the GoreChernomyrdin Commission and other measures. We did a lot to help support Russian democracy and modernization and increase the two-way flow of

8

Richard N. Gardner

intellectuals and students. And we brought Russia into a cooperative relation with NATO. Aside from these five topics, I could mention Bill Clinton as peacemaker. Without Bill Clinton’s personal involvement and the excellent work of Special Envoy George Mitchell as his negotiator, there would never have been the Good Friday Accord, which brought an end to the bloodletting in Northern Ireland, between the Protestants and the Catholics. The decision to grant a visa to Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams was controversial, but Bill Clinton did that and that helped turn the tide. That was a brilliant stroke, the way he handled the Northern Ireland problem.

Finally, I should mention the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Bill Clinton started with the famous handshake on the lawn of the White House between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Clinton practically forced Rabin to extend a hand and then nursed those difficult negotiations along.

Clinton put forward a final settlement deal, which the Israelis accepted and which Arafat did not. It was the best possible deal that both sides could possibly accept. It involved the two-state solution: a Palestinian state and Israel, a final peace between them. Ninety-seven percent of the West Bank would become a Palestinian state, and Jerusalem would be shared in a reasonable way, with no right of return and so on, all this with justice for both sides.

Arafat could not accept it, and I’m afraid my reluctant conclusion is he really didn’t believe in a final settlement and a two-state solution, or at least he felt that he couldn’t get support from the hardliners in his leadership or from people like Hamas and the other extremists.

I close with this thought: if you judge foreign policy, you have to ask not whether the foreign policy produced final solutions, optimal solutions – that’s not the fair test. The fair test is, given the external constraints in dealing with the other countries, given the internal constraints of a hostile Congress, which Bill Clinton had after the 1994 Congressional elections, did he do as much as it was possible to do? And I think on most of these things the answer is yes, and he should get a B-plus or A-minus at least.

Practical Internationalism

9

ENDNOTE 1

Talbott, Strobe, Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2003).

In: Foreign Policy …

Editor: Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 2

DOING THE RIGHT THING IN A PRAGMATIC WAY Madeleine K. Albright Former US Secretary of State Washington, DC, US

I would like to say that we had an unbroken chain of success, but of course, we didn’t. In the first term, we acted too slowly in Bosnia, too inconsistently in Somalia, and too late in Rwanda. In the second term, we were unable to close some of the deals we sought, our efforts to improve relations with Iran were rebuffed, and India and Pakistan made the world more dangerous by testing nuclear weapons. We didn’t achieve all that we had hoped, but part of the reason is that we had set such ambitious goals.

The two Clinton terms occupied most of the decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the destruction of the Twin Towers. It was widely described as a time of transition, but to what? That was the question. Our goal was to create an international system in which nations would increasingly come together around basic principles of democracy and open markets, the rule of law and a commitment to peace. To secure progress, we faced the challenge of adapting or replacing the institutions that had served

12

Madeleine K. Albright

us during the Cold War and of asserting American leadership in response to new dangers. Our strategy was neither overly idealistic nor narrowly cynical.

We were determined to do the right thing, but in a pragmatic way.

We worked to strengthen multilateral institutions, but recognized the need for America to move out ahead in such areas as the Balkans and the Middle East. We defended human rights but gave ample space to other urgent issues such as nonproliferation and peace. We saw the use of force as an essential tool, but to be used with care, for it is a blunt instrument that may lead at times to unintended consequences. And we operated as a team.

I sat down with Sandy Berger and Defense Secretary William Cohen regularly for what we called our “ABC” lunches. We arrived at our recommendations through consensus, not cabals, and despite the frustrations and setbacks we experienced, our overall record was a cause of pride.

When Bill Clinton was elected, the key question was whether in the absence of a superpower rival, America would withdraw from the world.

The president himself had entered office determined to focus on “the economy, stupid” but while in power, he quickly filled the role of global leader. As a result, he was able to bequeath to his successor an America that was respected and prosperous in a world freer than it had ever been. When we left office, we could say that the task of controlling loose nukes from the former Soviet Union had been well begun. In Europe, we had taken bold steps towards fulfilling the dream of a continent whole and free, expanded NATO, forged peace in the Balkans, ended ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and had given Slobodan Milosevic a one-way ticket to the Hague.

In the Persian Gulf, we had kept Saddam Hussein in his box, his military weak and surrounded, still a menace, but no imminent threat. In the Middle East, we had shown that peace was possible, if only Yasser Arafat had been a wiser, braver man. The structure for peace remains open, one upon which the leaders will build. In East Asia, we helped to integrate China into the world economy while publicly confronting that government on religious liberty and human rights. Working with allies, we blocked North Korea’s quickest route to nuclear weapons and gained a suspension of advanced missile tests.

Doing the Right Thing in a Pragmatic Way

13

We also led on less traditional foreign policy matters, including efforts to improve the lives of women, curb trafficking in human beings, fight HIV and AIDS and reduce the debt of the world’s poorest countries. I took pride in helping to organize the first meeting of the community of democracies held in Warsaw in June 2000. I said at the time that America had once gone to war to make the world safe for democracy but that now, the world’s democracies should come together to make the world safe.

On the financial side, President Clinton had inherited a sluggish US economy burdened with high deficits. He left behind sound fiscal policies, a record surplus and an America whose international economic leadership was undisputed. I will never forget traveling to Chile with the president in April of 1998 for the Summit of the Americas. He was widely cheered because people everywhere recognized that Bill Clinton was committed to globalization with a human face, globalization that would not lead to marginalization of the world’s poor.

Obviously, no discussion of foreign policy in the 1990s would be complete without a reference to al-Qaeda. As any good historian would acknowledge, history is lived forward, but written backward. Much that seems obvious now was less clear prior to September 11. But our team did everything we could and everything we could think based on the knowledge we had to disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda. As early as 1995, President Clinton said, “Our generation’s enemies are the terrorists who kill children or turn them into orphans.” In speaking to the world, the president repeatedly told friends that combating terrorism topped America’s agenda and should also top theirs. He urged every nation to deny sanctuary to terrorists and to cooperate in bringing them to justice.

Now, there’s a myth that until 9/11, US presidents treated terrorism as solely a law enforcement matter, and that’s simply not true. In the 1980s, President Reagan ordered military strikes against Libya. In 1998, President Clinton ordered military strikes against al-Qaeda (in Sudan and Afghanistan). The day after those strikes, the White House convened a meeting to study further military options. Our primary target was bin Laden, since he had not been hit, we were determined to try again. We placed warships equipped with cruise missiles on permanent call in the Arabian Sea

14

Madeleine K. Albright

and we studied the possibility of sending a special forces team into Afghanistan. But success in either case depended on whether we knew where bin Laden would be at a particular time. Although we consumed all the intelligence we had, we did not get that piece of information.

Instead, we occasionally learned where he had been or where he might be going. It was definitely maddening. And I compared it to one of those arcade games where you manipulate a lever hooked to a claw-like hand that you think once you put your quarter in, will easily scoop up the prize. But every time you try to pull the basket out, the prize falls away. For all our efforts, we didn’t succeed, nor did our successors.

Meanwhile, the fight against terror has developed new and even more dangerous dimensions that go beyond the scope of my remarks today. I will only add that our nation must remain absolutely united in fighting al-Qaeda and all others who are determined to attack us, especially as we just saw in Amman, Jordan. We will not back down, nor shrink from our responsibility, nor abandon our allies, nor retreat from the world.

During the Clinton years, we thought a lot about what America’s role would be in the 21st century, the era to which the president was always building that bridge. Early on, Mr. Clinton referred to the US as the indispensable nation. I liked the phrase so much that I borrowed it until it became associated with me. Some thought the term arrogant, but that’s not how I meant it. Rather, I felt it captured the reality that most large-scale initiatives required at least some input from the United States if they were to succeed. And I also hoped that the phrase would create a sense of pride among Americans so we would be more willing to invest in overseas projects and less reluctant to take on hard jobs. Although the US has much in common with other nations, it is also unique in power and global reach.

And this creates opportunities, but also temptations.

For better or worse, American actions and policies serve as an example.

If we attempt to put ourselves above or outside the international system, we invite others to do so as well. And that is when moral clarity is lost and the foundation of our leadership becomes suspect. I have always believed America is an exceptional country, but that is because we have led in

Doing the Right Thing in a Pragmatic Way

15

creating standards that worked for everyone – not because we are an exception to the rules.

History is continuous, but American leadership is divided into four-year chunks. Every administration inherits problems and leaves others behind in its wake. And that’s why bipartisanship is important, and so is continuity in our most basic principles and policies. Countries should know that America is a nation whose leaders can be trusted and will practice what they preach.

By that high standard, I am proud of the Clinton administration’s record and I will forever be grateful for the opportunity I was given to serve in what I consider the best job in the world. Representing the American people to the world is an awesome responsibility and it is also an unbelievable honor.

In: Foreign Policy …

Editor: Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 3

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: THE PURSUIT OF ORDER IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz Department of Political Science, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, US

President Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 on a distinctly domestic economic agenda. The new president would not necessarily neglect foreign policy, but he would not allow himself to be consumed with it either. It was the economy that would receive the president’s attention. However, as in any administration, events have a way of altering intentions. From the very outset of his term in office, from the possibility of massive numbers of boatpeople arriving from Haiti, to the crisis in Somalia, to the passage of NAFTA, the administration was forced to deal with foreign policy questions.

How can we characterize the Clinton administration’s foreign policy? For

18

Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

this essay we have selected an architectural metaphor which might help better analyze President Clinton’s foreign policy. We first describe the analytical metaphor. Second we provide a brief discussion of the intellectual foundation for the Clinton’s administration’s world view. Third we assess a few significant foreign policy events and crises. Finally, based upon this discussion, we attempt to characterize the Clinton administration’s foreign policy in terms of the architectural metaphor.

THE ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR When formulating foreign policy, presidents have to decide just what their approach should be. For example, should the president serve as a chief architect in formulating foreign policy? An architect is one who draws up plans, devises solutions to problems, and creates new structures. The opportunity to play the role of architect depends heavily upon the time within which the administration is serving and the various issues of the day.

For example, President Harry Truman found himself confronted with a new world after World War II. He seized the initiative and along with his advisers formulated the foreign policy of containment of communism based upon economic (the Marshall Plan) and military (mutual assured destruction or MAD) foundations. The strategies of the Nixon/Kissinger regime with respect to the multipolar balancing of China, Russia and United States’ interests through the institution of détente also fit nicely into the chief architectural metaphor.

Other presidents function as general contractors. Their vision is less sweeping and their time frame more immediate, but they do see foreign policy problems in broad terms. General contractors are implementers who work with an idea or mission for American foreign policy and take the initiative in finding others to help implement the project. These subcontractors may be allies, or the tasks may be delegated to various departments and agencies within the US government. The Gulf War in the first Bush administration would fit this pattern. Other nations were

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration

19

contracted to participate or pay for parts of this war in the grandest coalition of forces since World War II. Still other presidents have been reluctant home remodelers. Their perspective on foreign policy is the most limited. They are not oriented to undertaking grand initiatives but to attacking discrete problems or issues.

They work on the margins of existing policies. These presidents are content to work within the framework of a previous chief architect type perhaps changing the carpeting or painting a few walls. This is akin to adding their own nuances to the established foreign policy. President Dwight Eisenhower engaged in this type of behavior by faithfully following the principles of containment.

These various metaphors are not necessarily exclusive to certain presidential administrations. In fact presidents may adopt different roles depending on the foreign policy problem or evolve over time from a reluctant home remodeler to a general contractor or even a chief architect.

Evolution along these lines depends upon the original agenda of the president and any subsequent changes in this agenda due to events, political circumstances, original intentions, presidential power conceptions, political difficulties, education and presidential outlook. In short, presidencies are in flux.

Before we characterize the Clinton administration according to the architectural metaphor, we provide a brief discussion of the intellectual foundation for the administration’s foreign policy.

THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATION OF THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S FOREIGN POLICY The Clinton administration was the first elected in the post-Cold War era. At the outset of the Cold War American foreign policy accepted a bipolar balance of power approach to world order fueled by the containment doctrine. Realism reigned in this traditional image of international reality.

Policymakers opposed Wilsonian internationalism and moralism.1 This was

20

Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

a traditional, realist, balance of power view of the world and it was held by policymakers who were Cold War internationalists engaged in the battle between the US and the Soviet Union.

Immediately after the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War, this framework began to fissure. Now there were arguments between those advocates of a multipolar or bipolar approach to world order. A new image of international reality encompassing multinational organizations, NGOs and terrorist entities competed with the more traditional nation state view of reality. Foreign policy elites were divided between those who held a postCold War internationalists view of international reality which emphasized North/South global economic issues and those who were wedded primarily to an East /West perspective.2 After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, a new pattern of elite policymaking seemed to emerge, transcending political party lines. While a balance of power approach to world order was still evident, it allowed for the multipolar nature of the world. The interdependence image of international reality also emerged triumphant and was legitimized by the multilateral effort in the first Gulf War. There was talk of the new “twin pillars” of a new United States foreign policy: the promotion of democracy and the construction of a new system of collective security.3 Charles W. Kegley, Jr., noted that “neoidealism” was on the rise.4 This international interdependence view dominated elite foreign policymaking circles in the Clinton administration as evidenced by the president’s own language post-Cold War.5 His administration rejected a moralistic type of international interventionism in favor of a more pragmatic version based upon national self interest. In the Clinton administration, pragmatic interventionism had an economic as well as a military component.

While isolationists were present they were not influential in elite policymaking circles. This was the inherited intellectual framework within which the Clinton administration operated.

Three speeches delivered early in the Clinton administration capture the essence of the administration’s foreign policy focus. First, Secretary of State Warren Christopher delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in September 1993. He argued for the United States to remain engaged in

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration

21

the world not because of altruism but because of its interests. He noted that unilateralism and multilaterism are means of protecting US interests, and when multilateralism is selected US foreign policy will not be subcontracted out to other nations.6 Anthony Lake, NSC adviser, presented the second installment in the series of speeches to define the administration’s foreign policy on September 21, 1993.7 Lake identified democracy and market economics as the core concepts in foreign policy and argued that the successor to containment would be enlargement, which had four parts: 1) strengthening of the community of major market democracies, 2) fostering and consolidating new democracies and market economies, 3) countering aggression by “backlash” states hostile to democracy and markets, and 4) working to help democracy and market economics take root in regions of greatest humanitarian concern. Lake’s speech gave an economic emphasis to the administration’s foreign policy.

The third speech was given by UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright at the National War College.8 She took a position between both Christopher and Lake on the use of military force. She argued that the Clinton administration was fashioning a new foreign policy framework that would be wider and more flexible than the old. Diplomacy was identified as America’s first choice as a means for solving problems, but Albright quickly noted that there will always be times when words and sanctions are not enough. For this reason modern, versatile, ready, and strong military forces were a continued necessity. She emphasized four elements in conjunction with a UN peacekeeping effort: 1) Was there a humanitarian disaster or real threat to international peace and security? 2) Does the peacekeeping mission have clear objectives? 3) Is a ceasefire in place, and do the parties agree to a UN presence? And 4) Can an endpoint to UN participation be identified?

The capstone speech was delivered by President Clinton before the UN on September 27, 1993. The president argued that the UN needed to ask hard questions before sending peacekeepers into troubled international situations.

He stressed limits to US support for UN peacekeeping efforts in general. The president also spoke of reform in the structure of the UN and advocated, for

22

Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

example, the establishment of both an inspector general to fight corruption and abuse in UN operations and a high commissioner for human rights.

What type of concise picture do these speeches paint of the Clinton administration’s foreign policy? First, the administration would not disengage from world politics. Second, it would not relinquish its military or security responsibilities to international bodies, although it would work closely with them to achieve American interests. Third, the administration’s preference for activism would be in the economic realm promoting the establishment and maintenance of market democracies. Fourth, the administration would be active in international humanitarian efforts, especially when US interests were at stake. Finally, there was a decidedly skeptical attitude toward international institutions like the UN due to the corruption and abuse in operations; thus, America would and could move unilaterally whenever necessary in international relations. However, this was not the administration’s first preference.

CLINTON’S FOREIGN POLICY ASSESSED How do these elements combine to describe the Clinton administration’s architectural metaphor? Viewed from the perspective we have outlined here, Clinton’s foreign policy not unexpectedly often can be characterized in terms of a home remodeler. This president was one who undertook repairs reluctantly, only when forced by events to do so, and often without a deep understanding of the issues or circumstances. As David Halberstam notes, where foreign policy was the raison d’etre of his predecessor’s administration, it was an inconvenience for Clinton, who assumed the presidency focusing on domestic policy.9 Clinton’s disinclination to engage in major foreign policy restructuring was evident from the outset in his selection of Warren Christopher as secretary of state. “The one thing Clinton did not want was an activist secretary of state who would undertake new and politically unpredictable initiatives,” Halberstam writes.10 Clinton favored a continuation of the status quo.

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration

23

Clinton’s home remodeler orientation to foreign policy was evident in his handling of the Haitian refugee crisis at the outset of his administration.

Having promised during the campaign a new approach to dealing with Haitian boatpeople seeking safe harbor in the United States, he quickly changed his position once in office, adopting a stance that was fully consistent with the outgoing George H. W. Bush administration’s policy of denying entry. The home remodeler approach to Haiti surfaced again in October 1993: US forces were dispatched to Haiti as a show of force, and then, after experiencing difficulty docking and encountering protesters on the docks, the troops quickly left. The administration had been divided on how to proceed. The CIA opposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and US Secretary of Defense Les Aspin felt the situation was too volatile and did not trust Lieutenant General Raul Cedras to keep his word in accepting US troops. Clinton did not involve himself in the crucial decisions. Halberstam characterizes the policy as one built on “hope and not much more.”11 As is common with a home remodeler approach to a project, the president proceeded without a clear understanding of the situation or whether the objectives could be accomplished. Moreover, no back up plan existed.

Clinton’s home remodeler instincts were again evident in Somalia where the administration also inherited a policy. His predecessor had sent American troops into Somalia near the end of his term with the promise and expectation of a quick exit. It had done so not so much out of principle but due to growing domestic pressures brought on by Democrats calling for action and images of suffering in the media. Hope also existed in some quarters of the outgoing administration that military action in Somalia would defuse pressures for military action in Bosnia. As is often the case with a home remodeler, the incoming Clinton administration did not pay close attention to the project. “The Clinton people were not on top of events,” Halberstam writes. “In Washington no one was paying quite enough attention to Somalia. The commitment was not that big and appeared to be going well.”12 No senior official went to Somalia, and according to CIA Director James Woolsey no one in the White House was particularly interested in CIA warnings about the future. Without fully realizing it, the administration was overseeing a significant expansion in the scope and risks

24

Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

of the US intervention, one that would lead to tragedy and a swift about-face in policy as the home remodeler abandoned his project when it took on proportions he or she had not imagined. “I did not envision anything like a daytime assault in a crowded, hostile neighborhood…I thought I was approving a police action by US troops,” Clinton recounted.13 The home remodeler approach to foreign policy also dominates the administration’s policy to the former Yugoslavia. Early on his administration rejected the Vance-Owen peace formula that it inherited but could not devise an alternative. Anthony Lake observed that “we kept looking for something…and it just wasn’t there…so we would go back and try again, looking for some as yet undiscovered opening, for something new that we could do, and it wasn’t there.”14 Piecemeal experimentation and improvisation, typical of a home remodeler, came to dominate policy making. Speaking of Bosnia, Clinton noted, “My own options were constrained by the dug in positions I found when I took office.”15 In seeking a new strategy, his administration turned to a “lift and strike” approach.

Clinton endorsed it tentatively and with doubts that outweighed his commitment to the policy. It was a commitment that was soon abandoned in favor of a return to containment. Later the administration would alter the terms of the Dayton Accords without consulting those who negotiated the agreement. It specified that the US troop commitment would have a twelvemonth time limit in hopes of avoiding controversy during the 1996 election.

A more successful instance of Clinton’s adopting a home remodeler approach to foreign policy involves NAFTA. The agreement became a lightening rod for opponents of President George H. W. Bush during the presidential campaign. Ross Perot opposed it quite vehemently. Clinton did so in more moderate tones before endorsing it contingent on the attachment of three supplemental agreements to cover “serious omissions.” The general architecture was left in place but additions were appended. As is often the case in home remodeling, the additions begat more additions as side agreements were necessary with members of Congress and lobbyists opposed to NAFTA to gain their support. And, just as one remodeling project can create problems for future ones, so it was here. Clinton observes “the AFL-CIO, which was still angry about losing the NAFTA vote, had

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration

25

made the fast-track vote a test of whether Democrats were for or against labor.”16 A final example of Clinton’s home remodeler approach to foreign policy is found in his policy of democratization. Clinton called for an “American foreign policy of engagement for democracy” in his first foreign policy speech of his presidential campaign in 1992. It was the most frequent theme in speeches given by him or his advisers. He repeatedly portrayed President George H. W. Bush as weak on democracy and human rights. Yet, as Carothers establishes in his survey, Clinton’s approach to promoting democracy showed few significant innovations.17 He did not change the overall US approach to China, the pursuit of a partnership with Russia, or the low priority assigned to democratization in the Middle East. His administration’s policy toward support for democracy in Latin America continued to rely on the same set of policy tools and the emphasis on free market reforms as a necessary component of democratization. More generally, Carothers notes that Clinton’s democratization policy avoided addressing the latent tension between democracy promotion and human rights promotion. Instead it tried to be “all things to all people” much as a home remodeler is often tempted to promise too much and incorporate incompatible elements into their project making the whole less than the sum of its parts.

To begin an overview of Clinton’s foreign policy by stressing his dominant home remodeler orientation does not mean that other orientations did not exist. His approach to the Northern Ireland peace process was one of a general contractor. As he notes in his memoirs, “my role was basically to keep reassuring and pushing all the parties into the framework George Mitchell was constructing.”18 In at least one important instance, the attempt to formulate a new policy to counter terrorism, Clinton sought but failed to play the role of chief architect. By his own account and those of others he was “frustrated” by his inability to change the direction of American foreign policy. 19 Richard Clarke, Clinton’s chief counterterrorism adviser, notes that Clinton took office without much concern for terrorism, but by the beginning of 1996 he was preoccupied with it.20 In August 1998, for example, Clinton delivered a

26

Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

speech to the American public in which he asserted that the United States was engaged in a war with Osama bin Laden. This preoccupation did not, however, translate into the construction of a new architecture from which to combat it. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the closest Clinton came to a coordinated response to terrorism was PDD-62, but that it did not appear to have had much of an impact.21 Clinton’s failure to successfully play the role of chief architect can be traced to several factors. On the one hand, there was an inability to provide a compelling case for a change in the definition of the national security threat facing the United States. In part this was due to the nature of the problem.

He was dealing with a nonevent of sufficient magnitude to warrant making terrorism the focal point of American foreign policy. Neither Republicans nor Democrats made terrorism a campaign issue in 2000. Problems also arose from the absence of a direct link between bin Laden and recent attacks on US personnel. Speaking of the US response to the USS Cole attack, Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger observed, “To go to war a president needs to be able to say his senior intelligence officials have concluded who is responsible.” Clinton himself stated that he was “very frustrated that he could not get a definitive enough answer to do something about the Cole attack.22 A second set of factors can be found in Clinton’s decision-making style.

He stressed collegiality and consensus building but did not provide a focal point for that consensus to form. He was unable to provide a consistent foreign policy vision or an effective division of labor among his top advisers.

This blind spot, while not crippling for a home remodeler, effectively undermined any attempts at playing the role of a chief architect. Clinton’s senior foreign policy staff was divided on the issue, which complicated the task of putting a new architecture in place. After the August 1998 military strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, the 9/11 Commission notes that Clarke turned his attention to creating a government-wide strategy for destroying bin Laden. This strategy was never formally adopted and the National Security Council, and the informal Small Group that oversaw antiterrorism policy continued to search for options. In spring 2000, Clinton was still prodding them to pursue more aggressive initiatives.23 This followed a

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration

27

NSC staff report that concluded the US had only begun to nibble around the edges of bin Laden’s terrorist network.24 In a marginal notation to a March 2000 report on US efforts against bin Laden, Clinton writes “the US surely could do much better” but no follow up pressure to remedy the situation was applied.25 As a result, while high ranking foreign policy officials in the administration, including Clinton, were clear that the goal of covert action was to kill bin Laden, this was not the case for the CIA or the other foreign policy bureaucracies where decisions as to what actually would be done were made.26 A final set of factors that contributed to Clinton’s frustration as a wouldbe chief architect can be found in the realm of domestic politics. Many expressed fears that any aggressive move to strike at bin Laden would be seen as an attempt to divert attention from the political fallout stemming from his relationship with Monica Lewinsky that would culminate in impeachment proceedings. Those within the government were also sensitive to Clinton’s fragile political standing in Washington. “Weakened by constant political attack, [Clinton] could not get the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat,” Clarke writes.27 Unable to act as chief architect, Clinton became a home remodeler in the war against terrorism. He identified it as a major threat and took steps to improve US counter terrorism capabilities but did not leave a blueprint for others to follow. His was a policy of half steps that produced isolated rather than integrated responses and bold words that more often than not were not translated into action. Much as a new home owner would question why the previous occupant spent so much time worrying about a renovation project he had no interest in, the George W. Bush administration came into office determined to pursue a different agenda. It was one which placed traditional great-power politics and a concern for rogue states front and center.

Counterterrorism was relegated to the status of an ill-considered and incomplete renovation that could safely be shelved for the time being and returned to once the new owner was fully settled in.

28

Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz

CONCLUSION How then can we describe Clinton’s foreign policy journey? He began as a reluctant home remodeler and remained one for the most part. Three points should be made with regard to Clinton as a home remodeler. First, this role orientation is not necessarily bad. Carothers notes that the similarity of his democratization agenda to that of George H. W. Bush was not necessarily a bad thing because it signified the existence of a reasonable bipartisan consensus.28 He succeeded in getting NAFTA approved, thus avoiding the mistake of the Carter administration that completely jettisoned the Vladivostok framework in a failed bid to obtain a different arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. Second, the motives behind his home remodeling efforts varied. Domestic political considerations and a lack of interest played a major role in some instances, while in others, bureaucratic considerations or the absence of credible options played leading roles. Third, while no overarching architectural vision guided his administration’s foreign policy in some respects, none was demanded. His was the first post-Cold War presidency as well as perhaps the last depending upon when one dates the beginning of the war on terrorism. It was an era without a clear sense of identity.

Clinton’s foreign policy also reveals an attempt at creating a new architecture for US foreign policy in his efforts to stop bin Laden. His failure to effectively do so tells us much about the requirements that must be met for this role orientation to succeed. At a minimum they include a clearly articulated vision, a sense of unity of purpose in the bureaucracy (or at least that part of it given charge of the policy), and a public willing to follow.

ENDNOTES 1

See for example, Robert E. Osgood, Ideals and Self Interest in America’s Foreign Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953) and Robert E. Osgood and Robert W. Tucker, Force, Order and Justice (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1967).

The Foreign Policy of the Clinton Administration 2

29

See for example, Seyom Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1974); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).

3 Larry Diamond, “The Twin Pillars of a New US Foreign Policy,” The World and I, April 1993, 22-33.

4 Charles W. Kegley, Jr., “The Neoidealist Moment in International Studies? Realist Myths and the New International Realities,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (1993): 131-46.

5 See Clinton on globalization and interdependence in Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 894.

6 Warren Christopher, “Building Peace in the Middle East,” United States Department of State Dispatch 4 (1993): 38.

7 Anthony Lake, “From Containment to Enlargement,” text of speech delivered to the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., September 21, 1993.

8 Madeleine K. Albright, “Remarks to the National War College, National Defense University, Fort McNair,” text of speech delivered September 23, 1993.

9 David Halberstam, Peace in a Time of War (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 193.

10 Halberstam, 168.

11 Halberstam, 271.

12 Halberstam, 253.

13 Clinton, My Life, 552-53.

14 Halberstam, Peace in a Time of War, 199.

15 Clinton, My Life, 513.

16 Clinton, 769.

17 Thomas Carothers, Critical Mission: Essays on the Promotion of Democracy (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), chapters 2 and 3, 23-54. Carothers notes that the major difference between the two administrations was Clinton’s policy toward Haiti.

18 Clinton, My Life, 780.

19 Clinton, 925.

20 Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies (New York: Free Press, 2004), 73, 101.

21 Steven Strasser (ed.), The 9/11 Investigations (New York: Public Affairs Reports), 473-74.

22 The 9/11 Commission Report, authorized edition (New York: Norton, 2004). Both quotes are on page 193.

23 Strasser (ed.), The 9/11 Investigations, 156-59.

24 The 9/11 Commission Report, 182.

25 The 9/11 Commission Report, 187.

26 The 9/11 Commission Report, 108, 133.

27 Clarke, Against All Enemies, x.

28 Carothers, Critical Mission, 32.

II. DEFENSE POLICY

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

CLINTON AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MILITARIZATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY Melvin Goodman Johns Hopkins University, Center for International Policy, Washington, D.C., US

“Foreign policy is not what I came here to do.”

William Jefferson Clinton

During the George W. Bush Administration, the Pentagon was at the top of the decision-making ladder on national security policy, weakening the role of the Department of State and other agencies dealing with foreign policy. As a result, the long-term security interests of the United States were weakened, particularly the formation of an international coalition against terrorism and the international pursuit of arms control and counterproliferation. Although the militarization of national security policy was a dominant theme in the workings of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, some of the blame for this dangerous trend lies with President Bill

34

Melvin Goodman

Clinton, who entered office with an aversion to the use of force and a suspicion of the military community.

Clinton’s relations with the Pentagon were tenuous from the start. He arrived in Washington with a reputation for manipulating the draft laws in 1969 to avoid military service during the Vietnam War. Although his opposition to the war was cautiously calibrated, the military pictured Clinton as an extreme activist. (It must be noted that Republicans such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and William Cohen drew a pass from the Pentagon on this issue, but Democrats such as Clinton and even a war hero but Vietnam critic such as Senator John Kerry did not, begging serious questions about the politics of the professional military).

Clinton alienated the military shortly after his inauguration when he suggested in a press conference that he would allow homosexuals to openly serve in the military. When Clinton was caught off-guard by the opposition of Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), the chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, he had to backtrack and instruct his secretary of defense to find a compromise. The compromise, of course, was the cynical policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This episode told the uniformed services that they could challenge the authority of the commander in chief with impunity. “I got the worst of both worlds,” Clinton later wrote, losing the fight to allow gays in the military and earning taunts of betrayal from his gay supporters.1 Clinton, unfortunately, bowed to military pressure time and time again on a variety of national security and foreign policy issues. His capitulations weakened or abandoned agreements dealing with the International Criminal Court, a ban on land mines, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Chemical Warfare Convention. His capitulations on issues involving confrontation, however, angered many members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The embarrassing withdrawal of US forces from Somalia in September 1993, and the sudden withdrawal of the USS. Harlan County from Port-auPrince, Haiti, in October 1993 created a picture of US impotence and irresolution that the Pentagon deplored. These two events displayed a lack of coordination and competence at the highest levels, which was reminiscent of the incompetence of the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The Bay of Pigs, of course, got President John F. Kennedy’s presidency off to a miserable start, and

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

35

Clinton found himself in a similar position. The fact that Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) dictated the terms of the withdrawal from Somalia added to President Clinton’s embarrassment. The US intervention in Bosnia occurred after years of killing, and in 1994 the United States blocked UN efforts to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Often when military force was used, in response to terrorist attacks against US embassies and warships, the tactics were mere pinpricks if the United States responded at all.

INTRODUCTION Prior to World War II, the military rarely influenced foreign and national security policy. The Cold War and the 1947 National Security Act made the military an integral part of national security policy in peacetime and in war.

The National Security Act created the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and successive amendments and reforms enhanced the power of the chairman and weakened the influence and leverage of the civilian secretaries of the army, navy, and air force. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 made the chairman the “principal military adviser to the president, the National Security Council, and the secretary of defense.” The stature of JCS chairman Colin Powell in the early 1990s added to the leverage of the position, and the authority of regional commanders of forces in major regional areas (previously known as commanders in chief or “Cincs” until Bush Administration Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later declared that the country had only one commander in chief) was also strengthened, thus weakening the stature of assistant secretaries of state and key ambassadors in the field. In her book The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, Dana Priest refers to the regional commanders as “proconsuls to the empire.”2 The unprecedented statutory authority of the regional commanders has given them greater influence in the budget process, foreign policy formulation, and national security decision making, including the debate over the transformation of the military in the twenty-first century. These commanders, backed by the secretary of defense, have prepared regional

36

Melvin Goodman

engagement plans around the world without proper consultation with the State Department, resulting in the overuse of US forces. (In May 2003, several weeks after the end of the war in Iraq, the US military conducted a raid on the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Baghdad without consulting any civilian official in Iraq. An official in the Bush administration explained that “marines don’t get paid to worry about any flags, other than the Stars and Stripes, and this unit carried out its disarmament mission with relish and Semper Fi.”3).

CLINTON’S NATIONAL SECURITY TEAM Although Bill Clinton had pledged to install a government that “looks like America,” his national security team was a selection of individuals who created policy and/or management problems at their respective departments and agencies. In staffing the four key positions for national security affairs (Warren Christopher as secretary of state, Rep. Les Aspin (D-WI) as secretary of defense, Anthony Lake as national security adviser, and James Woolsey as director of central intelligence), Clinton chose individuals who failed to conceptualize and implement an effective national security policy.

No member of this team could be considered a conceptualizer for grand strategy; none could play the role that Henry Kissinger had played for President Richard Nixon or Zbigniew Brzezinski had tried to play for President Jimmy Carter. The inexperienced president needed a strategist and sherpa for grand strategy; instead he ended up with low-keyed mechanics much too lackluster to play such a role.

It should have been no surprise that Secretary of Defense Aspin was the first to falter. Clinton was one of the least experienced commanders in chief in the twentieth century, and it was obvious from the start that Les Aspin was not going to fill the void for the president. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Aspin aloof and abrasive, and his waffling over key substantive decisions regarding military support for the contras in Nicaragua and the MX missile certainly didn’t help his standing. He was an intellectual figure in an anti-intellectual setting, slow to make decisions, unable to

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

37

manage the substantive disputes between the separate forces, and imprecise in debate. As one of his military critics opined, Aspin had the courage of his conclusions but not the courage of his convictions.

Aspin lasted less than a year, leaving the Pentagon in December 1993 due to health problems and serious policy differences with high-ranking military officers over the issue of gays in the military, armored support for US forces in Somalia, and disputes over the military budget. When asked about the causes of his resignation, Aspin conceded “Oh, a bit of all three” in reference to his health, gays in the military, and Somalia. In his short tenure at the Pentagon, he also had to deal with controversies concerning the role of women on the frontlines, cutting the reserve force, and base closures.

Clinton went from the frying pan into the fire when he nominated Admiral Bobby Ray Inman to be Aspin’s successor. At the press conference where the president announced Inman as the nomination for the post of secretary of defense, Inman arrogantly stated he had reached a “level of comfort” with Clinton as a suitable commander-in-chief. And no cabinet nominee has ever provided a better political epitaph than Inman, who announced his withdrawal from consideration and told the press “…the country is better off with me in the private sector.” In fact, it was the shady business practices of Inman that called attention to his dubious qualifications for the post of secretary of defense. Clinton’s embarrassment with this selection continues until today because nowhere in his 964-page memoir does Bobby Inman’s name appear.

Clinton eventually solved his problem at the Pentagon with the appointment of William Perry as secretary of defense, the only genuine exception to the mediocre appointments in the field of national security affairs. However, in an attempt to find a bipartisan solution for his second term, Clinton selected Senator William Cohen (R-ME), who created some of the same organizational and morale problems with the military that Aspin created in the first term.

A year after Aspin’s resignation, the second key member of the national security team was forced to go. Director of Central Intelligence and CIA Director James Woolsey was confirmed unanimously in February 1993 but within months had antagonized key members of the Senate Intelligence

38

Melvin Goodman

Committee, including Chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), as well as important players in the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, including OMB Director Leon Panetta. One of Panetta’s senior staff officers commented on Woolsey’s approach in dealing with Panetta: “I’ve never seen a more graceless stonewall….”4 Woolsey’s mishandling of the espionage case involving CIA career operations officer Aldrich Ames, particularly his mild discipline for responsible officers in response to the worst security breach in US history, led him to announce his resignation in December 1994. The seventh-floor offices of the director of central intelligence offers a wonderful view of the wooded hills of northern Virginia, but it was obvious that Woolsey could not see beyond the cloistered world of an agency that was overtaken by history, particularly in its inability to realign itself in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Ames was responsible for the deaths of the twelve most important Soviet officials spying for the United States, but Woolsey could only bring himself to issue bureaucratic reprimands in the face of clear institutional dysfunction that allowed Ames to remain on Soviet and Russian payrolls for nearly a decade. The fact that the CIA could not track the huge amounts of cash that Ames received and immediately spent raises serious questions about its ability to track “clean,” let alone dirty, money.

Ames had been on the Soviet (and Russian) payroll for nearly a decade, but no one was fired, no one was demoted; there were only reprimands for the “old-boy” network that failed to respond aggressively to a traitor responsible for the deaths of every CIA asset in the Soviet Union and the loss of every espionage and counterintelligence operation against the Kremlin. And when Clinton created a presidential commission to investigate the obvious need for reform of the intelligence community, headed by former secretaries of defense Aspin and Harold Brown, Woolsey clashed repeatedly with the Congress and even the White House over the work of the commission. He became increasingly combative and isolated and, having lost the trust of the president and the Congress, he had to go.

Clinton seemed to learn nothing when he named Admiral Bobby R. Inman to replace Aspin; similarly, he repeated himself when he nominated

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

39

Air Force General Michael Carns to replace Woolsey. No government agency required a stronger management hand than the CIA, and it was obvious from the start that the Air Force general was not the right candidate.

Carns ostensibly withdrew his nomination because of immigration and tax issues involving a member of his domestic workforce, but almost from the outset it was clear that Carns lacked the acumen and experience to deal with the nomination process, let alone the complexities of the US intelligence community. Like Admiral Inman, there is no mention of General Carns in the Clinton autobiography. Like a Sherlock Holmes’ mystery, often the dog that doesn’t bark provides the loudest clue. Clinton’s other directors of central intelligence, John Deutch and George Tenet, made their own contributions to the decline and fall of the CIA and, with the Intelligence Reorganization Act of 2004, the post of director of central intelligence was ended and the role of CIA director was significantly weakened.

If Aspin didn’t let you know what he was thinking because he hadn’t decided, Secretary of State Warren Christopher didn’t let you know what he was thinking by design. Even before the dust had settled on the resignations of Aspin and Woolsey, there were rumors involving the possible resignation of Christopher. Actually, Christopher lasted in place until November 1996, but it was a bumpy and unsuccessful ride. His first major trip to Europe took place early in the first Clinton term, April 1993, in order to persuade key Western European states to lift their arms embargo on Bosnian Muslims.

The trip was a total failure, leaving European foreign ministers wondering why the new president would send his secretary of state to European capitals with no apparent instructions and no obvious priorities. European journalists and pundits immediately caricatured the secretary with such stories as the secretary bellying up to the bar during a refueling stop in Ireland to order a “virgin decaf Irish coffee.”

In the wake of this failure, the Clinton White House made secret decisions that worsened relations with the Europeans. Clinton’s White House decided to ignore European opposition and permit the Iranians to supply Bosnian Muslims with arms, informing the US ambassador of Croatia of the decision but not the director of the CIA. Agency operatives in the Balkans learned of these arms transfers and reported incorrectly to the

40

Melvin Goodman

director of central intelligence that the ambassador, Peter Galbraith, was secretly and illegally involved in negotiations to arm the Muslims. The DCI took this information to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which had not been briefed on this covert action, and an unnecessary political imbroglio took place on Capitol Hill. In addition to mishandling the Bosnia matter, Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake also developed a reputation for multiple changes of direction on virtually all key areas for decision, particularly Haiti and Somalia.

But the straw that broke this prim and proper camel’s back took place in 1994, when Christopher supported the reform plans for the State Department sponsored by reactionary senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Their plan called for ending the independent status of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), the Agency for International Development, and the United States Information Agency, and moving these functions into a super State Department. This would create a large and unmanageable department and deprive the executive branch of the independent expertise needed in areas of arms control and disarmament as well as the need to use information policy to combat anti-Americanism in key areas of the world, particularly the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

Ultimately, it was Clinton who agreed with Helms’ efforts to move ACDA and the United States Information Agency into the State Department, actually defending the decision in his autobiography and never mentioning the unfortunate impact of this reorganization on the management of the State Department let alone the loss of independent agencies. Clinton contended that he had to agree to the Helms’ reorganization plan in order to get a vote on the Chemical Weapons Convention, which ultimately passed by a 74-26 margin.

It didn’t help matters that on almost every key area of policy, particularly Haiti and North Korea, Christopher and his State Department were upstaged by the globetrotting diplomacy of former president Jimmy Carter. Carter’s successes in these areas made Christopher look irrelevant and led to a good deal of sniping and opposition within the department.

Aspin’s fecklessness did the same at the defense department, and Tony Lake was similarly accused of being unable to manage and discipline his small

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

41

staff, an accusation which was used against him when he was nominated to be CIA director in 1996.

It is ironic that Lake had so much substantive difficulty at the National Security Council and was unable as a result to be confirmed as CIA director.

Alone among the key Clinton advisers, Lake was the only substantive expert who understood the need for developing operational strategies to deal with terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and ethnic conflict. He was clearly someone who had his substantive priorities in order and someone who could think outside the box; for instance he undertook an initiative to permit Iranian arms to reach the Muslims in Bosnia. But Lake had no ability to manage the bureaucracy and no ability to touch the appropriate bureaucratic bases when decisions were made. On the Bosnian arms transfer, it was his idea, for example, not to inform the director of central intelligence, whom he didn’t trust, or even the US Congress, which became irate when it learned of this initiative. These missteps led to resignation rumors for Lake as early as October 1993.

In view of Lake’s substantive expertise, he may have been the kind of director of central intelligence who could have prevented the huge intelligence failures that characterized the lack of strategic warning prior to the 9/11 attacks and certainly the politicization of intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003. It is virtually impossible to imagine that Lake, who courageously resigned from the Foreign Service in 1971 to protest the secret bombing campaign against Cambodia, would have caved in to policy demands to politicize intelligence as George Tenet did in 2002. (It was Tenet who uttered that it would be a “slam dunk,” when faced with the outrageous demand from President Bush for phony intelligence to support a decision to go to war).

Even though his critics, especially Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Pat Roberts (R-KS) from the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited Lake’s management style to force the withdrawal of his nomination, it was clearly an ideological campaign that was used against him. Like Theodore Sorenson, President Jimmy Carter’s first choice for CIA director, Lake was simply too liberal for the troglodytes on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In addition to resigning from the Foreign Service for reasons of principle,

42

Melvin Goodman

Lake was a supporter of arms control and human rights, and a critic of thenDirector William Casey’s mishandling of the CIA in the 1980s. The bottom line was that he was just “too damned liberal” for the ideologues who opposed him.

Lake was moved aside at the National Security Council to make room for Clinton’s closest foreign policy adviser and most loyal political aide, Sandy Berger. Berger had the president’s complete trust and confidence, but Berger was an international trade lawyer by background and lacked the credentials to impress foreign policy analysts or elite opinion makers. He understood the political realities of decision making but operated for the most part by the seat of his pants and not from a strategic worldview. “I really like him,” said Henry Kissinger, “but you can’t blame a trade lawyer for not being a global strategist.”5 One of Berger’s unfortunate contributions to the US playbook on strategy was the policy of “dual containment,” which justified the non-recognition of both Iran and Iraq and thus complicated US interests in the Persian Gulf.

On balance, Clinton failed miserably in his choice of a national security team. Unlike his economic security team, which had such stars and heavyweights as Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, the foreign policy players were weak and ineffective. Two of the four were gone within two years, one was clearly outmaneuvered by his deputy, and the fourth, Warren Christopher, lasted nearly the entire first term but left behind a weak department that could not stand up to the growing influence and power of the Department of Defense. Christopher’s successor, Madeleine Albright, did nothing to improve the standing and morale at the State Department, and President Clinton soon tired of her constant moralizing on foreign policy issues, providing “advice that was devoid of politics.”6 The team failed to provide the outlines of broad strategy for national security, the concepts for implementing strategy, or the sherpa to lead the way. Clinton was virtually on his own in the field of national security and this put a heavy responsibility on the chief executive who was not up to the task and was having his own difficulties within the bureaucracy, particularly the Pentagon.

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

43

PROBLEMS WITH THE PENTAGON I served with the government for forty-two years, including twenty-four years at the Central Intelligence Agency and fourteen years on the faculty of the Department of Defense’s National War College. In that time, dating back to the mid-1960s and the deep controversies within the government bureaucracies over Vietnam and détente with the Soviet Union, there was only one period when I felt there existed a deep and abiding animosity at the Pentagon toward the president of the United States. The professional military has become increasingly conservative and ideological since the end of the draft in the 1970s and the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Bill in the 1980s. The institutional hostility of the military toward President Clinton was palpable, and it was manifest among the senior officer corps of the US military, which I observed up-close in policy debates, seminar discussions and overseas travel. When I joined the war college faculty in 1990, I assumed the strategic threats to the United States for the officer corps were the Soviet Union and China, but I soon learned that liberal Democrats, the Congress, and the print media topped their list of threats. Clinton was perceived as beholden to all three.

It must be understood that the Pentagon has been a consistent opponent of arms control treaties, starting with its heavy-handed opposition to President John F. Kennedy’s negotiation of a Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which banned the testing of nuclear weapons on land, at sea, and in the atmosphere. Military brass, particularly Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, opposed Kennedy’s diplomatic solution to the Cuban missile crisis and believed that the test ban represented an additional concession to Moscow. President Richard Nixon had to override Pentagon opposition to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972, which stabilized mutual deterrence on the basis of parity and equal security, and the AntiBallistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in the same year, which limited antiballistic missile sites in the United States and the Soviet Union to two sites, and eventually none, and thus prevented the deployment of a nationwide or comprehensive antiballistic missile system, until President George W. Bush abrogated the treaty in 2001.

44

Melvin Goodman

Clinton certainly did not help his standing with the Pentagon when he walked away from military confrontation or bowed to the interests of the military on a series of arms control and international security measures. The fact that Clinton’s autobiography makes no mention of some of these incidents points to the former president’s unwillingness to even discuss these unpleasant episodes in hindsight. For example, the senior military leadership was strongly opposed to involvement in Bosnia, but Clinton’s autobiography merely talks about the “ambivalence” of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ subordinates. His memoir makes no mention of the episode of the USS. Harlan County in Haiti, where the dispatch and then panicky withdrawal of the ship from Port au Prince drew much criticism in senior military leadership circles. Indeed, the combination of the withdrawal of forces from Somalia and the withdrawal of the USS. Harlan County was an embarrassment to the military and contributed to its contemptuous attitude toward the president and the White House.

International Criminal Court Clinton’s willingness to bow to the interests of the Pentagon reached a particular low in 1999, when he walked away from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the first permanent court based on a treaty to promote the rule of law and ensure that the gravest international crimes do not go unpunished. The court, which entered into force in 2002, is based in The Hague in the Netherlands as an independent international organization. In rejecting a court that would bring the world’s worst human-rights criminals to justice, the United States joined hands with some of the most uncivilized nations in the world, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Qatar, Sudan, and Yemen.

Every member state of the European Union favored the ICC. Initially Clinton did too, after the administration’s successful involvement in warcrimes tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. But the Pentagon resisted exposing US soldiers to international justice, claiming that the court would allow other countries with political motivations to prosecute US military personnel. The Pentagon’s interpretation of the ICC charter was

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

45

misguided because it only applied to nations that lacked judicial institutions to try war criminals. Nonetheless, its opposition drove US policy, and the Clinton administration ended up opposing the ICC. In caving in to the Pentagon, the Clinton administration showed no sign of the growing international resentment of the US government’s unwillingness to subject itself to international law. Anger over US highhandedness on human rights issues made US allies less willing to compromise on matters of importance to the United States. There was also international opposition to the State Department’s efforts to pressure governments not to join the ICC, including the threat to renegotiate bilateral treaties that govern the stationing of US forces overseas in order to protect them from the ICC. The latter policy had the enthusiastic support of Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

The ICC opened for business in 2002 and is surviving without US participation, but the absence of the United States is undermining Washington’s opposition to terrorism and drug-trafficking. The Clinton administration supported US trials over suspects in terrorist attacks and drug-related murders, which contradicts the Clinton administration’s contention that prosecutions must be limited to suspects whose governments have consented to its jurisdiction. Also, the Clinton administration stepped up the dubious policy of extraordinary renditions, which had the CIA arresting terrorist suspects and turning them over to third countries that conduct torture in interrogation procedures. (The Bush administration’s more aggressive use of the renditions policy led to protests from Canada, Italy, and Sweden).

Landmines Ban The debate over the ICC wasn’t the only place where the interests of the uniformed military pushed the United States to oppose its allies and support dubious policies. Take the campaign to ban land mines. By the 1990s, land mines in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam and dozens of other countries were killing or injuring 25,000 annually.7 The campaign to ban land mines

46

Melvin Goodman

was an international one, headed by Jody Williams of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and supported by more than one thousand NonGovernment Organizations (NGOs) in 85 countries. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced legislation in the Senate to place a one-year moratorium on American exports of antipersonnel mines, which was passed in 1992.

Clinton called for the “eventual elimination” of land mines in his speech to the United Nations in 1994 and issued a policy statement in 1996 that called for negotiations of an international agreement to ban antipersonnel mines.

The Ottawa Conference that year, attended by fifty governments, called for an immediate ban on all antipersonnel land mines, but then the United States and the Clinton administration began to waffle.

The Pentagon opposed the international effort against land mines because of its deployment of mines in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea as well as its support for the use of mines in mixed antitank systems and the continued use of so-called “smart” mines that would selfdestruct after a pre-set time. Antipersonnel mines, unable to tell the difference between a combatant and a child, have created havoc in such disparate places as Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Bosnia, and Mozambique. But the Pentagon’s regional commanders have made line mines a readiness issue and will not budge. Not even the inauguration of a tentative peace between the two Koreas and the beginning of summit diplomacy between the United States and North Korea have led to new thinking at the Pentagon. Clinton bowed to the Pentagon’s pressure, even though several retired generals supported the ban, including several former commanders in Korea and the former Superintendent of West Point. In his memoir, Clinton briefly mentions his inability to sign the international treaty banning land mines, but makes no mention of the Pentagon’s opposition to the treaty.8 Similarly, he mentions his support for the ICC, but makes no mention of its defeat in the Senate let alone the opposition of the Pentagon to the court.

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

47

Ban on Combat for Teenagers One particularly low point for the Clinton administration took place in 1999, when the United States voted against UN efforts to ban using soldiers under the age of eighteen in combat. Nearly 200 nations voted in favor of the ban. Only Somalia, which for all practical purposes has no civil governance, joined the United States in casting an opposing vote. The Pentagon’s opposition was particularly irrational in view of the fact that fewer than three thousand Americans in uniform were under the age of eighteen in 1999. In any event, Clinton reversed policy gears on the ban for teenagers in combat in July 1999 after six years of lobbying the Pentagon for support.

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty The Clinton administration also badly mishandled the Senate’s vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which marked the first congressional rejection of a significant international agreement since the Treaty of Versailles established the League of Nations eighty years earlier. The Pentagon has fought restraints on strategic and conventional arms, including testing, for the past four decades, starting with President John F. Kennedy’s partial test ban treaty in 1963 and President Richard Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972, but Kennedy and Nixon stood up to the Pentagon. Ironically, the Pentagon opposed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1986, even though the treaty was drafted by Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. When the Soviets accepted the zero-zero arrangement for intermediate nuclear forces, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Perle resigned to protest President Ronald Reagan’s support for the treaty.

Clinton became the first president to fail to stand up to the Pentagon on an arms control treaty, when he failed to challenge the Pentagon’s opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Pentagon got an unanticipated opening to block ratification due to an incredible intelligence

48

Melvin Goodman

failure in 1998 by a relatively new intelligence agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), to predict and monitor four Indian nuclear tests. This failure led CIA director George Tenet to tell the Congress that the he could not monitor and verify the CTBT, marking the first time that a CIA director told the Congress that an arms control or disarmament agreement was not verifiable. In turn, this led the Senate to reverse gears, with many Senators suddenly declaring that, if the United States could not monitor an international weapons treaty, then it should not be ratified. President Ronald Reagan had said of arms control and disarmament measures that the United States would “trust, but verify.”

With the emphasis on verification, Tenet’s public remarks were fatal. The Senate accepted the Pentagon’s position and defeated the treaty. There is no mention in the Clinton memoir of this controversial issue and the intelligence failure that led to the defeat of the CTBT in the Senate.

The failure was due in part to assigning the important task of analyzing satellite imagery to the Pentagon, which gave a low collection priority to South Asia as a region and to arms control as an objective. This is precisely the reason for President Harry Truman placing intelligence analysis outside the realm of policy. The failure on the part of NIMA and CIA, and the defeat of the CTBT is sufficient reason for criticizing the Clinton administration for shifting the analysis of satellite imagery from the CIA to the Pentagon, which is responsible for the staffing and funding of NIMA. With the creation of a director of national intelligence in 2004, there was the possibility that the analysis of satellite imagery will be moved outside of the policy community or at least be made a joint DoD-CIA responsibility.

The Clinton administration was also responsible for mishandling the ratification process on the Hill, which led to the president’s worst foreign policy defeat in the Congress. The vote was a stark 48-51—not even a majority in the treaty’s favor, and far below the two-thirds required for approval.9 As Professor Terry Deibel noted in his useful case study on the defeat of the treaty, Clinton failed to mount a public campaign on behalf of the treaty, to appoint a high-level official within the administration to lobby for its passage, and to recruit a senior Republican senator such as Richard Lugar (R-IN) to work for the treaty in the Republican caucus. He also failed

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

49

to block the behind-the-scenes efforts of the Pentagon that took advantage of the opposition to the CTBT from senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) to conduct its lobbying on the Hill.

The perception of Clinton’s passivity on this issue convinced many Democrats that the White House was not genuinely committed to the comprehensive test ban. And by the time that the NSC, the White House Legislative Office, and the State Department shifted into high gear to gain support for the treaty, it was too late. A majority of the Senate, realizing that the United States would suffer a significant diplomatic embarrassment with the defeat of the treaty, wanted to postpone any vote, but Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) demanded a letter from the president requesting the postponement and adding that the “CTBT not be considered for the duration of his presidency.”10 It was obvious that the Republican leadership was more interested in embarrassing the Clinton presidency than in a genuine compromise with the White House. If they couldn’t impeach the president in 1998, then at least they could defeat his national security agenda, even a bipartisan treaty that had the support of six presidents over a thirty-five-year period, ever since the Kennedy administration stood up to the Pentagon and secured the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. (The election of George Bush in 2000 effectively ended any further discussion of the ICC, the CTBT, and the land mine ban.)

Other Failures Clinton’s political vulnerabilities led to other setbacks as well.11 The president wanted to take some action to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, but the Pentagon would not even provide military options to the White House. At the very least, the United States Air Force could have bombed the radio facilities that were responsible for the hateful propaganda and the kill orders that the Hutus were giving against the Tutsis. Clinton’s response to the bombings of the US embassies on the Horn of Africa in 1998 seemed particularly craven, with the White House not even having clear justification for the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, that was not

50

Melvin Goodman

involved with the production of lethal chemicals. In 2000, the bombing of the USS. Cole led to no US action whatsoever, although it was obvious to everyone (except the CIA) that al-Qaeda had planned and carried out the operation. Clinton and Berger have claimed that they gave the CIA clear and unambiguous orders to assassinate al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but that is open to dispute as well.

The attack on the USS. Cole demonstrated the key role that the Pentagon played in the implementation of national security strategy. For two years prior to the attack, the State Department and the CIA had warned both the policy communities and the public at large of the dangers of using Yemen as a refueling stop for US warships and of traveling to the Arab nation. The US ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, had even vetoed several planned military ship visits to the country because of concern over terrorist attacks.

But the regional commander for US forces in the Persian Gulf, General Anthony Zinni, insisted that the refueling of warships in Yemen would be part of his policy to improve relations with that country. On October 12, 2000, two men in a dinghy full of explosives rowed up to the Cole and blasted a 1,000-square foot hole in the hull of the ship, killing seventeen American sailors. The fact that the Clinton White House had no military response to the bombing of a combatant ship displayed unbelievable weakness to the international community and presumably to the responsible terrorist organization, al-Qaeda.

Although Clinton became a more confident leader of his foreign policy team in his second term, he nevertheless lacked a strategist who could define and describe foreign policy problems and solutions in broad terms. Perhaps the best example of a flawed strategic concept was the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which ensured that there would be no progress in developing a strategic approach to the former Soviet Union.

Clinton correctly observed that the liberated states of Eastern Europe had to be anchored to the West, but the appropriate vehicle for such an arrangement should have been the European Union, not NATO. Indeed, one of the greatest strategic failures of the Clinton administration was its effort to marginalize Russia rather than seeing to anchor Russia to the West, as suggested by the late George Kennan in his

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

51

strategy of containment. This policy suited the interests of the uniformed military, but not Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, but Clinton was acting for his own reasons and not merely to satisfy the Pentagon. The current crisis in Russian=American relations over Ukraine can be traced to the expansion of NATO in the 1990s.

Problems for the Bureaucracy In addition to worsening some aspects of American foreign policy and decision-making, the Clinton team left the national security bureaucracy in worse shape than it had been found. The strengthening of the Pentagon was achieved at the expense of the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The fiscal situation at the State Department was so weak in the late 1990s that a form of “Sovietization” was taking place in Foggy Bottom. The State Department lacked foreign service officers for more than 300 overseas positions and, since the CIA is traditionally overfunded and overstaffed, it began filling these overseas positions, moving intelligence officers into State Department slots. Similarly, there were more military attaches than political officers in such key embassies as Moscow. When the former Soviet Union faced a similar problem in the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB began to assign its personnel to fill foreign ministry slots overseas. Mikhail Gorbachev moved smartly in 1985 to correct this situation, but the Clinton administration and the Office of Management and Budget did nothing to reverse the trend. Neither did the Congress.

The role of the CIA as a supplier of objective intelligence was significantly weakened, with the CIA playing much less of a role in military intelligence and strategic intelligence. The Pentagon, moreover, was permitted to dominate the analysis of satellite imagery, the single most important collection system in the intelligence community. As a result, the CIA became increasingly known for providing “worst-case views” of key national security issues. In 1999, for example, the agency produced an estimate on new strategic challenges to the United States that significantly changed the likelihood of a missile threat to the United States, which was

52

Melvin Goodman

favored by the Pentagon. The military was looking for a rationale for its national missile defense system, and the new estimate provided such a rationale without citing new intelligence data since its previous estimate on the problem. (In a heartening show of independence, the State Department strongly dissented from CIA’s position, arguing that the agency’s worst-case view gave “more credence than is warranted to developments that may prove implausible.”12)

National Security Success This is not to say that the Clinton administration did not have its successes in the area of arms control and disarmament. President Clinton secured a major success in 1994 when he negotiated the removal of so-called “loose nukes” from the Ukraine, which led to the removal of all strategic nuclear weapons in those former Soviet republics, outside the Russian Republic, that had deployed or stored such weapons. Two influential senators, Nunn and Lugar, played a key role in this step.

The Clinton Administration also engineered an indefinite expansion of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). It secured ratification of the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). In 1994, Clinton negotiated a nuclear freeze with North Korea in return for promising Pyongyang two light-water reactors. Construction on a site for the reactors began in the 1990s, but the reactors never were delivered. The Bush administration was particularly critical of the Agreed Framework with North Korea, but in September 2005 it entered its own agreement with North Korea that called for an eventual light-water reactor for Pyongyang, thus replicating the very Clinton policy that the Bush team had trashed. The Bush administration also derided a 2000 communique in which the Clinton administration pledged not to attack North Korea, but the 2005 agreement had the same promise.

Clinton and the Origins of the Militarization …

53

POSTSCRIPT Although the Clinton administration is responsible for permitting an unacceptable level of military influence over US national security and foreign policy, the Bush administration’s policies of unilateralism and preemptive attack lent an imperial dimension to US policy that is unprecedented. The United States and the Pentagon do not have the personnel or the treasury to maintain this strategy, which has increased the operational tempo of US forces over the past ten years. The emphasis on preemptive and preventive warfare is contrary to a long established rule in international society that forbids the first use of force except in narrowly drawn circumstances.

President Clinton’s successor walked away from the constraints of international diplomacy and coalition strategy. In addition to abandoning treaties on the International Criminal Court, the ban on land mines, and a comprehensive test ban, the Bush administration abandoned the Kyoto accord on climate change and abrogated the cornerstone to deterrence and arms control, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972.

The Clinton presidency may have contributed to the problems of the national security policy process by weakening the balance between the key instruments of foreign policy, but the Bush presidency worked hard to enable the Pentagon to emerge as the strongest player in the process. The State Department was significantly weakened, and the Pentagon’s control over the intelligence community was not challenged by the Intelligence Reorganization Act of 2004. The emphasis on preemptive war in President Bush’s commencement address to West Point in 2002 and the Pentagon’s revision of nuclear strategy to permit the use of nuclear weapons to destroy enemy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have reversed major tenets of American foreign policy. To paraphrase Mark Twain, if the only tool in the toolbox is a hammer, then all of our problems will soon look like nails.

54

Melvin Goodman

ENDNOTES 1

Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Knopf, 2004), 486.

Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).

3 Patrick E. Tyler, “US Civilians Not Told of Raid on Palestinians,” New York Times, May 31, 2003, 6.

4 Douglas Garthoff, Directors of Central Intelligence as Leaders of the US Intelligence Community, 1946-2005 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2005), 225.

5 John Harris, The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House (New York: Random House, 2005), 370.

6 Harris, 164. According to Harris, Clinton liked advisers who understood the political and practical realities of key issues, having no patience for “moralistic arguments that were blind to practical realities.”

7 Bob Fehribach, “Using Landmines Offers No Benefits to US Military,” Lansing State Journal, January 14, 2003.

8 Bill Clinton, My Life, 765.

9 Terry L. Deibel, “The Death of a Treaty,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 5 (2002), 142.

10 Deibel, “Death of a Treaty,” 154.

11 Ironically, just as Clinton’s political vulnerabilities cost him such national security initiatives as the ICC, the land mines ban, and the CTBT, President George W. Bush’s political vulnerabilities in 2005 (e.g., the Iraqi War, Hurricane Katrina, and the diplomatic standoff regarding Iran’s nuclear program) persuaded him to enter into a nuclear disarmament agreement in return for a civilian nuclear power plant “at an appropriate time.”

12 The funding for the national missile defense system being deployed in Alaska and California is now the largest line item for a weapons system in the current military budget. Although the system has not proved workable in its various tests, the system receives over $10 billion a year; the Pentagon, moreover, has not shared sensitive testing data with the Senate Armed Forces Committee as required by law.

2

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 5

US NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION POLICY DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION1 Donald H. McNeill Consulting Physicist, New York, NY, US

In their first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign, both candidates affirmed that the “single most serious threat to the national security of the United States” is nuclear proliferation.2 While this dictum is deceptively simple, it accurately reflects the US government’s concern about the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries since the Manhattan project was started in 1942 to build an atomic bomb.

The following is a discussion of nuclear proliferation during the Clinton administration. An initial review of the materials used in nuclear weapons and of the evolution of US Cold War nuclear policies helps clarify many of today’s political and technical problems with nuclear proliferation. The secrecy imposed on many aspects of nuclear arms impedes understanding and affects the methods used to study policy. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a preliminary evaluation of the place of the Clinton administration’s nuclear proliferation policy in the sixty year history of the atomic era.

56

Donald H. McNeill

HISTORY The scientific basis of the atomic bomb is described in the Smyth report, issued in September 1945 by the Manhattan Project.3 The essential ingredient of an atomic bomb is either uranium-235 (the isotope of atomic mass 235) or plutonium. U-235 constitutes less than one percent of natural uranium, so it must be separated by physical means. Gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic separation were used during World War II. Other methods, such as centrifuges, are used now. Plutonium, an artificial element, is created in reactors (fueled by uranium) and extracted chemically from partially spent fuel elements. Hydrogen bombs, triggered by fission explosions, ultimately rely on the same materials.4 Because nuclear reactors can operate at steady, high powers, they can be used for generating electricity. This leads to a fundamental security problem with atomic energy: reactors can produce both electric power and nuclear weapons material (plutonium, and tritium for hydrogen bombs). The proliferation implications of this conundrum were discussed in detail, in terms that still make good sense today, in the Acheson-Lilienthal Report of 1946 on the international control of atomic energy.5 When the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II, the bomb acquired a reputation as an “absolute” weapon. P.M.S. Blackett, the British Nobel Prize physicist and a founder of operational research, argued that this reputation was unjustified.6 Japan was a unique case, all but defeated, with many of its cities destroyed by firebombing that caused damage comparable to that which occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.7 Blackett asked whether the bombs were dropped to frighten the Russians, an idea dismissed by official US sources, but potently suggested by the smug comments of Truman and his secretary of state, James Byrnes, as well as by later US policy. 8 During World War II the Russians acquired a vast amount of information on the Manhattan Project,9 beginning with the first British feasibility study (the MAUD report,10 brought by the British to the US in late summer 1941). By the time of the Potsdam Conference, the Soviet project was under way, with searches for uranium and German scientists,

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

57

and labor arrangements being made by Lavrentiy Beria.11 Stalin was not blasé, as Truman seems to have believed.12 He stalled for time as US policymakers prepared for a long conflict with their former ally.

In 1943 Walter Lippmann wrote that the US had no foreign policy.13 From 1945 onward, however, the US developed a consistent, durable foreign policy that ranged from harassment through containment14 to threats of nuclear annihilation of Russia.15 The Cold War of common acquaintance is the nuclear-armed phase, but this very long conflict between the US and Russia began with numerous military incursions by the Allied governments between 1917 and 1922.16 The US refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933, nominally over financial matters, but more plausibly over ideological concerns.17 In the 1940s secrecy obliterated any possibility of serious discussion of nuclear matters by Congress or the public.18 Information gained from postwar decoding of wartime Soviet diplomatic messages about the atomic bomb project was even kept from Truman.19 Nuclear-weapons activities became intertwined with every aspect of American ideology, domestic and foreign policy, and economic, scientific, and cultural life.20 With the promulgation in 1950 of National Security Council policy document NSC68,21 a despairing, intensely ideological US Cold War policy was set, with nuclear weapons as its main underpinning.

As part of the buildup prescribed in NSC-68, the number of US nuclear warheads peaked at approximately 32,000 in 1962. The Soviet stockpile evolved similarly, reaching a peak of 41,000 warheads in 1986.22 Incremental policy changes came with time: limits on American intervention became clearer after the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 195623 and, as the Russians acquired hydrogen bombs and delivery systems, policies of flexible and limited response of the kind advocated by Henry Kissinger replaced the planned early use of nuclear weapons in total war.24 Deterrence became a reality as the one-sided array of forces of 1950 approached a “metastable” balance.25 Eventually, with the arrival of détente in the late 1960s, arms control agreements became possible. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the nominal reason for the Cold War vanished, but the pressures of power, economics, and ideology that had led to the nuclear

58

Donald H. McNeill

arsenals persisted. The December 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review reaffirms that nuclear weapons retain a critical role in US military strategy. 26 As Arthur Schlesinger notes, unilateralism, closely linked to isolationism, is the oldest doctrine in American foreign policy.27 The Baruch Plan (August 1946) was the policy version of the AchesonLilienthal Report with an additional element curtailing the UN veto on nuclear matters in order to inflict “condign” punishment.28 Widely touted as liberal at the time, its punitive emphasis and lack of reciprocity, on inspections, for example, had no appeal to the Russians, who exploded their first atomic bomb in August 1949. The Baruch Plan was essentially aimed at keeping nuclear weapons away from the Russians. Its collapse represents the first failure of a nuclear nonproliferation policy. 29 An almost simultaneous failure occurred when nuclear cooperation with Britain was cut off in 1946, contrary to Roosevelt’s agreement to continue collaboration after the war. The British, who had worked closely with the US in developing the bomb, set out in 1947 to build their own. Britain became the third nuclear power in 1952.30

THE CLINTON RECORD Bill Clinton’s memoirs confirm that he was not a “foreign policy” president.31 With the economy in a slump and the Cold War over, foreign relations were not a campaign issue in 1992. While the number of nuclear warheads decreased during Clinton’s administration, strategic nuclear weapons remained on alert, and new nuclear weapons and uses for them were under development. Proliferation proceeded apace. Clinton’s results in nonproliferation are mirrored in the experiences of Frank von Hippel, a physicist who spent sixteen months working on nuclear nonproliferation and arms control in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Frustrated by the bureaucratic ineffectiveness of that office and the inbuilt hostility to arms control on the part of the State Department, he quit to return to his work on these issues outside government.32

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

59

By 2005, at least eight countries had nuclear weapons. Others had considered developing them and have renounced them, while some appeared to be developing them and many more were capable of doing so.

Governments “go nuclear” because of fear, a desire to prevent victory by an opponent (deterrence), economy, prestige, and bureaucratic momentum. 33 Of comparable importance, though usually neglected in official US pronouncements (but not in those of other nuclear powers and aspirants34), American actions have been a major driver of nuclear proliferation. By its example, the US has shown throughout the atomic era that the way to gain power, security, prestige, and influence is to develop, accumulate, and prepare to use nuclear weapons.

Proliferation is referred to as horizontal or vertical, corresponding, respectively, to the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries or to their further development by existing nuclear powers. Richard Butler writes of “an axiom of proliferation. It states that as long as any state holds nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them.”35 As true today as it was in 1945, this point is reflected as a demand for reciprocity in security and disarmament in Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970, which obliges signatory nuclear powers (including the US) to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”36 The Cold War approach to preventing nuclear proliferation is still in force but is an anachronism, poorly suited to today’s world, for the “secrets” of atomic energy are long out, the required materials are ubiquitous, and the technologies involved are far cheaper and more efficient than fifty years ago.37 The danger of stolen nuclear weapons or material is, indeed, greater than in the past, but is often exaggerated38 compared to the danger of nuclear war between existing nuclear powers.

The principal components of today’s nuclear nonproliferation regime are international.39 Centered on the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), these include the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN agency set up in 1957 to encourage the development of atomic energy and monitor compliance with international agreements, and export control systems such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) organized by nuclear supplier

60

Donald H. McNeill

countries. US domestic components include laws to control and license technology transfers, along with laws requiring sanctions for violation of nonproliferation agreements. On the other hand, Congress lavishly funds nuclear weapons programs, overtly confirming US interest in further development of its nuclear armaments and often conflicting with its treaty obligations.40 In Britain, Russia, and India reactors were built to produce electricity and bomb material simultaneously. In the US, the two functions were kept separate until December 1998, when the long standing separation between reactors for civil and military purposes was breached by a decision to begin producing tritium in Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reactors.41 The Science Based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS) program, aimed at maintaining weapons design expertise at the nuclear weapons laboratories without nuclear explosive tests (i.e., through “virtual testing”), was expanded under Clinton through, among other ways, substantial involvement by many universities in nuclear weapons related studies, thereby releasing much higher-level technical information on nuclear weapons development to the world.42 Work continued on inertial confinement (laser and ion-beam driven) fusion research, which is funded primarily as a weapons physics and simulation program43 and has been since it began around 1970.

In an important, positive step, the Clinton administration declassified many historical documents on nuclear weapons and policy, making this information available to the public for the first time. This advance for democracy was reversed by the George W. Bush administration as it withdrew information from the public throughout government,44 possibly in the belief, familiar from the Cold War, that ignorance will facilitate acceptance of its “security” doctrines or that today’s engineers cannot obtain these old data.

Clinton’s passive acceptance of a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system opened up the possibility of an arms race with China or Russia in the Cold War style. Both nations have repeatedly stated that they will respond to significant deployment with an offensive buildup.45 The greatest problem with BMD is that many of the politicians who discuss it assume that it is

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

61

ready to work. Nothing could be further from the truth. Antimissile defenses are meant to destroy warheads before they reach their target, for, as the Acheson-Lilienthal report noted, there is no defense against nuclear explosions. Efforts to develop BMD have failed since the early 1950s. The success rate of missile defense tests was low during the Clinton administration and still is. (The main difference is that public access to the test results was sharply curtailed by the George W. Bush administration.)

The tests are often rigged.46 In a 2005 test, the interceptor never left its silo.47 One thing is as true as ever: “pouring concrete” in a missile defense system makes more money for military contractors than any research.48 The current system was ordered by Congress in March 1999 through the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, which made it US policy “to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system . . . .” The Rumsfeld report of July 1998 on ballistic missile capabilities of “rogue states” confused the desire for long-range missiles with actual capability, but, in traditional Cold War style, solidified Congressional support for today’s BMD system, which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld activated in October 2004.49 In 2005, this system remained untestable and unworkable.

As for horizontal proliferation, the Clinton administration’s Defense Counterproliferation Initiative of 1993 offered little new.50 The notion of adding “protection” to prevention as a major policy goal is an old idea from the early Cold War that showed up in the George W. Bush administration’s declarations about preventive (disguised as “preemptive”) war.51 Several countries posed nonproliferation problems for Clinton. All were of concern before and after his presidency. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program of 1991 to prevent theft of and eliminate nuclear material in the former Soviet Union was reinforced by Clinton. (In particular, nuclear weapons were transferred from the former Soviet republics Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to Russia.) Lab-to-lab contacts improved its operation, but congressional support for this and related programs waned.52 India and Pakistan, which have long worked on nuclear weapons,53 each conducted several nuclear tests in May 1998 and threatened war. North Korea and Iran continued their projects. The Clinton

62

Donald H. McNeill

administration made a deal with North Korea to stop its production of fissile material54 that was reinforced at the end of 2000 but subsequently fell apart.

Iraq was disarmed by UN inspection teams between 1991 and 2002, the first time that nuclear disarmament was realized under international auspices. In 1998, charges were made that the US was using the inspections for espionage. In December of that year the US told the UN inspectors to leave Iraq and began a massive air attack, “Operation Desert Fox,” which is still controversial; however, we do know that the Iraqis did not kick the inspectors out, and the president was heavily preoccupied with scandal. This incident was a great blow to the concept of international inspections.55 It was essentially what the Russians claimed56 would have happened had they accepted the Baruch Plan.

The nuclear isolation of the US stood out starkly in June 1996, when the International Court of Justice (World Court) gave an advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. Neither the opinion nor the question it was meant to answer is particularly definitive. But the remarks against nuclear weapons by most of the judges (except those from the US, France, and Britain, who recited their governments’ justifications for nuclear weapons) were consistent with the views of the UN General Assembly which requested the opinion in 1994 after a long worldwide campaign.57 The Clinton administration was always under pressure58 to resume nuclear testing, under a moratorium since September 1992, ostensibly for “safety” testing of warheads but, as ever, actually for developing new, smaller, more “usable” warheads.59 Agreed to because of worldwide criticism over radioactive fallout, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 ended nuclear tests in the atmosphere by the US and Russia but never curtailed the development of new nuclear weapons, as these were subsequently tested underground. Reduction of horizontal and vertical proliferation is the fundamental reason for stopping all nuclear explosive tests in a comprehensive test ban,60 first proposed by Nehru in 1954 and sought (in their own ways) by the Russians61 and Eisenhower.62 Perhaps the greatest defeat for the Clinton administration was the failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). 63 In 1995 Clinton extended the moratorium on US nuclear testing until a CTBT came into

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

63

force. He also applied considerable pressure on China, France, and others to get them to sign the CTBT. The permanent extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 was based on a US promise to join the CTBT.64 In September 1996 Bill Clinton was the first head of state to sign the CTBT after it had been passed by the UN General Assembly that month. A year later he transmitted it to the Senate. He mustered an impressive array of supporters from all branches of American political, scientific, and military life who showed that the treaty would make little difference in US defenses while enhancing safety from nuclear attack. But he could not overcome the narrow personal and ideological biases of the Senate. After prolonged political maneuvering, the Republican-led Senate scheduled a vote on the CTBT, granting less than a week for hearings.

Ratification was defeated by a 51-48 vote on October 13, 1999.

The Senate’s refusal to ratify the CTBT seriously undermined the worldwide nonproliferation effort. The permanent extension of the NPT in 1995, under the premise of early US adherence to the CTBT, undercut the five-year reviews prescribed by the original NPT and thereby decreased confidence in the nonproliferation regime. The consequences were evident at the 2005 NPT review conference.65 Few treaties signed by US presidents have been rejected by the Senate. The most famous example is the peace settlement after World War I, about which Winston Churchill wrote,66 “The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. They repudiated President Wilson’s signature. And we, who had deferred so much to his opinions and wishes in all this business of peacemaking, were told without much ceremony that we ought to be better informed about the American Constitution.” Something similar happened in the 1990s.

CONCLUSION Despite his detractors’ claims that he reduced our country’s strength, Clinton left us a powerful military machine.67 His nonproliferation activities were fully consistent with past US policy in their substance and in their ad hoc nature. Slight changes were made in nonproliferation policy, but little

64

Donald H. McNeill

was done to alleviate the worldwide concern about ongoing US nuclear activity.68 As the preceding examples show, during our first post-Cold War presidency, both horizontal and vertical proliferation proceeded at more or less the same rates and in the same ways as before (and after). Had Clinton approached nonproliferation with the interest, intensity, and brilliance with which he defeated the Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich, things might be different today.

In fact, many tough problems of nuclear proliferation were exacerbated five years into the George W. Bush administration, which rejected at least ten international agreements on armaments and the conduct of war in its first eighteen months.69 The notion of protecting ourselves with missile defense, like the fallout shelters of 1961,70 is a costly chimera. It is another reminder of the need to get rid of our addiction71 to nuclear weapons: first by redefining the nonproliferation problem in a modern way and then by working more convincingly with all countries to eradicate nuclear weapons at home as well as in the world. Henry Kissinger’s tragicomic impercipience of early 2001 that “President George W. Bush is wise in calling for a measure of humility for America”72 indicates how far we are from eliminating the danger of nuclear weapons and their proliferation, the most international of political problems.

ENDNOTES 1

I thank Drs. Daniel Fine and Fannie Peczenik for their comments on this paper.

Transcript of the Bush-Kerry debate September 30, 2004, available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6146353/.

3 Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945). Also published in Reviews of Modern Physics 17, no. 4 (October 1945): 351471.

4 The Progressive, entire issue, November 1979. Howard Moreland’s article “The H-Bomb Secret: To Know How is to Know Why” was delayed in publication for six months when the government attempted and failed to impose prior restraint.

5 US Department of State, A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, Publ. 2498, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1946). This is the Acheson-Lilienthal Report.

2

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration 6

65

P.M.S. Blackett, Fear, War, and the Bomb: Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948). Although Blackett initially underestimated the effect of the radioactivity created by nuclear weapons, as a founder of operational research, which deals with the mathematical analysis of the operations of complex systems, e.g., weapons systems, he was well qualified to examine the military significance of the atomic bombs. Blackett encountered a storm of criticism, e.g., Louis N. Ridenour, “A US Physicist’s Reply to Professor Blackett,” Scientific American, March 1949.

7 Blackett well understood the difference between these two bombs and a massed attack or, later on, hydrogen bombs. See his Studies of War (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962).

8 Charles L. Mee, Jr., Meeting at Potsdam, (New York: Dell, 1975). See also Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Dream, (New York: Knopf, 1995). This is a descendant of his book Atomic Diplomacy: Potsdam and Hiroshima, (New York: Vintage, 1965).

9 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb. The Soviet Union and the Atomic Energy 1939-1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Roy and Zhores Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin. His Life, Death, and Legacy (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004), chap. 5-7. The Russian edition of the Medvedev book came out in approximately 2000.

10 Margaret Gowing and Lorna Arnold, The Atomic Bomb (London: Butterworths, 1979). For more detail, see Gowing’s Britain and Atomic Weapons 1939-1945 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), the first installment of the official history of the British nuclear weapons project.

11 Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin.

12 Mee, Meeting at Postdam; Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin.

13 Walter Lippmann, US Foreign Policy. Shield of the Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1943).

14 George F. Kennan, who died in March 2005, is recognized as the author of the containment policy. One of the few state department officials familiar with Russia in the late 1940s, his lengthy and well informed reports to the State Department (e.g., the “long telegram” of February 1946, and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” by “Mr. X” published in Foreign Affairs, July 1947) formed the basis of much of the Cold War containment strategy. Kennan disagreed with the militarization of this policy at the earliest stages. During the late 1940s, within the State Department he alone consistently raised the moral issues of the increasing dependence on nuclear weapons and militarization of our foreign policy. His many reports and critiques, on issues such as the evolution of NATO, first use of nuclear weapons, and actions that might impede future agreement with the Soviet Union show up frequently among the documents published in the relevant volumes of the State Department series Foreign Relations of the United States, from 1946 through 1949, after which he was replaced as head of the Policy Planning Staff. He discusses this period in his Memoirs, 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), and in many of his other books.

In his Russia, the Atom, and the West (New York: Harper, 1957), Kennan writes, “To me it is a source of amazement that there are people who still see the escape from this danger [of nuclear war] in the continued multiplication by us of the destructiveness and speed of delivery of the major atomic weapons. These people seem unable to wean themselves from the belief that it is relative changes in the power of these weapons that are going to determine everything” (51). This echoes Blackett’s arguments in Fear, War and the Bomb.

66

Donald H. McNeill

Kennan’s dismay at the fate of an idea to which he had originally contributed has many analogs among physicists. I. I. Rabi, a US Nobel prize physicist who worked on radar and the atomic bomb in World War II, wrote, “Although we meant well, we abdicated. We gave it away. We gave the power to people who didn’t understand it and who were not grown up enough and responsible enough to realize what they had. We always hoped we would elect better, broader people.” [“How Well We Meant,” in New Directions in Physics. The Los Alamos 40th Anniversary Volume (New York: Academic Press, 1987), 264. Rabi is the only one of the twenty writers in this book who raised the issue of the arms race in this way.]

15 See John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know. Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). The work covers the Cold War through the Cuban missile crisis. See also Derek Leebaert, The Fifty-year Wound. The True Price of America’s Cold War Victory (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 2002). The conclusions of the latter, a well documented history of the Cold War, are marred by the author’s insubstantial claim that Reagan was the grand architect of the end of the Soviet Union. [For a more convincing possibility, see G. H. N. Seton-Watson, introduction to The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Retrospect, (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1978) 1-7.] He nevertheless sets out the financial and moral costs of the Cold War very clearly.

16 Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958).

17 George F. Kennan, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1961).

18 Daniel P. Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

19 See Moynihan, 70-73.

20 See Fred J. Cook, The Warfare State (New York: Collier Books, 1964, 1967). Originally published in 1962. See also Louis Menand, “The Long Shadow of James B. Conant,” in American Studies (New York: Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 91-111. The very influential Conant was head civilian administrator of nuclear research during World War II and president of Harvard University. Menand’s article deals with Conant’s roles in American education after the war and in defending the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. [On the other hand, in his autobiography, My Several Lives (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), Conant writes of peaceful nuclear power that its “potentialities for destruction are so awesome as to outweigh by far all the imaginable gains . . . .” This was an unusually passionate, forceful reminder of the issues raised twenty-five years before by the Acheson-Lilienthal Report.]

21 NSC-68, in Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy 1945-1950, ed. Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). This book contains fifty-two documents from this period. NSC-68, dated April 14, 1950, was the successor to NSC-20/4 (November 23, 1948) taking into account the Soviet atomic bomb test and the fall of Nationalist China in 1949. The effective date for the setting of US Cold War policy is, perhaps, more appropriately identified with the issue date of NSC-20/4.

22 Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945-2002,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 6 (November-December 2002): 103-4.

23 G. H. N. Seton-Watson, introduction to The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Retrospect, ed.

Béla K. Király and Paul Jónás (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1978), 1-7. The effect of the Hungarian revolt on the Soviet Union is discussed in a letter from Andrei A. Amalrik

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

67

in this book, pp. 85-86. Amalrik was the author of the short, prophetic book Prosushchestvuet li Sovetskii Soyuz do 1984 goda? (Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?), completed in 1969. In it he discussed the internal contradictions of the Soviet Union, in particular bureaucratic and nationality problems of the sort that led to its collapse in 1991.

24 Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957). A very influential book, followed by other influential books, including his American Foreign Policy (1969), in the expanded edition of which (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974) he identifies détente as an imperative (p. 276).

25 Leo Szilard, “How to Live with the Bomb – and Survive,” in The Atomic Age, ed. Morton Grodzins and Eugene Rabinowitch (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 217-43. In this article (from 1960) Szilard discusses the early evolution of the nuclear arms race, which he predicted would reach a metastable stalemate.

26 US Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, Submitted to Congress on December 31, 2001; not released publicly, excerpts at http://imi-online.de/download/ Nuclear_Posture_Review.pdf.

27 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., War and the American Presidency (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).

28 US Department of State, International Control of Atomic Energy: Growth of a Policy, Publication 2702 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1946).

Declarations and proposals relating to the international control of atomic energy from August 6, 1945, to October 15, 1946.

29 Morton Grodzins and Eugene Rabinowitch, eds. The Atomic Age (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963). This book is a collection of articles from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists during the early Cold War. Part I deals with events up to the failure of the Baruch Plan. See also, Blackett, Fear, War, and the Bomb. Also A. I. Ignatov, Atomnaya Problema i Politika SShA (The Atomic Problem and US Policy), (Moscow: Izd. Sotsial’no-Ekonomicheskoi Literatury, 1960). Chapters 1-4 cover the Soviet view of the Baruch Plan and its collapse.

30 Margaret Gowing and Lorna Arnold, The Atomic Bomb (London: Butterworths, 1979). For more detail, see Margaret Gowing with Lorna Arnold, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy 1945-1952, vol. 1, Policy Making, and vol. 2, Policy Execution (London: Macmillan, 1974).

31 Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Knopf, 2004).

32 Frank von Hippel, “Working in the White House on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Arms Control: A Personal Report,” Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report 28, no. 2 (March-April 1995).

33 William H. Kincade and Christoph Bertram, eds., Nuclear Proliferation in the 1980s: Perspectives and Proposals (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982).

34 Leonard Beaton and John Maddox, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (London: Institute for Strategic Studies, Chatto and Windus, 1962).

35 Richard Butler, “Heavily Armed Duo in No Position to Lay Down Law on Proliferation,” Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia), March 7, 2005, available at http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/Heavily-armed-duo-in-no-position-to-lay-down-lawon-proliferation/2005/03/07/1110160750281.html. Butler was Australia’s ambassador for disarmament 1983-88, ambassador to the UN 1992-97, and head of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq (UNSCOM) 1997-99.

68 36

Donald H. McNeill

US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements, Texts and Histories of Negotiations, Publication 105 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1980). Similar commitments to continuing active negotiations on nuclear arms limitations are made in the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the SALT I Agreement of 1972.

37 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, World Armaments and Disarmament, SIPRI Yearbook 1977 (Boston: MIT Press, 1977), chap. 1 and 2.

38 For example, see Ref. 2, or any ballistic missile defense plan, or the fantastic demands of Sen. Norm Coleman for “radiation” testing of 100 percent of maritime shipping containers entering the US (Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2006, A8).

39 Zachary Davis, Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Issues in the 104th Congress, CRS Issue Brief 91023 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, November 1996), available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/crs/91-023.htm.

40 Statement of Ambassador Linton F. Brooks, Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, before the Senate Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, March 24, 2004, available at http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/ congressionaltestimony/03.24.04. The statement of mission of the National Nuclear Security Administration contains this agency’s conflicting commitments to “enhance United States national security through the military application of nuclear energy” and to “promote international nuclear safety and nonproliferation.”

41 Richard E. Rowberg, The Department of Energy’s Tritium Production Program, Congressional Research Service Report RL30425 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, November 8, 2001), available at https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/ 20011108_RL30425_bd3708552c1a12028ee7db21f0efbd71ceabe5eb.pdf.

42 Christopher E. Paine and Matthew G. McKinzie, “Does the US Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program Pose a Proliferation Threat?” Science and Global Security 7 (1998): 151-83. Some of the pulsed plasma devices offer little prospect of producing much fusion energy, for reasons clear to anyone, like myself, who has worked in fusion research. The authors’ concerns about information spread and research on laser and beam driven inertial confinement fusion are, however, highly relevant to the proliferation problem.

43 ICF Quarterly Report, Volume 8, Number 1 (October-December 1997), Inertial Confinement Fusion, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This report gives a typical statement regarding the purpose and funding (p. 2): “The underlying theme for LLNL’s ICF/NIF Program research is defined within DOE’s Defense Programs missions and goals. In support of these missions and goals, the ICF/NIF Program advances research and technology development in major interrelated areas that include fusion target theory and design, target fabrication, target experiments, and laser and optical science and technology.”

44 Dana Priest, “One Man Against Secrecy. Newsletter Editor Works to Limit Classified Information,” Washington Post, November 26, 2003, A23, about the work of Steven Aftergood and his “Project on Government Secrecy” at the Federation of American Scientists (http://www.fas.org/sgp/).

45 Two recent examples: Sergei Blagov, “Russia Ups the Nuclear Ante,” Asia Times, November 25, 2004, at http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FK25Ag01.html, and “US Will Attack

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

69

from Space? China and Russia Call for Space Arms Prohibition,” People’s Daily, December12, 2003.

46 Technical critiques of the current BMD system and related systems have been provided by, among others, the Government Accountability Office (GAO, known as the General Accounting Office prior to July 7, 2004) and (until early 2002, when its public website content was reduced to drivel compared to the highly informative technical and statistical information it provided before) the Directorate of Operational Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E) of the Department of Defense within government, and the American Physical Society (APS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) outside government. The current system and its advocates rely heavily on “faith-based” engineering, because, after fifty years of trying, existing technology still cannot provide significant defense, mainly because of the ease of countermeasures, data processing problems, and the far lower cost of increasing the number of offensive missiles.

47 “‘Star Wars’ Missile Defense System Fails Again,” Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2005.

48 I was reminded of this fact by a presenter for a Long Island aviation company at an exhibit on BMD in Washington in 1990.

49 Stephen W. Young, Pushing the Limits. The Decision on National Missile Defense (Washington, DC: Council for a Livable World, April 2000). An illustration of the persistence of bad ideas and wasteful expenditure in missile defense schemes: then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the termination of the Safeguard ballistic missile defense system in January 1976. After the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, it seems obvious that nuclear attacks from weak opponents are unlikely to arrive by missile.

50 See for example, Les Aspin, “Counterproliferation Initiative,” remarks to the National Academy of Sciences, Committee on International Security and Arms Control (December 7, 1993), at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd18.htm. This was a talk on Clinton’s PDD/NSC-18 (not publicly released). Aspen said that the increased threat of proliferation is a new danger because of changes in technology. The policy of prevention through denial is no longer enough, so the plan is to add “protection” to prevention as a major policy goal in the Defense Counterproliferation Initiative. A late Clinton administration document on this issue is: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (January 2001), available at https://fas.org/irp/threat/prolif00.pdf.

51 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: The White House, December 2002), 3, and The National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: The White House, September 2002), 15-16.

52 Peter Slevin, “Plutonium Disposal Program Fizzling Out,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 16, 2004, A-10 (from Washington Post). About a 1998 program to destroy sixty-eight tons of plutonium from bombs and warheads.

53 John F Burns, “Pakistan, Answering India, Carries Out Nuclear Tests,” New York Times, May 29, 1998. The long term problem is discussed in Robert F. Goheen, “Problems of Proliferation: US Policy and the Third World,” World Politics 35, no. 2 (January 1983): 194215. When Goheen was US ambassador to India during the Carter administration, he often saw reports on Pakistan’s nuclear program (Personal communication, approx. 1982).

70

Donald H. McNeill

Relations with North Korea are discussed in James Sterngold, “Defector Says North Korea Has Five A-bombs and May Make More,” New York Times, July 28, 1994, A7; R. Jeffrey Smith, “Clinton Gambles on Aid for North Korea,” Guardian Weekly, June 16, 1996, 15 (from Washington Post), and Madeleine K. Albright, “At the Door to the Hermit Kingdom,” Vanity Fair, September 2003, 310.

55 Scott Ritter, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem – Once and for All (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), and Richard Butler, The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security (New York: Public Affairs, 2000). These two participants in UNSCOM have different opinions about the events leading up to “Operation Desert Fox,” but their views of US nuclear activity are quite similar today. Hans Blix, the successor to Butler in the reconstituted inspection agency (UNMOVIC, the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission) of 2000-2003 discusses the abuse of the inspection process in more detail in his book Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2004).

56 Ignatov, Atomnaya Problema I Politika SShA (The Atomic Problem and US Policy).

57 The International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion of July 8, 1996, “Legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons” is available, along with a summary, and the declarations, separate opinions, and dissenting opinions of the judges, at http://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/ 95/summaries.

The elegant Dissenting Opinion of Christopher G. Weeramantry, the Sri Lankan member of the Court, summarizes the consensus that had developed against nuclear weapons in the UN General Assembly and in the world and had led to the Assembly’s request for the Court’s advisory opinion in 1994 and to its vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in September 1996.

58 “Clinton Under Pressure to Scrap Nuclear Test Ban,” Guardian Weekly, May 23,1993, 1.

59 Besides political pressure from Congress and the arms industry, much of the pressure for new nuclear weapons is from the nuclear weapons labs. See, for example, Stephen M. Younger, Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, LAUR-00-2850 (Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2000). Younger was the lab’s associate director for nuclear weapons.

Some of the new weapons are discussed by Robert W. Nelson, “Nuclear Bunker Busters, Mini-nukes, and the US Nuclear Stockpile,” Physics Today 56, no. 11 (November 2003): 3237.

60 David Inglis, “The Nuclear Test Ban as a Step Toward National Security,” (1956) in The Atomic Age, ed. Morton Grodzins and Eugene Rabinowitch (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 32433. See also Frank Barnaby, Why We Need a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, (Chipping Norton, Oxford: The Centre for International Peacebuilding, 1990).

61 See Ignatov, Atomnaya Problema i Politika SShA (The Atomic Problem and US Policy).

62 Herbert F. York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist’s Odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 82-84, 117-21. See also, “Ike on Ike,” Newsweek, October 23, 1961, 23-4.

63 Christopher M. Jones, “Rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: The Politics of Ratification,” in Contemporary Cases in US Foreign Policy, from Terrorism to Trade, ed.

Ralph G. Carter, (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2002), 160-95.

64 Associated Press, “UN Delegates Renew Anti-nuclear Treaty,” Courier News (Bridgewater, NJ), May 12, 1995, A-10: the permanent renewal of the NPT was “a diplomatic victory for the US 54

US Nuclear Proliferation Policy during the Clinton Administration

71

led nuclear powers [i.e., the US, Britain, and France], which resisted efforts by non-nuclear states to make extending the twenty-five-year-old treaty conditional on greater, faster cuts in their nuclear arsenals.” Few of the agreements approved at the global conference of 1995 on extending the NPT have been implemented, and India, Pakistan, and Israel have never signed the NPT. 65 Jimmy Carter, “Saving Nonproliferation,” Washington Post, March 28, 2005, A-17. Carter, our only president able to understand nuclear weapons technically, wrote, “So far the preparatory committee for the forthcoming NPT talks has failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the nonnuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal.”

66 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 12.

67 Criticisms of Clinton’s military and nuclear policies are personal, very numerous, and still pouring out. For example, the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org) has many repetitious reports on the topic. Books include: Bill Geertz, Betrayal. How the Clinton Administration Undermined National Security (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999), and Rich Lowry, Legacy. Paying the Price for the Clinton Years (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2003).

From the Congress, we have Senator Thad Cochran’s purely partisan Stubborn Things. A Decade of Facts about Ballistic Missile Defense (US Senate, September 2000), and The Proliferation Primer, A Majority Report of the Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, Committee on Governmental Affairs (US Senate, January 1998), with an interesting, but hyped, summary of proliferation in the world. The numerous problems listed in the Primer are still not being dealt with, as they were not prior to 1992. No evidence is provided that the US can solve any of these problems alone.

The panic attacks of the 1990s echo those throughout the Cold War, such as one reported by David Binder in 1977, “Soviet Union has military superiority over US in all major categories, intelligence chief says,” Chattanooga Times, January 3, 1977, pages 1 and 3. (The chief was General George J. Keegan, Jr., who had just retired as the Air Force’s chief of intelligence.

He became a famous advertiser of nonexistent Soviet antimissile capability.) On the military scare stories of the 1990s see Lawrence J. Korb, “The Readiness Gap. What Gap?,” New York Times Magazine, February 26, 1995, 40-41.

In his book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press, 2006), James Risen tells of Operation MERLIN, an attempt in 2000, approved by Clinton, to pass off to Iran a Soviet nuclear weapon trigger design that had been doctored by a US weapons lab to include numerous errors. The Russian émigré who was to deliver it to Iran discovered an error in these plans at once. It is hard to imagine that Iranian engineers did not discover the errors, as well. Republican and right-wing internet writers, in great numbers, immediately fastened onto this as another “Clinton” incident. The scheme was, indeed, absurd and may have aided Iran’s nuclear effort, but this is hardly the first time the US has fostered nuclear weapon development in another country, and the bloggers ignored the fact that Risen’s book is a catalog of numerous Bush Administration disasters of greater significance. The incident is best regarded as confirmation of the contempt toward the world inherent in the US approach to nuclear proliferation.

72 68

Donald H. McNeill

Madeleine K. Albright (secretary of state under Clinton) and Robin Cook (former British foreign secretary under Tony Blair), “We must cut our nuclear arsenals: Unless the US and Europe act now, non-nuclear states will rebel,” Guardian, June 9, 2004. They write that, “finally, although France, Russia, Britain and the United States have taken good steps to reduce their nuclear arsenals [in the post-Cold War period], more must be done. A failure in this regard would encourage states that do not have nuclear weapons to rebel against nonproliferation norms out of dissatisfaction with what they perceive to be a double standard: some states get nuclear weapons, while others do not.”

The Indians were telling us this in the 1950s and, seeking recognition as a nuclear power, complained for fifty years of a double standard. During his trip to India in early 2006, George W. Bush offered the desired recognition in a confused, and possibly destructive, revision of the US approach to the nonproliferation regime. (See “India Civil Nuclear Cooperation: Responding to Critics,” Office of the Press Secretary, White House, March 8, 2006 at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060308-3.html.)

69 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 4 (July-August 2002): 36-37.

70 Department of Defense, Office of Civil Defense, Fallout Protection: What to Know and Do about Nuclear Attack (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1961).

71 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition (1993), defines addiction as “persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.”

72 Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 288.

III. ASIA: ECONOMIC AND SECURITY ISSUES

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

CLINTON AND CHINA: FROM CONFRONTATION TO ENGAGEMENT Jeffrey A. Bader The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, US

President Clinton came into office three and one-half years after the Tiananmen massacre, which shattered the American domestic basis of support for a positive relationship with China. In the face of opposition from Democrats in Congress, and with only lukewarm support within his own party, President George H. W. Bush attempted to restore some semblance of normality to the relationship through politically unpopular visits and exchanges but without notable success, and none in improving the sour national mood toward China. So by the time of President Clinton’s inauguration, there was no bipartisan consensus for a positive relationship with China. President Clinton decided to try to build a new consensus with a harder edge, based substantially on the near-unified congressional opposition to China’s human rights practices.

Governor Clinton had singled out the “Butchers of Beijing” for condemnation in his acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic Convention, and he proceeded to put in place policies that were more confrontational with

76

Jeffrey A. Bader

China than pursued by his predecessor. Most notably, he issued an executive order that imposed human rights conditions upon renewal of China’s mostfavored nation (MFN) status, the prerequisite for normal trade between the US and China.1 His administration also undertook a review of US policy toward Taiwan that caused unease in Beijing, and adopted vigorous steps to prevent suspected Chinese proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

President Clinton adopted these policies in large measure because of his perceived need to work with the Congress on China. The Democratic leader in the Senate, George Mitchell (D-ME), had led the fight against renewal of Most-Favored Nation (MFN) under the first Bush administration. In the House, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was a prominent advocate of strong measures designed to improve human rights in China, including denial of MFN. Indeed, Senator Mitchell and Congresswoman Pelosi worked closely with the administration in drafting the 1993 executive order on conditional MFN, and they were regularly consulted by the administration until 1995 on China-related issues.

The policy of conditional MFN was a failure. The Chinese refused to make the concessions outlined in the executive order, leaving the administration with the choice of proceeding to withdraw MFN or to renew it despite the language of the executive order. Under pressure from the business community, and with prominent members of Clinton’s cabinet hostile to the concept of conditional MFN, the administration decided in 1994 to revoke the executive order and, with the support of a centrist majority in Congress, to renew MFN annually without conditions.

While the MFN issue was off the table, relations between the US and China remained fragile. In 1995, that fragility was replaced by tension and military confrontation. Under pressure from the Congress and Taiwan lobbyists, the administration decided to grant a visa for Taiwan’s President Lee Teng-hui to visit the US. After a speech delivered by Lee at his alma mater, Cornell University, that Beijing judged inflammatory, the PRC began ratcheting up military pressure on Taiwan. In July 1995, they conducted the first of a number of tests of intermediate range ballistic missiles within sixty miles of Taiwan. This series culminated with firings in March 1996 of unarmed missiles over the northern tip of Taiwan and near the southern city

Clinton and China: From Confrontation to Engagement

77

of Kaohsiung. President Clinton responded to the PRC tests by deploying two aircraft carriers to the waters immediately to the east of Taiwan, signaling that the US would not stand idly by should the PRC take military action against Taiwan.

After the first PRC missile tests in 1995, the top foreign policymakers in the Clinton administration, led by the president, decided to reorient US policy toward China. The relationship was suffering from tensions on a broad range of issues – Taiwan, human rights, Chinese proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, Chinese nuclear weapons tests, trade frictions, and disagreements over Hong Kong’s future. The foreign policy team at the National Security Council and the State Department concluded that they needed to assure that disputes over unprioritized single issues did not wreck the entire relationship and render it impossible to reach agreements on other questions that might be vital to US interests. They realized that the level of distrust between the two sides was so high as to make difficult progress on individual issues. But they also realized that unless they started to achieve concrete results on some important issues, they could not sustain domestic support for a rebuilt relationship. So they began a process of intensive coordination of US government actions toward China, assuring that individual agencies did not pursue their goals blindly without regard to overall US objectives. They launched a “strategic dialogue” between National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and his nominal Chinese counterpart, Liu Huaqiu, in March 1996. They sought to build a new, broader consensus for a stable and constructive relationship with China based on reciprocal steps the two sides would take to address the other’s concerns. And most importantly, President Clinton decided to exchange state visits with President Jiang Zemin in 1997-98.

There had been no head of state visits in either direction between the US and China since Tiananmen. The Chinese leaders were anxious to gain the international acceptance of being received in the White House, to help wash out the stain of Tiananmen. President Clinton in turn saw opportunities to use the prospect of two-way state visits to make progress on the key issues separating the two countries, thereby fostering a change in American popular attitudes toward China and construction of a more stable relationship. Such

Jeffrey A. Bader

78

a change in American perceptions of China was essential, Clinton felt. This was a time when the media were filled with near-daily editorial condemnations of China, mostly over human rights abuses, so it was difficult to sustain any rapprochement unless there was a simultaneous transformation in American understanding of China.

Collectively, the two state visits, by President Jiang to the US in October 1997 and by President Clinton to China in June 1998, produced major progress on a host of contentious issues. Among the achievements:    



   

China agreed not to undertake any new cooperation with Iran’s nuclear program, including for peaceful uses.

China halted sales to Iran of ship-to-ship missiles (C-801’s) threatening US naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.

China’s two most prominent political prisoners, Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan, were released (albeit in exile to the US).

China toughened its export controls and joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group to assure that technologies for weapons of mass destruction would not be sent abroad.

The US and China agreed on new frameworks of cooperation to develop ties on energy, the environment, rule of law, law enforcement, and housing, among other issues.

Military-to-military ties were built up, and an agreement was reached designed to prevent incidents at sea.

Each of the two countries agreed to de-target its nuclear missiles from the other’s territory.

A secure telephone “hot line” was established between the two presidents.

In addition, the optics of President Clinton’s visit to China were extraordinary. The Chinese allowed national television coverage of the joint press conference of the two presidents, in which Clinton pointedly criticized the Tiananmen massacre and called for Beijing to begin a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. President Clinton’s speech at Beijing University also was televised. These were unprecedented decisions by the Chinese leadership.

Clinton and China: From Confrontation to Engagement

79

The two visits served to take much of the toxicity out of the US-China relationship. While large problems continued to separate the two, Americans, including the media, began to appreciate more clearly the complexity of China and the need for the US to have a normal relationship with Beijing. For the first time since 1989, the American body politic adopted a sense of realism about what could be expected of China, combined with an awareness not only of the opportunities for American business, but more broadly of the chance to participate, tangentially but constructively, in China’s evolution.

President Clinton’s personal attitude toward China had evolved over the six years he had been in office. He no longer saw China solely through the prism of its poor human rights record that had shaped his view at the outset of his presidency. Instead he understood China to be a country in the midst of one of the most extraordinary transitions in human history, moving from an autarkic, totalitarian command system to a free market economy that unleashed the potential of its people and shook the society from top to bottom. Reading the lessons of Chinese history, he understood the obsession of the leadership, but not only the leadership, with maintaining stability and harmony as a basis for economic growth and social transformation, in contrast with America’s unchallenged core value of individual freedom.

This view of a China in transition is articulated in several second-term speeches President Clinton gave devoted exclusively to the subject of China.

At the same time, he argued, politely but firmly, with Chinese leaders about the importance of making progress on political reform and protection of human rights, insisting that a dynamic economy could not sustain its performance without freedom of information and that China could not maintain the stability and harmony it sought without legitimizing outlets for dissent. But he no longer conditioned the relationship on such progress, instead arguing to the Chinese that positive steps would both help China and strengthen the necessary political support for improved relations between the US and China.

He developed a positive personal relationship with President Jiang. As early as 1993, when the two presidents met in a decidedly cool atmosphere at the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC) gathering in Seattle, Clinton

80

Jeffrey A. Bader

concluded, contrary to the view of many observers, that Jiang was a savvy politician who would consolidate control. Eventually, the two leaders developed sufficient trust to allow the progress that culminated in the two state visits. And beyond the leaders’ personal relationship, the Chinese people felt a bond with President Clinton that was unmistakable during his visit, from the surging crowds of students at Beijing University, overwhelming security to meet him after his speech, to the warmth that was apparent at every stop.

The last two years of the Clinton presidency saw one major accomplishment and one setback in the relationship. The achievement was the negotiation of a comprehensive and far-reaching bilateral trade agreement with China in November 1999. This opened wide Chinese markets to American manufacturers and farmers. President Clinton put together a strong centrist congressional coalition that backed the bilateral trade agreement and laid the basis for conclusion of the negotiations on China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly called MFN) in 2001.

The setback was the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war, in which several Chinese were killed. Tens of thousands of Chinese demonstrators besieged and threw rocks at the American embassy in retaliation. Further progress in US-China relations was rendered difficult not only by this tragic episode, but by the investigation by the House Select Committee on US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, headed

by Representative Chris Cox (R-CA). The Cox committee investigated the decision by the president to allow a US satellite manufactured by Loral to be launched on a Chinese rocket. Clinton’s decision raised concerns about breaches of US export control law and national security, according to Representative Cox. The Cox Committee’s investigation spread far beyond its original mandate, where the facts proved considerably more mundane than the sensational media allegations that had prompted the investigation.

Instead the committee concluded that the crown jewel of a massive Chinese espionage collection, of which satellites were a part, was the alleged theft of the design of an American nuclear weapon capable of being carried on a

Clinton and China: From Confrontation to Engagement

81

MIRV missile warhead. This led to the indictment of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee. The Cox committee produced more headlines and leaks than credible results. All consequential charges against Wen Ho Lee ultimately were dropped and he was given an apology by the judge, but the Clinton administration had to strike a more cautious posture on relations with China while the investigation and its accompanying partisan rancor ran their course.

What then was the legacy of President Clinton’s eight years of China policy? Following were the principal outcomes: First, after a halting start in the first term, Clinton repaired the relationship from the mortal blow of Tiananmen, helping shape a new consensus to treat China not as an enemy or a crumbling empire but as a normal, major country with whom the US had significant interests in a constructive relationship. The result was a marked slowdown in the blistering public commentary about China, and of the propensity of Americans in public life to impose impossible litmus tests on China before the US would do business with it. This made it vastly easier for Clinton’s successor to conduct normal relations with China without fear of coming under the kind of attacks that President Clinton had to endure (for example, a letter from 152 members of Congress on the eve of Clinton’s 1998 visit to China urging the president not to go). Indeed President George W. Bush’s visits to China attracted little attention and no significant denunciations, for which he could thank President Clinton in no small measure.

Second, a sense of balance was restored to American perceptions of China, after the unrealistic expectations in the early 1990s that the revolutions that had swept Eastern Europe were just around the corner in China. This in turn allowed the US to pursue its strategic, security, economic, and other interests in its relationship with China without the handicap of mistaken assumptions and false hopes.

Third, China made significant commitments that limited its dangerous military and nuclear relationship with Iran and improved its controls on exports of WMD and dual-use technology. These were elicited through an adroit deployment of carrots, such as access to American nuclear power

82

Jeffrey A. Bader

plants, and sticks, such as occasional targeted sanctions for particular transactions.

Fourth, a trade agreement was negotiated that opened China’s market wide to American exporters and paved the way for China’s entry into the WTO, thereby subjecting it to the global rules-based trading system and making China the fastest growing US export market by orders of magnitude for years to come.

Fifth, on human rights, progress was modestly incremental, not systemic: release into exile of China’s most prominent dissidents; the first steps toward dialogue between Chinese leaders and the Dalai Lama’s representative in over a decade that continued to move forward; Chinese signature but not ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and a dialogue on rule of law between American and Chinese institutions with corresponding improvements in China’s legal system. Based on Chinese conduct over the thirty years prior, there is no reason to believe that more positive results could have been achieved by a different approach than President Clinton followed in his last six years in office after abandoning the experiment with conditional MFN. Finally, with regard to Taiwan, the legacies are mixed. On the one hand, the dispatch of two US carriers to the waters around Taiwan in 1996 sent a clear message that the US would resist by military means if necessary Chinese threats to use force against Taiwan, a signal that was important to send then and remains important for China to understand today. On the other hand, those events marked the beginning of a much more vigorous effort by the militaries of both China and the US to assure dominance in the Taiwan Strait, with the result that military scenarios are not as unthinkable as they seemed in the early 1990s. There were other ups and downs in the Taiwan relationship, including the easing of restrictions on meetings with Taiwan officials in offices, the opening of private channels for dialogue between senior national security officials, sale to Taiwan of necessary weapons such as Harpoon and Maverick missiles, Patriot missile defense units, and early warning aircraft and radars, plus improvements in military training, coordination, and communication technology. Taiwan’s political leaders, however, reacted negatively to President Clinton’s articulation in Shanghai

Clinton and China: From Confrontation to Engagement

83

of the so-called “Three No’s” (no support for independence, for one China/one Taiwan or two Chinas, or for Taiwan membership in international organizations with sovereignty as a criterion for membership), despite the fact that it was not a new policy. The ultimate lesson learned by the Clinton team in dealing with Taiwan, particularly after the 1996 tensions, was that peace in the Taiwan Strait could not be taken for granted. It would require an active, even-handed American diplomacy to prevent conflict through accident or miscalculation. Ultimately, the subsequent Bush administration came to the same conclusion about the necessity of an active, even-handed diplomacy and adopted policies not dissimilar to those of President Clinton in this regard.

ENDNOTE 1

Executive Order 12850, “Conditions for Renewal of Most-Favored-Nation Status for the Peoples Republic of China in 1994,” May 28, 1993, available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=61546.

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

JAPAN’S DUAL CHALLENGE: A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE GROWING SHADOW OF CHINA Takashi Kanatsu Department of Political Science, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

On January 8, 1992, the forty-first president of the United States, George H. W. Bush, was about to make a speech at a dinner reception in Tokyo hosted by Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. President Bush suddenly collapsed. Although he was suffering from just a minor digestion problem, the scene was broadcast all over the world. Nothing symbolized better than this scene the relative decline of United States status in the world in terms of both economy and technology relative to Japan, which was enjoying the pinnacle of a bubble economy without knowing what would come next.

President Bush was accompanied by the CEOs of the top three auto manufacturers in the United States. The CEO of Nissan, Yutaka Kume, proudly lectured the CEOs of the Big Three as to why they were losing to

86

Takashi Kanatsu

the Japanese auto manufacturers. This was the apex of the Japanese rise and also the beginning of the Japanese “lost decade” that characterized the relationship between Japan and the US during the Clinton presidency. The timing of the Clinton presidency corresponded to one of the largest changes in post-WWII Japanese politics, economy, and society. Although we still need some time to evaluate the impact of the epoch, it is safe to say that this period was one of the most significant transformations that Japan has ever experienced.1 Not many Japanese people would look back favorably to the 1990s. The decade demonstrated the collapse of many aspects that had characterized Japan, at least since 1955. Following the Latin American economic collapse of the 1980s, the Japanese people call the 1990s the Japanese “lost decade.”

The change took place in almost all aspects of Japanese society. The Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin scandal in 1992 undermined the Miyazawa cabinet.2 However, it was not only the Miyazawa cabinet that the scandal undermined but also the 1955 system that installed the dominance of LDP (Liberal Democratic Party). Under the 1955 system, Japanese politics became stable, and the nation’s economy grew exponentially. In spite of a couple of major corruption scandals, the Japanese people approved the status quo, as “Japan Inc.” marched into the world. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry’s (MITI) industrial policies seemed to have worked like magic.

Japan changed from a war-devastated country to one of the richest, most peaceful countries in the world. During the Clinton administration, however, the Japanese people saw the collapse of this 1955 system and experienced the political confusion that followed.

Economically, Japan entered a state of chaos. Initially, nobody thought that the Japanese economic stagnation that had started from the collapse of bubble economy would have continued this long. Japan had proudly overcome two oil crises in the past. Japan had overcome (or thought that she had overcome) a surge in the value of the yen after the Plaza Accord in 1985, the agreement among the governments of France, West Germany, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom, to depreciate the US dollar in relation to the Japanese yen and German Deutsche Mark by intervening in currency markets.

Japan's Dual Challenge

87

However, something fundamental was shaky. This giant economic illness never seemed to stop. The Nikkei average lost more than half by August 1992 compared to its height in 1989. The bankruptcy and unemployment rates surged to their highest points since the recovery from WWII. The Keynesian solution of throwing large public construction projects into the Japanese economy resulted in record high government deficits. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s decision to raise the consumption tax to save the government deficit failed to work having eliminated any possibility of a quick economic recovery.

Socially, economic chaos as well as other structural issues marred Japan during the Clinton presidency. The rise of bankruptcy and unemployment in the Japanese cultural background and the “tomorrow will be better than today” experience of post-WWII Japan meant the rapid increase of suicide.

Sadly, many workers in their 40s and 50s committed suicide. Accounts of “human body related accidents” on the train tracks never ceased to appear in the evening news. A decade prior, Japanese college graduates usually received two or more job offers. After the collapse of the bubble economy, the employment rate of college graduates dropped down to only sixty percent at one point. Youngsters who did not have secure full-time jobs but rather part-time work became more numerous; these were dubbed as “freeters” and became a social phenomenon.

It was not just the economy that affected Japan negatively at that time.

The year 1995 will be remembered as one of the most traumatic and tragic years of post-WWII Japan. In January, a major earthquake hit the city of Kobe in western Japan. It killed more than five thousand people. The government’s slow response was criticized. The pride in being prepared for earthquakes was hurt. The same year in March, a horrendous terrorist attack shook the capital of Japan: the subway Sarin gas attack, which killed twelve and injured more than five thousand people. This undermined the myth of Japan as a safe country. The rapid increase of crimes committed by youngsters and “allegedly” by foreigners put this xenophobic society into fear.

In addition, Japanese society started seeing the impact of social structural changes, some of which had existed for a long time but became

88

Takashi Kanatsu

apparent only in the 1990s. For example, the lower birth rate started taking a toll. Many universities and colleges started losing applicants for the first time and would face potential bankruptcy. The decline of population put additional pressure on the rapidly aging society. The myth of equal income distribution started crumbling as the income gap widened during and after the bubble economy.

In the 1980s, everything Japan had done had seemed “right,” and everything the US had done had appeared “wrong.” In the 1990s, everything Japan did seemed “wrong” and everything the US did appeared “right.” This was the stage at which William Jefferson Clinton appeared. Japan’s business world and government tend to prefer Republican presidents, as Japanese think the latter are committed to free trade and less protectionism. In that sense, this new, young, energetic Democratic president was nothing but a concern for the Japanese. Indeed, this president’s main issue with respect to Japan was trade. The administration was ready to send a different message to Japan from those of previous Republican presidents who tended to be lenient on Japan’s trade policy. President Clinton appointed Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who had criticized Japan’s “strategic trade policy” in her scholarly work, as chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. The president and his right-hand trade man, US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, demanded that Japan show results, not just a commitment or rule changes. Japan had to show that the US trade deficit with Japan was actually reduced.

Furthermore, the Japanese finally started feeling a major shift of power and influence in East Asia: the emergence of People’s Republic of China.

The Clinton administration’s attention shifted from Japan to China on various fronts. Initially, President Clinton was more concerned about the human rights situation and MFN status issues drawn from criticism after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. However, China’s emergence as an economic superpower eventually brought the administration to a much more pro-China line. The Republicans took this opportunity to start criticizing Clinton’s relations with China on various fronts. Eventually, the Clinton administration worked hard to put China into the World Trade Organization (WTO).3 In spite of the initial critical view of China’s human right record,

Japan's Dual Challenge

89

the Clinton administration moved into an engagement policy rather than one focused on isolation and punishment.4 Clinton’s China policy was a major threat to Japanese status in East Asia. Although the Nye Report in 19955 identified Japan as a key ally, the controversy and the close relationship between China and the US certainly forced the Japanese to reconsider the future of Japan for the United States, which led to the new relationship between President George W. Bush, who followed Clinton, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

PRELUDE TO THE LOST DECADE In the 1980s, Japan was considered a formidable new emerging power.

Although its military strength never reached the level of a superpower without nuclear weapons, economic and technological aspects certainly impressed the US and many other countries whether one welcomed this or not.

The “Japan as number one” syndrome spread to the world. Ezra Vogel’s book of the same title (1979) was the beginning of this syndrome.6 Some took this as the opportunity to learn from Japan, while others took this as a warning. The Department of Defense’s Defense Science Board issued the Report on Defense Semiconductor Dependency in February 1987; it stressed that Japan’s emergence in the semiconductor market posed a threat not only to American economic might but also to American defense capabilities, as many US weapons relied on the semiconductors made in Japan.7 The Japanese psyche was also drastically changed.8 Displaying more and more confidence in what Japan had achieved since the end of WWII, the Japanese people expressed its new feeling in, for example, a bestseller book The Japan That Can Say No (1989), written by former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara and the ex-chairman of the SONY Corporation, Akio Morita.9 This change of psyche started around 1985, when the Plaza Accord was concluded. The G5 nations (France, West Germany, Great Britain, the United States and Japan) agreed to set up a new currency rate between the

90

Takashi Kanatsu

Japanese yen and the US dollar. The Maekawa Report, published in the following year, claimed that the Japanese economy required structural change from export-oriented to domestic consumption. The higher valued yen was directed into domestic investment in real estate rather than to the US T-bonds, as the US dollar’s value declined. The rise of the yen allowed many Japanese people to travel abroad and buy expensive items. Rockefeller Center in New York City was purchased by Mitsubishi Estate Company of Tokyo in 1989. This changed the psyche of the Japanese people; they perceived that Japan was no longer a junior partner of the United States but an equal partner. This was the setting when the forty-second US president assumed office.

TWO ISSUES BETWEEN PRESIDENT CLINTON AND JAPAN There were two major issues between Japan and the United States when President Clinton assumed office: trade and security. Both issues had been debated intensely since the Reagan presidency. For example, there had been major trade disputes between the US and Japan on automobile and semiconductors during the Reagan period. In the 1986 Semiconductor Agreement, Japan had to face a numerical target to import from the US until the share of the US semiconductors reached 20 percent of the Japanese semiconductor market.10 The end of the Cold War was technically before the Clinton presidency. However, the real test of post-Cold War relations started with the Clinton presidency. Although trade disputes were more a continuation from the previous presidency,11 this new Democratic president, with Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, approached Japan in the new setting of the post-Cold War and WTO, the collapsing bubble economy, and China emerging as a potential superpower.

On security and international relations issues, Japan also was put into the difficult position of finding out how to situate itself in the new post-Cold War environment. On the one hand, Japan grew as a major technology leader in various fields that had implications for military technology in the 1980s.

On the other, Japan started feeling the shadow of China’s emergence and

Japan's Dual Challenge

91

Clinton’s China-primacy policy. Japan feared losing its significance for the United States in East Asia, although the 1995 Nye Report that reconfirmed Japan as a key strategic pillar reassured the Japanese and supported sustained friendly relations between the United States and Japan.

THE TRADE DISPUTE There were two main aspects of the trade dispute between the Clinton administration and the Japanese government. The first was Clinton’s forceful approach, led by Trade Representative Kantor, requiring Japan to show the result of improvement in the form of a lower US trade deficit with Japan. The second aspect was Japanese resistance against such a coercive managed trade demand. Overall, Japanese resistance worked, and the Clinton administration was put under significant criticism from mainstream economists.12 In the words of Godement, Asian countries viewed the Clinton administration as “a rude missionary preacher that intruded into the ‘Asian Way’, and as a ruthless merchant nation that advanced its own trade and financial interests under the guise of global economic liberalism.”13 From the moment Clinton assumed office, the major issue with Japan was trade, particularly related to automobiles. The US president met with the executives of the Big Three and asked Mickey Kantor to deal with this issue.14 At the G7 meeting held in Tokyo in July 1993, Clinton met a lameduck Prime Minister Miyazawa and “agreed” with him to open the Japanese markets of “automobiles, auto parts, computers, telecommunications, satellites, medical equipment, financial services, and insurance with objective standards for measuring success on specific time tables.”15 “Objective standards” for the Clinton administration meant results rather than fair rules and regulations. Evidence of the closed Japanese market was calculated as the share of manufactured imports in GNP, whose rationale was severely criticized by Bhagwati.16 In May 1995, Mickey Kantor, frustrated with the scant progress on the trade deficit with Japan, imposed a very forceful, unilateral, retaliatory, and threatening measure against Japanese automobile manufacturers:17 The US

92

Takashi Kanatsu

would put a 100 percent tariff on thirteen Japanese luxury cars. Schoppa states: “Despite the fact that the Japanese government had made it clear that these were private forecasts, Clinton administration officials Mickey Kantor and [Secretary of Commerce] Ron Brown wrote a letter in early 1994 demanding that the government deliver on the ‘pledge’—or else.”18 Japan, under Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, was forced to open 200 dealers that would be required to sell American cars and would have to have 1000 dealers to do so within five years.19 This was an attempt to threaten the Japanese manufacturers to avoid the relatively tough negotiator Ryutaro Hashimoto, then minister of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).20 One need not be an economics Ph.D. to understand the ridiculous nature of this demand. It was as if a Dodge dealer must sell Toyota regardless the preference of the car dealers, private enterprises in a capitalist economy. The fact that eighty percent of American dealers carried Japanese cars while only seven percent of the Japanese dealers carried American cars did not mean that Japanese government was forcing the US dealers to carry Japanese brand cars in the US nor the Japanese government prohibited the Japanese car dealers to carry the foreign models and prohibited foreigners to open car dealers in Japan. Quite contrary, the American dealers carried the Japanese cars because they sold well. The same applied to the Japanese auto market. For example, BMW successfully penetrated the Japanese market because Japanese consumers like the company’s products, and the company invested heavily to set up a dealer network in Japan appropriately.21 The trade dispute continued under the Prime Minister Hashimoto. Japan kept yielding, concluding twenty more trade agreements.22 The US received the result it wanted. The exports to Japan were up eighty percent while the bilateral trade deficit declined three years in a row. Yet, specific requests of car targets did not succeed, as MITI anyway supported those car manufactures by subsidy in R&D, which was compatible with WTO rules.23 Furthermore, it is unclear if this was the result of trade pressure from the US or simply Japan’s own transformation, although the process might be slow or sluggish at times. At least, as far as automobiles are concerned, the US has not shown any significant improvement since then. The Big Three are not doing well after having received much support from the US government.

Japan's Dual Challenge

93

Bhagwati holds that America was tough with Japan for three reasons.24 First, there were pork barrel politics issues. The Clinton administration had to provide something to please US Representative Richard Gephardt (DMO) and US Representative David Bonior (D-MI), particularly considering the Clinton’s pursuit of NAFTA, which Kantor also argued against. A tough approach against Japan was necessary to show that the administration was serious about the trade unions. Second, the bureaucrats under Secretary of Commerce Brown wanted to be tough on Japan to prove their usefulness facing formidable MITI officials. Third, the Big Three of Detroit naturally jumped on this bandwagon led by the US government. The US government’s managed trade would save a lot of money that the Big Three needed to invest in Japan to set up its dealer network.

Relations between Japanese government officials and the Clinton administration suffered from a lack of trust. Schoppa states: “Japanese officials repeatedly cited the letter [in 1994 written by Ron Brown and Mickey Kantor] as an example of how US negotiators could not be trusted with numbers.”25 The same kind of distrust existed on the American side.

The US did not trust Japan without numbers. They believed there must be some underlying reason for the lack of improvement in the trade deficit with Japan. The most pronounced case was Motorola’s entry into the Japanese market.

The hallmark of the US approach to Japan, led by Kantor, was its unilateral approach to focus on Japan and apply unyielding pressure. Japan conceded in the Motorola case, although many European nations would not have had they faced a similar situation with the United States.26 Schoppa concurred: “On average Japan was more responsive than any other major trading partner of the United States, significantly more responsive than the European Community and more responsive even than neighboring East Asian nations such as Taiwan and Korea that are much more dependent on US export markets than is Japan.”27 Bhagwati predicted in 1994 and 1996 that the US intention would never materialize. Schoppa found it did not work in his comparative study of trade disputes between the Reagan and the Clinton years. According to Schoppa’s study, Japan held out in many trade talks after Clinton. Although Japan

94

Takashi Kanatsu

conceded in one of the rule-oriented trade talks on the auto parts aftermarket in 1995, Japan held out in other results-oriented cases such as the Framework agreements on telecommunications and medical technology in 1994, on autos in 1995, and the renewal of the Semiconductor Agreement in 1996. 28 Both Bhagwati and Schoppa pointed out the environmental change as well as social change inside Japan. For example, Schoppa concluded that US pressure failed because of the establishment of WTO and the new rules associated with it and because of the generational change of Japanese bureaucrats. In the same vein, Bhagwati demonstrated various social changes that Japan experienced during the Clinton presidency. Furthermore, Schoppa claimed that the emergence of Japan as an equal partner, backed by its economic and technological growth and the end of the Cold War, terminated the junior partnership in which Japan long yielded to the US. The Americans’ Super 301-type unilateral threatening mechanism was deemed an insult by Japanese government officials.

Probably, this trade dispute with Japan was one of the major failures of the Clinton presidency. Yet, the Japanese lacked a decisive upper hand.

Japan, while adamantly refusing to concede to American demands, could not stop its economic stagnation under major restructuring in all fronts: politics, economy, and society.

It’s the Politics, Stupid!

In 1992, the Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin scandal marred Japanese politics.

Japan has had many setbacks in politics in the past, two of them notable. In the 1976 Lockheed Scandal, then-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was accused of receiving bribes from the American Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to buy the company’s L1011 Trister Jets. In the 1988 Recruit scandal, insider trading forced the then Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita as well as the then Finance Minister Miyazawa into resignation. These and many other corrupt relationships between LDP politicians and business groups did not result in a major political turnaround. Some say that Japanese culture is tolerant to this corruption, while others say that rising economic

Japan's Dual Challenge

95

power and the lack of trust in politicians from the beginning accounted for the lack of harsh punishment by the public in Japan. Whatever the reason, scandal does not portend political failure in Japan; Miyazawa later became the prime minister in spite of his resignation after the Recruit scandal.

The Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin scandal was not so kind to the LDP politicians. The scandal shook the LDP from the bottom. Many key politicians, such as Ozawa Ichiro, left the party, and the Diet passed a vote of no confidence against the Miyazawa cabinet on June 18, 1993. The first Japanese prime minister that met Clinton, therefore, was a lame duck prime minister who was about to leave office.29 The ensuing election in August changed the history of Japanese politics. The coalition government led by the New Japan Party, led by Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, broke the record of continuous dominance of the LDP since 1955. This new Hosokawa cabinet certainly played a major role in reorganizing the Japanese politics.

The new electoral law, which aimed to eliminate corruption due to the factional politics, passed in March 1994. This led to the opening of the twomajor political party system that Japan was trying to establish.

In terms of foreign relations, Hosokawa resisted Clinton’s pressure to accept the market target in his deal on the automobile trade dispute in February 1994 in Washington. This first non-LDP prime minister said “no” to the US unilateral demand for a target.30 Although Japan allowed Motorola to set up its cellular phone system on Tokyo and the Nagoya corridor, this was the exception, or “bribe” according to Bhagwati.31 Nonetheless, the confusion and chaotic restructuring of Japanese politics continued. In April 1994, Hosokawa suddenly resigned. Tsutomu Hata followed Hosokawa. One of the coalition partners, the JSP (Japan Socialist Party), failed to agree on the issues and faced a no-confidence vote. Hata in turn resigned and led the way for the LDP to come back to power.

In June 1994, the LDP came back to power with the support of the JSP. This coalition government of LDP, JSP, and another small party, Sakigake, was convoluted at best and fraught with ideological divisions. Murayama was weakened in domestic politics and thus could not resist the unilateral, managed, illegal trade pressure from the United States that led to VIEs (voluntary import expansions).32 Facing a 100 percent punitive tariff on

96

Takashi Kanatsu

Japanese luxury cars, the Murayama cabinet yielded.33 Murayama sent a bad signal to the US that Japan would yield if the US pushed a bit harder. This was a major setback for Japanese relations with the US, as Murayama’s decision wasted the former resistance of the Hosokawa cabinet. It is important to remember that Japan yielded to the US when prime ministers were almost lame ducks. Miyazawa agreed to the framework at Clinton’s first visit to Japan; so did Murayama.

Eventually, the distorted government under Murayama ignited the collapse of JSP, which changed its name to SDP (Social Democratic Party).

Although his friendly and familiar grandfatherly face saved his reputation, Murayama’s politics, except for his apology for Japan’s World War II actions against South Korea and China, were politically disastrous.

Murayama yielded to Clinton on trade. He was accused of handling poorly the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake disaster that killed more than five thousand people in January 1995.

The Hashimoto cabinet that followed seemed a rare stable cabinet.

Nonetheless, Hashimoto committed many policy mistakes and marked another poor performance in Japanese politics during the Clinton presidency. Prime Minister Hashimoto’s policy of raising the consumption tax while cutting the budget in 1997 deprived the Japanese economy of any hope of early recovery.34 By this time, the two-major political party system had begun: thirty representatives of the JSP had left the party in 1996 and set up a new political party, DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan), with some of the former LDP politicians, thus altering the party system yet again.

Keizo Obuchi, who succeeded Hashimoto in 1998, was the last Japanese prime minister during the Clinton presidency. Criticized as an ordinary man by the Japanese media and politicians, Obuchi might have considered the last part of his life less than felicitous. However, Clinton found him quite a noble politician in his memoir.35 In a May 1999 meeting, President Clinton praised Obuchi’s efforts to handle the economic crises of Japan.36 However, trade disputes continued even during Obuchi’s term. In November 1999, the US Commerce Department determined the Japanese were dumping and brought the case to WTO.37 Obuchi also implemented some political reforms including that cabinet members should directly respond to questions in open

Japan's Dual Challenge

97

Diet sessions, “a task that previously had been handled by senior bureaucratic officials.”38 It was not just politics by elected Japanese politicians that was under major transformation during the Clinton era. It was also the bureaucrats who had played a major role in the history of modern Japan that experienced a major transformation. By the time Clinton assumed office, the generation that had experienced the US occupation after WWII was gone. Most of the bureaucrats who negotiated trade deals during the Clinton era entered public service when trade disputes started between Japan and the US. This new generation, seeing Japan more as an equal partner, was much more reluctant to yield to the US unilateral pressure.

Throughout the Clinton presidency, Japanese politics went through one of the most chaotic transformation periods since 1955. The failure of trade negotiations between the US and Japan during the Clinton presidency can be attributed partly to this extremely unstable Japanese politics. There was no stable cabinet like the Nakasone cabinet (1982-87) and the Takeshita cabinet (1987-89) during the Clinton presidency.

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

The Japanese economy, which had been on the rise almost continuously since the end of World War II, faced a major decline in 1991. The highest point of the Japanese economy saw the Nikkei stock average up to 38,915 yen on December 29, 1989. The Nikkei crashed to less than half of that – 14,822 yen – by August 11, 1992. Real estate prices started crumbling starting in 1991. Thus, one of the best-known bubble economies collapsed.

The Japanese government reaction started with disbelief and moved to the optimistic solution of dumping public projects into the economy without considering financial solvency. This resulted in massive government deficit.

Responding to this government deficit, the Hashimoto cabinet took an approach that could be justified only by people who believed that the economic slowdown was not a structural problem but a short-term cyclical phenomenon. Raising the consumption tax rate set the Japanese economy in

98

Takashi Kanatsu

a deflation spiral mode, where there was no easy solution. The Bank of Japan (BOJ), the gatekeeper of monetary policy, also failed to react quickly. The governor of BOJ insisted on tightening its monetary policy for the fear of inflation. Overall, the overconfidence of the past failed to let the government take any reasonable remedy at the beginning of this economic stagnation.

Inside the society, however, major structural change had been taking place. Unlike the 1960s and the 1970s, the Japanese economy became much more reliant on domestic consumption rather than export. In particular, the Plaza Accord in 1985 forced the Japanese economy to adapt itself to the new world. In 1996, the former BOJ president issued a report known as the Maekawa Report, in which he emphasized the need for an economy led by domestic consumption. Although the banking industry, pampered under the Ministry of Finance’s convoy system in the post-WWII years, proved disastrous with its primitive evaluation system in making loans, at least, the collapse demonstrated where the center of the economic disease was located.

In 1998, the Financial Reconstruction Commission (FRC) was established, marking a serious effort to clean up non-performing loans.39 In terms of the relationship with the Clinton administration, trade issues, as described earlier, proved very difficult and frustrating for both sides. The Clinton government failed to obtain concessions from the Japanese side.

Japan, in the chaotic political and economic situation mentioned above, could not take any offensive actions against the United States. The Japanese government stayed on the defensive during the most of the Clinton period amidst criticism of its handling of macroeconomic policy. This, however, in a sense reduced the criticism against the trade imbalance as the world recognized that the recovery of the Japanese macro-economy is much more important for the world’s economic health.

SECURITY RELATIONS In the area of security, Japan and the United States started with uneasy relations during the Clinton years. The sudden end of the Cold War forced both sides into the search for new international security relations in Asia.

Japan's Dual Challenge

99

Japan, which had become confident in the 1980s, sought to establish more equal relations with the United States. The emergence of China as a major economic and security power and the end of the Cold War, as well as its own economic and technological achievements, encouraged Japanese leaders to consider new relations with various countries including the United States. A normal country, not a junior partner of the United States, should have its own ability to defend the country without relying on the United States.40 To some, this meant that Japan should obtain nuclear weapons. For some, it meant the revision of the US-Japan security alliance. The trend toward a more active role for Japan still continues to this day.

The relation between Japan and the United States during the Clinton presidency could have been affected negatively under this post-Cold War environment. Indeed, the first few years of the Clinton presidency were not assuring for the Japanese. They found this new president not so friendly; his aggressive approach on the trade issue was clear from the beginning. Unlike trade relations, however, security relations between the Clinton government and Japan did not deteriorate; rather, they improved significantly due to the new reality of East Asia. From the beginning, North Korea’s nuclear development was a common concern for both countries. The Agreed Framework between the US and North Korea, signed in October 1994, was a positive sign for security relations between the two countries.

Additional events worked to improve US-Japanese relations significantly. The first and the most significant was the Nye Report itself.41 In the report, author Joseph S. Nye redefined and emphasized the importance of US-Japan cooperation amidst the rising power of China and the potential threat of North Korea. The report warned against letting economic disputes poison security relations.42 This reassured Japan (and warned China) that US-Japan security relations in the post-Cold War era would remain sound and intact.

Ensuing developments on the East Asian security scene strengthened security relations between the Clinton administration and Japan. In 1996, the United States dispatched two aircraft career battle groups to the Taiwan Straight responding to the provocative military exercise conducted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The aim was to intimidate the Taiwanese

100

Takashi Kanatsu

people not to vote for pro-independent Lee Teng-hui.43 One of the aircraft career battle groups was stationed in the US naval bases located in Japan.44 This event set up an image that if Taiwan became a battleground between China and the United States, Japan would play a major supporting role. The joint declaration between Clinton and the then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in April 1996 called for “revitalization of the alliance to better guarantee the Asia-Pacific region.”45 This eventually led to the Guidelines for US‐Japan Defense Cooperation (“New Guidelines”) signed in September 1997.46 The Clinton administration also paid attention to the local concerns of US bases located in Japan.47 President Clinton and Prime Minister Hashimoto agreed in 1996 to move Futenma Air Station, located in the middle of a residential area in Okinawa, to somewhere else.

Another development took place in August 1998 when North Korea launched its Taepodong-1 missile over Japan. After this incident, Japan launched its own spy satellite for the first time. This event also encouraged Japan to commit to the Theater Missile Defenses (TMD) project with the United States, in which Japan had been reluctant to participate at the beginning.48 The Japanese government and the US government signed a memorandum of understanding in August 1999 committing about $200$250 million dollars for research and development.49 Japan rapidly moved to prepare for a potential nuclear attack from North Korea.

The new Japanese foreign policy became clearer around the end of the 1990s. A series of laws and the national atmosphere gradually but certainly suggested a more rightist tendency for Japanese security policy. In August, Japan’s national flag and anthem, which had de facto recognition but drew a lot of criticism from China and South Korea, were officially recognized.

Talks of amending the Constitution, particularly Article 9, became prevalent and socially acceptable.50

Japan's Dual Challenge

101

It’s China, Stupid!

Although renewed security relations gave Japan some kind of security assurance and the maintenance of good relations with the United States, this did not ease Japan’s impression that it had lost pride and significance for the United States because of the emergence of China. Clinton’s attention certainly shifted to China during his presidency. Japan became less significant for the United States in the 1990s, and only partly because of President Clinton’s preference. Clinton’s approach to China had started as a criticism against the presidency of George H. W. Bush, particularly Bush’s quick removal of sanctions after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989.51 Clinton’s main point was to criticize human rights violations by the Chinese authorities and to attempt to link these to the renewal of MFN (most-favored nation) status.

But China’s primacy became clearer during Clinton’s presidency. As trade and other economic relations developed rapidly, Clinton considered human rights and other issues such as Tibet less important for the US foreign policy. Although there was a period when both governments faced a major confrontation – like the Taiwan crisis in 199652 and the accidental bombing in Belgrade in May 200053 – the overall relations between these two countries progressed significantly during the Clinton presidency. In October 1997, Chinese president Jiang Zemin visited the US, and he and Clinton had extensive discussions on various issues.54 Clinton’s view on China and its leaders became much more sympathetic than before. Jiang’s trip was followed by Clinton’s trip to China in June 1998.55 This widely publicized trip was the first US presidential visit to China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.

The Clinton administration worked hard to push China into the World Trade Organization in spite of opposition from the Republican Party.56 Occasionally, the President had to pay the price for allegations that he was too sympathetic and close to China. For example, the Chinese government’s attempt to provide illegal campaign contributions to members of Congress became a major issue in 1996 and fueled charges of Chinese meddling in US elections.57

102

Takashi Kanatsu

CONCLUSION: THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN AFTER CLINTON In many ways, the result of Japan’s transition period during the Clinton presidency appeared in post-Clinton Japan. That is, post-Clinton Japan can explain what the Clinton administration meant for Japan. Economically, Japan’s sluggish economy finally seemed to hit bottom in the early 2000s.

The new Japanese economy of the 21st century is very different from that of the pre-Clinton period where bureaucrats dominated and pushed hard for rapid industrialization and export. Trade protectionism has become much less pronounced than before. However, structural problems of the US economy that were fundamental for US trade deficit problems against Japan remain.

The most typical example is the automobile industry. Since the Reagan administration, the US government has used automobile issues as prototypical protectionism vis a vis Japanese trade.58 Still, after more than two decades since the beginning of the problem and following repeated pressures and some agreements, the US automobile industry remained in shambles during the subsequent administration. Statistics showed the decline of US auto sales by about ten percent in the third quarter of 2005 due to historically high oil prices. Amid that crisis, US automakers such as Ford and GM’s sales declined more than 20 percent, while the Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda made roughly five-percent increases in sales compared to the same period a year earlier. In spite of all the efforts of government to pump up the industry, US auto manufactures failed to reform their structural weakness. Thus, Clinton’s auto policy proved to be a major disaster, as it did not save sinking ships.

In Japan, the government realized that Keynesian public works would not save the economy. The government’s economic policy in the latter part of the decade focused on how to increase domestic consumption and reduce waste in the public sector. The decision to privatize the postal service and savings was an extension of this policy. MITI (renamed to METI, or the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, in 2001) would no longer be a

Japan's Dual Challenge

103

powerful ministry. The major role of the government shifted drastically from promoting business interests to regulating business, particularly monitoring debilitated financial institutions. Thus, a prototypical developmental state became a regulatory state like that of many Western developed nations.

Japanese politics also became very different before and after the Clinton presidency. It observed the birth of first non-LDP government since 1955.

After the chaotic reorganization process of the mid-1990s, the current system emerged. Although the LDP still remained in power, the structure changed rather drastically. The major opposition party, JSP (later the SDP), became one of the smallest parties in Japan, smaller than the Communist Party. Instead many politicians left both LDP and JSP and organized the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan).

The LDP itself went through major reforms. After the miserable short period of Yoshiro Mori’s prime ministership (Mori succeeded Obuchi, who died because of heart attack while in office), Junichiro Koizumi appeared as a quite different kind of politician. He worked to abolish factional, or Habatsu, politics which had been a key characteristic of the 1955 system and the LDP. Koizumi convinced Japanese voters that his reform was real and the Japanese people must feel the pain, a very difficult task for any politician.

He reformed the party to concentrate more power into the hands of the prime minster and the cabinet, a reform which was initiated during the Clinton presidency under Prime Minister Hashimoto. Thus, the Japanese system became closer to the British system than before.

Socially, Japan also went through major changes. Now, the equal income distribution of which the Japanese people had been proud for so many years moved to the backseat. The Japanese now accepted a certain income gap as a necessary tool to elicit originality and individualism. As the economy stagnated, the standard course of graduating from prestigious universities and working for big companies lost its allure when young people saw their fathers laid off from prestigious companies. Young entrepreneurs such as Takafumi Horie and Hiroshi Mikitani, as well as economic needs, posed a threat to the traditional seniority system. Educational reform, which had been drastically changed to reduce the workload of students during the Clinton presidency, showed signs of needing re-adjustment once more to

104

Takashi Kanatsu

bring it to a middle ground. Women found their voice by sending an ultimatum to society that they would not bear children unless the society changed to support female workers and an environment of nurturing children.

In the field of foreign relations, the 1995 Nye report’s spirit continued.

There was a drastic change in public opinion, so that in general, Japanese public opinion has become much more hawkish and direct. Facing North Korea’s nuclear threats, which stem directly from events during the Clinton presidency, the Japanese are much more willing to express support for stronger military capability. Naturally, this led to more contentious relations with China and South Korea, particularly because Koizumi pledged to visit and then visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine once he became prime minister in 2001. Japanese leaders did not yield to criticisms from China or South Korea like they did in the past.

George W. Bush tried to mend a relationship that was somewhat hurt during the Clinton presidency.59 Although the relationship between China and the US significantly improved after the September 11 attack, as both shared the fear of terrorists, the Bush administration soon changed its balance toward more pro-Japan posture amid the rising military power of China and closer relations between China and Russia.60 With Koizumi and George W. Bush enjoying good relations, Japan emerged as the most cooperative country to Bush’s effort in Iraq along with Britain under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Japan seemed to be willing to respond to the request of the United States to play a major role in international relations in Asia. This is exactly the trajectory that started taking shape during the Clinton period.

How should we evaluate the Clinton presidency’s significance for Japan? Will Clinton be remembered as one of the most influential presidents of the United States for Japan? Hardly so. Unlike President Nixon, who changed China policy and monetary policy drastically, unlike President Reagan who developed very personal relations with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, President Clinton left neither a significantly positive nor a negative impact on Japan. The attention he paid to China might cause some policy experts to feel resentment. His appointment of former vice

Japan's Dual Challenge

105

president Walter Mondale as the US ambassador to Japan indicated that Japan was still important for the US.61 Yet, how much this soothed the Japanese mind is in doubt. For the ordinary citizens of Japan, Clinton will be remembered as one of the youngest and most down-to-earth presidents of the United States. In this sense, the image of Clinton will be similar to that of his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter, and unlike that of his successor, President George W. Bush. Clinton represented what Japan has been moving toward: a young, frank, down-to-earth, and casual style, as opposed to the formal gerontocratic Japan. Nonetheless, the timing was not right for Clinton to have a real positive image. President Clinton appeared as a bully making demands of Japanese corporations and government when Japan was struggling with a bad economy and a major transformation. Most of the Japanese people and policy makers, in other words, did not view President Clinton as a “man from Hope.”

ENDNOTES Jagdish Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute: a Monumental Mistake.” International Affairs 72, no. 2 (1996): 261-79; Jagdish Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift: Samurais No More,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 3 (May/June 1994): 712-18; Leonard J. Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” International Organization 53, no. 2 (1999): 307-42.

2 Sagawa Kyubin, a trucking company, was revealed in 1992 to have made large donations to public officials and to have made available to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party the services of organized crime. The scandal forced the resignation of Shin Kanemaru, leader of the LDP’s largest faction.

3 Clinton, William Jefferson, My Life (New York, NY: Knopf, 2004), 744.

4 Clinton, My Life, 758.

5 The report, named for then Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Joseph S. Nye, Jr., is formally known by the title United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs, 1995).

6 Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).

7 Report of Defense Science Board Task Force on Defense Semi-Conductor Dependency (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition, 1987).

8 Robert M. Uriu, “Japan 1999: Ending the Century on an Uncertain Note,” Asia Survey 40, no. 1 (2000): 149.

9 The authorized English translation, The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991) was translated by Frank Baldwin and did not include the comments of Morita.

10 Schoppa “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” 323.

11 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift,” 8.

1

106

Takashi Kanatsu

Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute,” and “The US-Japan Rift”; Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining.”

13 Francois Godement, “Escaping the Merchant/Missionary Dilemma: An Imperial Policy for AsiaPacific,” The Pacific Review 16, no. 2 (2003): 176.

14 Clinton, My Life, 462.

15 Clinton, 529.

16 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift,” 10.

17 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute” and “The US-Japan Rift”; also Jeffrey E. Garten, “Clinton’s Emerging Trade Policy,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 182, and Jeffrey E. Garten, “The 100-Day Economic Agenda,” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 5 (1992):16-31.

18 Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” 323.

19 Clinton, My Life, 657.

20 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute,” 270.

21 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute,” 273.

22 Clinton, My Life, 701.

23 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute,” 276.

24 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute,” 276.

25 Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” 324.

26 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Car Dispute” and “The US-Japan Rift.”

27 Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” 325.

28 Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” 327-32.

29 Clinton, My Life, 527, 30 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift,” 7.

31 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift,” 7.

32 Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift” and “The US-Japan Car Dispute.”

33 Clinton, My Life, 657.

34 Schoppa, “The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining,” 331.

35 Clinton, My Life, 827-8.

36 Uriu, “Japan in 1999,” 146.

37 Uriu, 146.

38 Uriu, 141.

39 Uriu, 144.

40 Wu, Xinbo, “The Security Dimensions of Sino-Japanese Relations: Warily Watching One Another.” Asian Survey 40, no. 2 (2000): 296-310.

41 Christensen, Thomas J. “China, the US-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia,” International Security 23, no. 4 (1999): 59.

42 Christensen, 59.

43 Clinton, My Life, 703.

44 Christensen, “China, the US-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma,” 62.

45 Christensen, 61.

46 Wu, “The Security Dimensions of Sino-Japanese Relations,” 298; Christensen, “China, the USJapan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma,” 62.

47 Clinton, My Life, 708.

48 Wu, “The Security Dimensions of Sino-Japanese Relations,” 299; Christensen, “China, The USJapan Alliance, the the Security Dilemma,” 64.

49 Uriu, “Japan in 1999,” 147.

50 Uriu, 147.

51 Clinton, My Life, 598.

52 Clinton, 703.

53 Clinton, 854-55.

54 Clinton, 769.

55 Clinton, 792-95.

56 Clinton, 758, 852, 879, 906, 922.

12

Japan's Dual Challenge 57

Clinton, 763.

Bhagwati, “The US-Japan Rift,” 8.

59 Godement, “Escaping the Merchant/Missionary Dilemma,”185.

60 Godement, 182.

61 Clinton, My Life, 708.

58

107

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 8

ENGAGING WITH NORTH KOREA: CLINTON’S LEGACY1 Mikyoung Kim Independent Scholar2 Busan, Korea

Former US President Bill Clinton was mindful of the precarious nature of historical enterprise. On his last day at the White House, he reminisced, “I could not control what happened to my policies and programs; few things are permanent in politics. Nor could I affect the early judgments on my socalled legacy. The history of America’s move from the end of the Cold War to the millennium would be written and rewritten over and over.”3 Bill Clinton was mindful of the interactive dynamics between the past and present in the acts of remembering and forgetting. As the present often dictates the way people remember the past, he knew that his legacy would be revisited time and time again.4 As politics suffers from temporality, so does people’s memory.5 The historical legacy being independent of his truths, Bill Clinton was aware of the constant revisions at the workings of selective mnemonics. Transcendence can be a virtue for all men, and Bill Clinton was one of them.

110

Mikyoung Kim

As the final hours at the White House approached, Clinton contemplated Neil Armstrong’s moon rock kept in the Oval Office: “That moon rock gave me a whole different perspective on history and the proverbial ‘long run.’

Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control. The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment.”6 The moon rock was a poignant reminder of the ephemerality of our time and the ultimate futility of investing emotions in the bygone era.

Historical assessment in and of itself does not mean much considering our finite existence. Everything seems to matter at the moment, but nothing matters at the end of the day. So he let it go. Bill Clinton has a nihilistic sense of history, and that is unlike the familiar faces of heroes.7 If nihilistic historicism rationalized the detachment from future assessments, his fear of death explicates never-ceasing cravings to live in the moment. Fear strikes an enigmatic chord in Clinton’s functionality.

Filling up each waking moment with a focus and work was his way of defying existential ephemerality. Inaction was equivalent to obliteration in his mind. With the possibility of impeachment looming large, President Clinton appeared on national television pleading that he had “work to do.”

He should not be distracted from all the tasks he wanted to accomplish, and yet they were not necessarily expected to be accomplished by any other party but himself. The tension between historical nihilism and existential emptiness can be a volatile mix. The two contradictory elements in his functionality led him to live “now” and let go of “then.” Where, then, would an exotic and yet inherently challenging entity like North Korea fit in his mind map? This paper attempts to configure the place for a peripheral and esoteric country, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Diplomacy is a messy process. Maximization of national interests is often only a normative ideal when translated into reality. More frequently than expected, logistical elements pose constraints on intergovernmental processes and outcomes. The Clinton administration’s engagement with North Korea is no exception to this. This paper examines the contingencies that shaped the trajectory and outcome of the Clinton administration’s North

Engaging with North Korea

111

Korea policy by focusing on the competing policy agendas.8 Public documents9 and oral interviews10 are used as primary data sources. This paper aims to explain the way in which the Clinton administration’s North Korea policy unfolded the way it did.

BACKGROUND BRIEFING: NEGOTIATING WITH A DIFFICULT PARTNER11 North Korea was work for President Clinton. While the threatening dictatorial regime demanded strategic attention, the situation, including humanitarian concerns, failed to induce emotional commitment from Clinton. His voluminous memoir, My Life, allocates relatively inconsequential space to Korean peninsular affairs despite its potentially calamitous consequences for his government.12 Had North Korea not been equipped with deadly weapons, it would have earned nothing but contempt, or at best dismissal. The eight-year saga of Clinton’s engagement with Pyongyang ended without disarming the country. A deal with North Korea was “tantalizingly close” at the end of the Clinton administration, but he let the opportunity slip through his fingers.13 The Korean impasse lingers on until today because of that crucial lost momentum. The Clinton administration tried but failed with North Korea.14 Ironically, the beginning of the North Korean nuclear impasse came with the end of the Cold War.15 After the demise of the Soviet Union, the US and Russia aimed to reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals. On September 27, 1991, President George H. W. Bush announced a unilateral plan to withdraw all naval and land-based tactical nuclear warheads deployed overseas.16 The plan affected about 100 nuclear warheads based in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. In the mood of post-Cold War détente, the two Koreas also signed the South-North Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula on the last day of 1991.17 These promising developments ultimately did not meet the optimistic expectations at the time. After North Korea’s ratification of its safeguards

112

Mikyoung Kim

agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the agency discovered “discrepancies” in North Korea’s initial report on its nuclear programs in September 1992. This discovery caused a heightened sense of alert in the international community. With the nascent Clinton administration still in disarray,18 the Pyongyang regime played the nuclear card by bluffing that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in March 1993. After Washington’s assurances that it would not use force against the Pyongyang regime or interfere with its internal affairs, North Korea agreed to consult with the IAEA in July 1993. One step forward with the difficult negotiating partner meant two steps backward in the coming years.

More ominous news followed the small concessions made by the Kim Il Sung19 regime. In late 1993 and early 1994, the US Central Information Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) concluded that the Pyongyang regime was already in possession of a couple of nuclear warheads. They estimated that about twelve kilograms of plutonium had been separated from the fuel rods in the previous years. Between January1994 when the allegations were made, and June 1994 when Pyongyang effectively ceased to be an IAEA member, Clinton’s foreign policy team engaged in intense negotiations with North Korea. The negotiations were stalemated, however, due to Pyongyang’s demand for compensation amid Washington’s partisan divisions.20 Amid increasing tensions, an inflammatory remark made by a member of the North Korean delegation added fuel to the sense of crisis. According to Wit et al., Pak Yong Su of the North told Song Young Dae of the South, “Mr. Song, your side has to deeply consider the dear price of war. Seoul is not far from here. If war breaks out, it will be a sea of fire. Mr. Song, it will be difficult for you to survive.”21 The chilling image of the prosperous South Korean capital turning into “a sea of fire” was interpreted to be something more than the usual bluff. With Pyongyang growing increasingly defiant and belligerent, Washington and Seoul began preparing for a worst-case scenario. President Clinton seriously considered attacking the North,22 but was soon persuaded from taking the military option. Estimates of casualties and property damage were far too grave to initiate preemptive strikes.23

Engaging with North Korea

113

President Clinton was in a situation he just could “not walk away from.” 24 From the time of the “sea of fire” remark in March 1994, North Korea lived up to its reputation for brinkmanship. In May, Pyongyang was confirmed to have begun removing spent fuel from its five-megawatt nuclear research reactor. In less than a month, the regime took another drastic measure, withdrawal from IAEA. A totally unexpected breakthrough was made amid the rapidly deteriorating situation. Jimmy Carter initiated a visit to Pyongyang in June and created crucial momentum. The former American president feared that the US and North Korea were headed toward a disastrous military conflict, and he made up his mind to intervene. He took along a CNN news crew from Atlanta and negotiated on his own with Kim Il Sung. He tried to create a fait accompli by announcing to the world through CNN in virtual real time the result of his talks with the North Koreans. He single-handedly succeeded in persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program.25 However, the sudden death of Kim Il Sung almost immediately after Carter’s visit put the situation into uncharted territory.26 Despite concerns about the possible consequences of the elder Kim’s sudden death, the new leader of North Korea stayed committed to bilateral negotiations with the US. Kim Jong Il turned out to be a pragmatist in foreign affairs.27 Only one month after his father’s death, intense negotiations with the US bore fruit in the form of an “agreed statement,” which in turn lead to the Agreed Framework in October 1994. The Framework was as close as the US has ever come in its negotiations with North Korea to achieving a path toward normalization of relations.

The agreement, however, did not stop North Korea from continuing with its nuclear weapons program. Divisive US politics hindered the administration from faithfully implementing some aspects of the agreement.

In addition, Pyongyang soon began cheating. The Republican House gains in the 1994 congressional elections were so substantial28 that it became much more difficult for the Clinton administration to carry through with aspects of the Agreed Framework. The administration did deliver heavy fuel oil to North Korea, albeit belatedly,29 but it eased sanctions only a very little. The

114

Mikyoung Kim

North Koreans could have taken that as a very bad sign and at some point thereafter secretly re-started their nuclear programs.

Interestingly enough, the Clinton administration’s post-Agreed Framework negotiations were centered mostly on North Korea’s missile development programs. The alert level went way up when Pyongyang launched a Taepodong-1 missile over the Sea of Japan in August 1998.30 The CIA Director confirmed during his 1999 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the continental US was within the reach of North Korean missiles.31 The US and North Korea continued bilateral talks regarding Pyongyang’s missile development programs as well as terrorism and proliferation activities. In addition to the bilateral format, the US, South Korea and Japan formed the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), aiming to closely consult and coordinate their policies and dealings with North Korea.

In the aftermath of the June 2000 inter-Korea summit talks in Pyongyang, North Korean Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok, Kim Jong Il’s second-in-command, visited Washington, DC, in October. In a personal letter that Jo delivered to President Clinton, Kim Jong Il invited the American president to North Korea. The summit talks were assessed by many to be a potent opportunity to bring peace to the region. Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright went to North Korea to lay the groundwork for a possible visit by President Clinton.32 She brought back very positive reports on North Korea’s sincerity about ending its missile programs.33 The momentum quickly lost its velocity because Clinton’s second term was running out of time. In his final weeks in office, the American president chose to work on the Middle East instead of cutting a deal with North Korea.

One irony in Clinton’s last days at the White House is that the incoming George W. Bush administration rejected its predecessor’s approach to the Pyongyang regime in its entirety.34 The Republican Congress argued that a Clinton visit to North Korea would give a notorious tyrant like Kim Jong Il a legitimacy he did not deserve and that should not be accorded. The Republicans saw Clinton’s approach as dangerously naïve and a trip by a US president to North Korea as very premature.35 The subsequent Bush

Engaging with North Korea

115

government broadened the agenda with North Korea to include not only the nuclear issue, missiles and the terrorism list, but also conventional arms, human rights and illegal activities.36 Unlike the Clinton government, the Bush administration was not eager to engage directly with the North.37 Critics often argue that Clinton was naïve about North Korea and did not understand that it would not keep its promises. Such criticism is not entirely factual. The North did in fact keep the specific promises made in the Agreed Framework about the Yongbyon nuclear project. IAEA monitors verified the freeze on the site. On the other hand, the North did apparently begin cheating in regard to at least the spirit of the Agreed Framework by pursuing uranium enrichment technology at some point during the Clinton years.38 The six-party agreement of September 2005 in Beijing did not represent much progress compared to the 1994 Agreed Framework.39 Unlike the subsequent US administration, the Clinton government invested intensive, sincere efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue for the sake of stability in Northeast Asia, for which the former president deserves recognition.40 One valid criticism would be the lack of clear policy focus on the part of the Clinton administration post-Agreed Framework. Clinton administration officials believed the nuclear situation was had been in check since 1994, and thought primarily that they now had to restrain North Korea’s missile program. The unexpected Taepodong launch over Japan in the fall of 1998 and the close alliance with Tokyo made the administration blind to other possibilities.

The existing historical narratives on President Clinton’s engagement legacy with North Korea do not fully address from a holistic view why the Clinton administration’s North Korea policy unfolded the way it did. It is necessary to situate North Korea within the broad schema of the Clinton presidency. In the following section, I attempt to answer the “how” and “why” questions by examining President Clinton’s relative detachment from Korean issues and his own functionality amid his legal troubles.

116

Mikyoung Kim

ANALYSIS: WHY IT HAPPENED THE WAY IT HAPPENED Bill Clinton provokes a slew of emotions in people. He often is described as “interesting,” “extremely intelligent,” “compassionate,” and “complicated.”41 These adjectives are illuminating because they address different aspects of Bill Clinton’s personality. “Interesting” is an ambiguous description relatively free of moral judgment. The word means engaging and enticing, whether good or bad. The words “extremely intelligent” and “compassionate” juxtapose functional attributes addressing different aspects of Clinton’s personality. “Complicated” is another neutral term alluding to the tension between the understandable and yet questionable.

President Clinton retains a certain controversial reputation. But his is very different from those of other historical figures such as Warren Harding42 and Richard Nixon.43 Harding and Nixon are remembered as shameful cultural icons, leaving little room for redemption. Much of the American public empathizes with Bill Clinton’s personal flaws. One interviewee said, “He disappointed us, but his sins are forgiven. We all make mistakes. That makes him one of us.”44 Many Americans are even nostalgic about his political leadership.45 Regarding North Korea, President Clinton did not rule out possibilities.

He remained engaged with the Pyongyang regime, yet did not fully commit himself to the issues. From the view of his presidency, there were more pressing issues: the Middle East peace process and his “parallel lives.”

COMPETING AGENDA I: THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS Democracy entails the delegation of popular power to elected officials.

Elected leaders are given the right to exercise justifiable authority in making policy decisions on behalf of the people. In order to prevent the unbridled exercise of such authority, the other branches of government serve to check and balance the executive power. Ample evidence, however, points toward

Engaging with North Korea

117

the shakiness of the power equilibrium in the case of foreign policy. The American public is believed to feel comfortable in delegating more power to the White House in foreign affairs than on domestic issues because of the presumed requirement of expertise.46 The top leader’s worldview plays a salient role in setting the policy agenda in that regard. The government hierarchy’s raison d'être is to support the leader’s policy agenda.47 President Clinton was a “sympathetic internationalist.” Having been taught to “look up to people others looked down on,”48 Bill Clinton paid attention to the dark corners of the world. Despite the presumed parochialism of a Southerner, President Clinton turned out to have a keen interest in international affairs.49 As he tried to introduce progressive domestic policies such as welfare and medical reform, he also relied on foreign aid as an effective policy tool.50 The North Korean threats, however, failed to bring out the sympathetic internationalist in Bill Clinton. The Clinton administration’s initial approach to North Korea derived from rational calculations and was shaped but little by vision or emotion. While he avoided public name calling, Clinton also did not display much compassion for the people of North Korea until his support for large-scale food aid in the late 1990s when the scope of the famine there became apparent.51 Bill Clinton’s devotion to the Middle East goes back to his early days in Little Rock, Arkansas. After having lost the gubernatorial reelection campaign in 1980, he joined the church led by W. O. Vaught. Clinton began singing in the church choir and studying the Bible under Dr. Vaught’s guidance. In the following year, Hillary and Bill Clinton joined the pastor in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The trip had a deep impact on Clinton. He recollects: That trip had a lasting mark on me. I returned home with a deeper appreciation of my own faith, a profound admiration for Israel, and for the first time, some understanding of Palestinian aspirations and grievances. 52

118

Mikyoung Kim

When Bill Clinton was serving as the Governor of Arkansas eight years later in 1989, he experienced another profound moment. Vaught, on his deathbed, stressed Israel’s importance to Clinton. As Clinton recalls: The final thing Dr. Vaught said took me aback. He said, “Bill, I think you are going to be a president someday. I think you will do a good job, but there’s one thing above all you must remember: God will never forgive you if you don’t stand by Israel.”53

Bill Clinton, the youngest governor in American history, sought solace in Christianity during trying times, and he found himself inspired by the religious leader devoted to the cause of Israel.

As Dr. Vaught predicted, Bill Clinton was of course elected as the US president. During numerous trips and personal interactions, he soon befriended the key leaders of the Middle East. He was particularly close to Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister. Bill Clinton writes: I had admired Rabin even before meeting him in 1992, but that day, watching him speak at the ceremony and listening to his argument for peace, I had seen the greatness in his leadership and spirit. I had never met anyone quite like him, and I was determined to help him achieve his dream of peace.54

A deep personal bond such as this was of course simply nonexistent between Clinton and the North Korean leaders. There was no “personal chemistry.”55 Despite eight long years of intense negotiations by his administration with both Koreas, there is little evidence that Clinton was emotionally vested in the peninsula. He writes about his first visit to South Korea as follows: In South Korea, I visited our troops along the DMZ, which had divided North and South Korea since the armistice ending the Korea War was signed. I walked out onto the Bridge of No Return, stopping about ten feet from the stripe of white paint dividing the two countries…In Seoul, Hillary and I were the guests of President Kim Young Sam in the official guest

Engaging with North Korea

119

residence, which had an indoor swimming pool. When I went for a dip, music suddenly filled the air. I found myself swimming to many of my favorite tunes, from Elvis to jazz, a nice example of Korea’s famous hospitality.56

The way South Korea left impressions on the American president was through the military confrontation at the DMZ and music playing at the pool.

The connectivity was made through the symbol of the world’s last Cold War frontier and an anonymous act of kindness, not by “personal chemistry.”

Although an admirer of the elderly Kim Dae Jung’s courage and vision, Clinton’s superficial connectivity to the leaders of the Korean peninsula was in drastic contrast to his intimate friendship with Yitzhak Rabin. Upon hearing the news of Rabin’s assassination, Clinton was overcome with deep sorrow.

In the two and half years we had worked together, Rabin and I had developed an unusually close relationship, marked by candor, trust, and extraordinary understanding of each other’s political positions and thought processes. We had become friends in that unique way people do when they are in a struggle that they believe is great and good. With every encounter I came to respect and care for him more. By the time he was killed, I had come to love him as I had rarely loved another man….Overcome with grief, I went back upstairs to be with Hillary for a couple of hours. 57

By contrast, the death of Kim Il Sung, the omnipotent dictator of North Korea who held the key to the outcome of long and intense bilateral talks, receives only a passing comment from Bill Clinton: My first day at the Naples summit was devoted to Asia. Kim Il Sung had died the previous day, just as talks with North Korea resumed in Geneva, throwing the future of our agreement with North Korea into doubt.58

120

Mikyoung Kim

President Clinton did not invest any emotions in the country or in the people. Unlike Albright,59 he withheld even contempt and hatred. Kim’s death, a potential turning point in the talks, was stated as a simple fact.60 The South Korean president, Kim Young-Sam, also failed to reach out to the American president, and instead engaged in continuous “manipulations” of US-DPRK negotiations.61 He often tried to turn the tables for his own domestic political advantage.62 Like the North Korean dictator, Kim was not able to connect with Clinton. The South Korean leader’s historical visit to the White House had one significance to Bill Clinton, as stated in the following: Hillary and I hosted our first state dinner, for South Korean president Kim Young-Sam. I always enjoyed the official state visits. They were the most ritualized events to occur at the White House, beginning with the official welcoming ceremony…63

The state dinner with Kim Young Sam was significant only because it was the Clintons’ first. After a passing reference to the South Korean president’s name in connection with the first state dinner the Clintons hosted, Bill Clinton moves on to describe the logistics of preparing and holding a state dinner.

As his term was nearing the end, President Clinton had to choose between the Middle East peace process and cutting a missile deal with North Korea. As previously noted, he had received a personal letter of invitation from Kim Jong Il to visit North Korea, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought back very positive reports from her visit to the country.

Around the same time, Yasir Arafat had given him hope for reaching an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Rabin’s successor.

Clinton put a priority on trying to reach an Israel-Palestine deal. The memoir does not give evidence that Clinton agonized about letting North Korea go.

He was driven to close a deal with Israel and Palestine before his time expired.64 He writes of the moment when Arafat callously misled him to choose his cause:

Engaging with North Korea

121

If we were going to make peace in the Middle East, I knew I would have to close the deal…After all my efforts, if Arafat wasn’t going to make peace, he owed it to me to tell me, so that I could go to North Korea to end another serious security threat. He pleaded with me to stay, saying that we had to finish the peace and that if we did not do it before I left office, it would be at least five years before we’d be this close to peace again. 65

Even though President Clinton does not mention it specifically, the Middle East also would have been a politically safer choice than North Korea. He writes, “The Jewish Americans have been good to me.”66 Although North Korea posed as grave a security threat to the administration, there was no evidence of Bill Clinton’s emotional attachment to the region. This is in stark contrast to his direct personal involvement with the Middle East peace process. It is very plausible that the only reason President Clinton remained engaged with the totalitarian regime on the Korean Peninsula was because of the purely strategic necessity.

COMPETING AGENDA II: “THE PARALLEL LIVES” Experiencing time can be a deeply subjective affair. James Joyce’s 783page long Ulysses, for instance, is about one-day happenings to the two main protagonists. The subjectivity in experiencing time makes some moments feel like an eternal drag, while others feel as fleeting as an arrow.67 “Flow of optimal experience” can be an irrelevant concept for a high-pressure job like American presidency.68 The job entails numerous demands, many contingencies, and heavy responsibilities.69 Bill Clinton, a driven achiever, had to readjust his schedule during the first term due to the pressure. He was trying to accomplish too much given the limited amount of time. My Life describes quite a few incidents when the American president was overwhelmed by the temporal pressure. “The first week of May was another example of everything happening at once….It was just another week at the office,” he writes.70 “Everything happening at once” at the Clinton White House can be compared to a chaotic restaurant kitchen. As performing under

122

Mikyoung Kim

time pressure is one crucial qualification of a good cook, so it would be for the presidency. However, there is one crucial difference between a chaotic kitchen and the presidency. In the kitchen, sequence hardly matters as long as the end result is acceptable. As Gary Fine observes, “This division of labor is sequential, rather than simultaneous. Yet, for some tasks, sequence hardly matters; who cares if the cabbage or carrots is shredded first for coleslaw, so long as they are mixed before the dressing is added.”71 For the chef in a kitchen, the timely presentation of the end product, an aesthetically satisfying dish, is the key to success. For the presidency, however, both the sequence and the end result matter. It is often the sequence that dictates the outcome. In the following passage, President Clinton describes the sequencing of the protocol he thought was important for the Israeli-Palestine peace process: I knew Arafat was a great showman and might try to kiss Rabin after the handshake. We had decided that I would shake hands with each of them first, then sort of motion them together. I was sure that if Arafat did not kiss me, he would not try kissing Rabin…. Tony said he knew a way I could shake hands with Arafat while avoiding a kiss. He described the procedure and we practiced it. I played Arafat and he played me, showing me what to do. When I shook his hand and moved in for the kiss, he put his left hand on my right arm where it was bent at the elbow, and squeezed; it stopped me cold. Then we reversed the roles and I did it to him. We practiced it a couple of more times until I felt sure Rabin’s cheek would remain untouched. We all laughed about it, but I knew avoiding the kiss was deadly serious for Rabin. 72

The presidency can be very challenging in terms of time pressure and the amount of work. Bill Clinton’s presidency was particularly challenging because of the Whitewater investigations. His plate was even fuller than usual. The negotiations with North Korea were taking place in the middle of the Whitewater investigations.73 President Clinton describes his compartmentalized functionality as “the parallel lives.”74 Growing up, he taught himself to keep emotional distance from potential and immediate disruptions. The Clinton presidency was about maintaining a fragile balance

Engaging with North Korea

123

among multiple parallel lives, Clinton’s own name for the separate realms of functionality he had to live by. Managing these lives was his self-devised protective tool to control and manage his internal struggles among his multiple selves, not necessarily between him and his adversaries. It is plausible to speculate that the compartmentalized functionality could have hindered him from managing pressing foreign contingencies effectively.

Despite the speculation, Clinton’s first person narratives do not point toward his incapacity to function under duress during the North Korean nuclear crisis. There exist, however, repeated remarks in My Life to the effect that he enjoyed staying involved with foreign affairs. For instance, he writes: I had enjoyed getting to know and work with the other world leaders.

And after the G-7, I felt more confident in my ability to advance America’s interests in the world and understood why so many American presidents preferred foreign policy to the frustrations they faced on the home front. 75

On the other hand, Bill Clinton expressed his deep anger and frustration at the vicious litigation of Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr: “I had to work hard to keep my anger in check, and I didn’t always succeed.”76 It is reasonable to conclude that, despite his defiant remark “what does not kill me makes me stronger,” Clinton’s devotion to policy issues including North Korea suffered under such duress. North Korea was in competition with formidable foes: the Middle East and President Bill Clinton’s parallel lives.

CONCLUSION As much as Bill Clinton tried to grab each moment, he cared less about the time beyond his own. His relationship to his waking moments was very temporal, and yet the sense of history was dangerously eternal. He acted as if everything mattered at the moment, but ultimately nothing mattered. Bill Clinton is a great achiever, and yet lacked fear in the conventional sense of

124

Mikyoung Kim

moral judgment. His functionality was a contradictory combination of ephemerality and eternity.

What makes a president great?77 Who are we to tell without having been in the shoes? Reeves introduces the following episode on the profound gap between those who have been there and those who have not: In 1962, David Herbert Donald, one of the greatest Lincoln scholars, visited the White House and discussed with John F. Kennedy the way historians rate some presidents as “below average” or “failures.” JFK was scornful, saying, “No one has a right to grade a president who has not sat in this chair, examined the mail and other information that came across his desk, and learned why he made his decisions.” 78

Should we take JFK’s skepticism seriously, none but a handful of individuals in the entire world can evaluate a presidency. Historians at the risk of constant revisions do engage in the assessment enterprise not because of blind faith in unearthing the hidden truth, but ultimately because leaders make decisions that have serious implications for society.79 President Clinton’s North Korea policy, the focus of this paper, reflected a combination of sincere efforts by a skillful negotiating team and lastminute fallout. The president’s political calculations and religious devotion led him to work on the Middle East. Shrewd Yasir Arafat played a masterful manipulation game with the American president, who was desperate to achieve a historic breakthrough in the region but ultimately failed to do so: Right before I left office, Arafat, in one of our last conversations, thanked me for all my efforts and told me what a great man I was. “Mr. Chairman,” I replied, “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.”80

Half-baked success and lost momentum define the Clinton administration’s North Korea policy. As for President Clinton’s own assessment of the continuing North Korean threats, he is ready to justify:

Engaging with North Korea

125

After I left office, the United States learned that in 1998 North Korea had begun to violate the spirit if not the letter of the agreement by producing highly enriched uranium in a laboratory – enough perhaps, to make one or two bombs. Some people said this development called the validity of our 1994 agreement into question. But the plutonium program we ended was much larger than the later laboratory effort. North Korea’s nuclear reactor program, had it proceeded, would have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to make several weapons a year. 81

What was the Korean peninsula’s place in the Clinton presidency? My answer to that question is: the periphery. An American president has more than a full plate of issues demanding attention. To prevail among the demands, an issue has to meet certain criteria, including strategic importance, domestic political advantage, and emotional commitment as a reflection of the president’s own worldview. The North Korean threat met the first category, but not the others. Despite many unpredicted logistical contingencies in the negotiation process, such as deaths and personal influences, what mattered in the end was election votes and personal devotion. The Middle East won to lose, and North Korea lost to stick around.

ENDNOTES 1

I would like to thank Professors Gary Alan Fine, Takashi Kanatsu, and Motofumi Asai for the helpful comments and suggestions.

2 Mikyoung Kim is currently litigating to recover her previous tenured faculty position at Hiroshima City University of Japan (www.justice-for-mikyoungkim.org).

3 Bill Clinton, My Life, (New York: Vintage Press, 2005), vol. 2, Presidential Years, 644.

4 Barry Schwartz and Mikyoung Kim, “Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem,” in Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory, ed. Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan), 1-30.

5 J. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); J. R. Gills, ed. Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

6 Bill Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 644-5.

7 Joseph Campbell, The Heroes with a Thousand Faces, 3rd edition, (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008).

126 8

Mikyoung Kim

The determining contingencies of diplomatic process include US domestic politics (bipartisan division) and South Korea (ideological conflicts between the liberals and the conservatives towards North Korea), the orientation and roles of the key players (former US President Jimmy Carter, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former US Ambassador to Korea James Laney, chief negotiator Robert Gallucci, South Korean presidents Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, the North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and Yasir Arafat), and life events (the deaths of Kim Il Sung and Yitzhak Rabin).

9 This category includes unclassified and recently declassified government documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

10 Confidential interviews will be cited only by dates, not by the names of the interviewees.

11 For a detailed chronology of North Korea’s nuclear threats, see John S. Wit, Daniel E. Poneman and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004).

12 So did Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2003).

13 Arms Control Association: Fact Sheets: Chronology of US-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Arms Control Association, 2014), 8, updates available at https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron.

14 Gallucci, Robert, “The Clinton Administration and North Korea,” paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meetings, September 2, 2005.

15 The North Korean regime began developing its nuclear programs in the early 1980s (Wit et al., 409).

16 The president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, reciprocated on October 3, 1991 with a reduction in Soviet nuclear arsenals deployed abroad.

17 In the previous month, South Korean President Roh Tae Woo took the initiative by announcing the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

18 Interview, August 8, 2004.

19 Following Korean convention, Korean family names precede given names.

20 Washington’s North Korean debates were split between “dismantlement-firsters” and “safeguards-firsters” (Wit et al., 139-143).

21 Wit et al., 149.

22 Interview, August 8, 2005; “Clinton 'had plans to attack N. Korea reactor,’” CNN.com, December 16, 2002; and Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 311-6.

23 The Clinton defense team estimated that for the first ninety days of military confrontation, about 52,000 and 490,000 would be killed or wounded in the US military and the South Korean military, respectively. Financial costs were projected to be $61 billion (Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 315).

24 Gallucci, 2005.

25 Many in the White House were appalled by the former president’s willful behavior. After some days of debate, they decided that there would be great risk in repudiating him and they might as well take the risk of accepting what he had done and seeing if Gallucci, the chief US negotiator with Pyongyang, could use it as a basis for reaching a detailed, workable agreement with the North Koreans. But thereafter Clinton administration officials were always very

Engaging with North Korea

127

nervous that Carter would again insert himself and visit Pyongyang. Very few US officials wanted that, because he was regarded as “uncontrollable” (interview, August 8, 2005).

Ironically, by the end of the Clinton’s second term, Clinton’s approach toward North Korea was very much along the lines of Carter’s general approach. It is probable that President Clinton himself rendered support to Jimmy Carter’s approach to North Korea given their close association, which started during very early in Clinton’s political career.

26 Despite widespread international doubts about Kim Jong Il’s governing ability, he remained in control after his father’s death (see State Department FOIA release, “State Department Talking Points [in re North Korean economic situation and food aid], ca. May 1996,” available at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB164). For observations on the resiliency of the DPRK regime and its shrewd diplomatic tactics, see Bruce Cummings, North Korea: Another Country (New York: New Press, 2003), 75-6.

27 Stapleton Roy argues in a State Department briefing document that, “The North Koreans have survived, independent and prickly, among their larger neighbors precisely because they have not had an ideologically rigid foreign policy. On the contrary, the policy has reacted to changing circumstances in and around the peninsula.” State Department FOIA release, “Memorandum, Roy to Secretary of State Albright, Subject: Pyongyang at the Summit, June 16, 2000,” available at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB164.

28 The Senate was already under Republican control.

29 The delivery was often late because of congressional resistance to funding the purchases and to a lack of international donors.

30 The US intelligence community was reportedly surprised by the advanced level of North Korea’s missile technology (Interview, July 7, 2005).

31 See www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron.asp.

32 State Department FOIA release, “Memorandum, Stanley Roth to Secretary of State Albright, Subject: Your Visit to Pyongyang, DPRK, October 19, 2000,” available at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB164.

33 Albright left the country with a rather positive impression of its leader. She writes, “My conclusion was that we should approach Kim in a businesslike way, not hesitant to engage in direct talks, and take advantage of North Korea’s economic plight to drive a bargain that would make the region and world safer.” Madeleine K. Albright with Bill Woodward, Madame Secretary (New York: Miramax Books, 2003) 467-8.

34 The dismissive attitude by the Bush administration toward the Clinton government led to the coining of a new phrase within DC policy circles “ABC” (Anything But Clinton).

35 Interview, August 8, 2005.

36 Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 94.

37 Making matters worse, the rigidly moralistic Bush administration engaged in public namecalling of the dictatorial regime in Pyongyang and of Kim Jong Il personally, aggravating relations further. The Bush administration’s drastic departure from the approach of the Clinton government propelled debates about the most effective strategy of “taming” North Korea. See Victor Cha and David C. Kang, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

128

Mikyoung Kim

State Department FOIA release, “Department of State INR Paper, Subject: DPRK Nuclear Status, December 20, 1996.” The INR memorandum notes the possibility of Pyongyang’s possession of enough plutonium to build one or two nuclear weapons. It also warns that the failure to implement the Agreed Framework will “undermine the IAEA’s ability to provide an historical audit of the North’s nuclear activity in the past or prevent the production of more plutonium in the future.” Available at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB164.

39 Joseph Kahn and David Sanger, “US-Korea Deal on Arms Leaves Key Points Open,” September 20, 2005, New York Times; Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody, “The North Korean Pact,” The Oregonian, September 20, 2005.

40 As for President Clinton’s own assessment of the lingering North Korean threat, he writes: “After I left office, the United States learned that in 1998 North Korea had begun to violate the spirit if not the letter of the agreement by producing highly enriched uranium in a laboratory – enough perhaps, to make one or two bombs. Some people said this development called the validity of our 1994 agreement into question. But the plutonium program we ended was much larger than the later laboratory effort. North Korea’s nuclear reactor program, had it proceeded, would have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to make several weapons a year.” (Bill Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 209-10).

41 Interviews, August 8; September 17, 2005.

42 Gary Alan Fine, “Warren Harding and the Memory of Incompetence,” in Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 60-94.

43 David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).

44 Interview, September 1, 2005.

45 Robert Franek, “Students Most Nostalgic for Bill Clinton,” in The Best 331 Colleges, 2002 edition (Natick, MA: Princeton Review, 2001).

46 Daniel Yankelovich, “Poll Positions,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (September/October 2005), 12.

47 A government employee is not allowed to voice disagreements with the official government policy in public. In the case of serious dissent, employees are expected to resign from the official duty. For instance, several State Department employees resigned after the George W. Bush administration started the Iraqi War. See Ann Wright, “Speaking Out II: Why Dissent Is Important and Resignation Honorable,” Foreign Service Journal, September 2003, 15-19.

48 In the dedication of his memoir, My Life, as well as in the main text of the book, Clinton often refers to his maternal grandfather’s teaching, which he internalized growing up in Hope, Arkansas.

49 Needless to say, the job comes with the highest prestige, privilege and influence. George W. Bush’s repeated remark, “It’s hard work,” is a plain summary of the American presidency.

50 His narratives in the memoir also reveal that he found working on global issues easier and more gratifying than domestic politics, given the bitter partisan divisions and the Whitewater lawsuits. For example, he helped Mexico with generous foreign aid in 1997.

51 Since his memoir was written after the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton may have had reservations about addressing at length negotiations such as with North Korea that yielded mixed results.

52 Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), vol. 1, The Early Years, 386-7.

53 Clinton, My Life, vol. 1, The Early Years, 466.

38

Engaging with North Korea 54

129

Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 105.

Clinton, vol. 2, 143.

56 Clinton, vol. 2, 83-4.

57 Clinton, vol. 2, 281.

58 Clinton, vol. 2, 186.

59 Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under the Clinton administration, offers such an assessment in her memoir. She writes, “Four decades passed between the [Korean] war and the day I became UN ambassador, but my view of North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), did not change because the fundamental nature of the regime did not change. North Korean President Kim Il Sung was among the world’s most destructive dictators, cruel to his people, hostile toward the South, and heedless of international law” Albright, Madame Secretary, 455-6).

60 I am not arguing that North Korea is either likeable or understandable. Especially for an American with a liberal democratic worldview, North Korea can be a challenging place to comprehend (Cummings, North Korea, 76). The Kim Jong Il regime has hybrid cultures allowing the sustainability of dictatorial rule. The strong Confucian legacy made hereditary succession possible, while the Juche ideology of self-reliance makes the closed social system feasible. The government-centered economic control is based on socialist indoctrination stemming from classical Marxism and Leninism. See Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, North Korea Through the Looking Glass (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000) 61 Wit et al., 115-6.

62 Interview, August 8, 2005.

63 Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 125.

64 Albright, Madame Secretary, 473-98.

65 Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 615.

66 The political influence of Korean Americans is relatively insignificant compared to that of Jewish Americans. The decision would have been a reflection of election votes as well as emotional commitment.

67 Barry Schwartz, Queuing and Waiting: Studies in the Social Organization of Access and Delay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

68 See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Collins, 1990). Csikszentmihalyi argues that professionals in high-stress occupations such as heart surgeons actually enjoy the highly compressed time pressure. Flaherty writes (p. 31), “Temporal compression during surgery” is enjoyed by the surgeons because those are the moments “when one’s skills are a good match for the demands of the immediate situation.”

69 Needless to say, the job comes with the highest prestige, privilege and influence. George W. Bush’s repeated remark, “It’s hard work,” is a plain summary of the American presidency.

70 Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 170-1; also as another example, he writes: “On the fifteenth, President Aristide returned to Haiti. Three days later, I announced that after sixteen months of intense negotiations, we had reached an agreement with North Korea to end the threat of nuclear proliferation…” (109).

71 Gary Alan Fine, Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 78.

72 Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 101-2.

55

130 73

Mikyoung Kim

His political adversaries, some of whom demonstrated a condescending elitism, religious moralism, snobbish classism, and regionalism, tried to bring down his presidency. In their eyes, Bill Clinton lacked the socio-cultural background to command their respect and lead the nation. Furthermore, his affinity to the Black community evoked an unarticulated yet deeply ingrained racism among a segment of the American ruling class.

74 Clinton, My Life, vol. 1, The Early Years, 149.

75 Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 83.

76 Clinton, vol. 2, 161.

77 As for one answer: “One of the ultimate Washington insiders, David Gergen, who has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, likes to cite the late Everett Carl Ladd, University of Connecticut political scientist, who defended “presidential intelligence” as a blend of knowledge, judgment, temperament and faith in the future. These, according to Ladd, were common qualities of successful presidents.” Richard Reeves, “The Perfect President: What Makes a Strong Leader?” Readers Digest, November 2004, 111.

78 Reeves, “The Perfect President,” 107.

79 “The Presidency, whatever Kennedy thought, is not only about one person. It is about all of us.

It is an act of faith on our part that one human can handle the job.” (Reeves, “The Perfect President, 111).

80 Clinton, My Life, vol. 2, Presidential Years, 634-5.

81 Clinton, vol. 2, 209-10.

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 9

THE TRANSFORMATION OF INDO-AMERICAN RELATIONS UNDER PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON1 Arthur G. Rubinoff Department of Political Science, The University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Although he expressed an “obligation” to improve relations with India,2 a country that had long fascinated him, President William Jefferson Clinton, like his predecessors, initially ignored South Asia. His attention to the volatile Indo-Pakistani dispute was belated and reactive, as was the case with other regions and issues. David Halberstam observed that, whereas “foreign policy had been George H. W. Bush’s raison d’etre, [f]or Bill Clinton it was an inconvenience,” something that might divert him from his primary interest, the American economy.3 After an inauspicious start that damaged bilateral relations with India, President Clinton laid the foundation for improved ties. It took a series of nuclear explosions for New Delhi to gain the attention of the White House. This paper describes how Indo-American relations were transformed from their historic condition of indifference and

132

Arthur G. Rubinoff

hostility to a positive state in the second term of President William Jefferson Clinton. After reviewing the historic conflicted residual nature of IndoAmerican relations, it will explain how the Clinton administration belatedly responded to the South Asian country’s economic liberalization and reorientation of its foreign policy and engaged New Delhi in a constructive manner that paid dividends in prosecuting the war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and reducing hostilities between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Kashmir.

THE CONTEXT OF RELATIONS Despite the perceived democratic systems of both countries,4 IndoAmerican relations, except for a brief period when the Sino-Indian border war coincided with the Cuban missile crisis, were historically characterized by indifference, hostility, resentment and disdain.5 New Delhi seldom sided with Washington on such issues as the Korean War, the Hungarian crisis of 1956, the conflict in Vietnam, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s. Grudgingly provided American foreign aid bred resentment rather than gratitude from the Indians. It caused the United States to question the benefit of extending assistance to a country that remained neutral in Washington’s struggle with global communism.6 The conflicted relationship was described as “the cold peace,”7 and the two countries were depicted as “comrades at odds.”8 Compared with other areas of the world, India, with one of the largest populations, most powerful military establishments, and most dynamic economies, was neglected by Washington,9 perhaps because until the 1980s few people of Indian origin resided in the United States.10 As Harold Isaacs suggests, India was little more than a “scratch on our mind,” since interaction prior to World War II—except for missionary activity—was much less intense than with other Asian states, such as China and Japan.11 Political and economic relations were sporadic. This lack of contact was responsible for uninformed perceptions of India and Indians that had implications for American foreign policy. Images of India in the United

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations

133

States were highly derogatory and were reinforced by school textbooks, the media, and academic writings. The same negative impressions were held by decision makers who produced policy on the basis of outdated stereotypes which portrayed India “as poverty-stricken and helpless.”12

THE RESIDUAL CHARACTER OF INDO-AMERICAN RELATIONS Relations with a region that was defined by problems and accounted for less than one percent of US trade had a low priority for Washington. Hence, India was treated in a residual fashion by both the executive and legislative branches. Until 1991, when a separate bureau was finally created in the Department of State, until the region was merged with Central Asia, South Asia was attached to the Near East (as it still is in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council), and handled by a deputy assistant secretary four levels removed from the secretary of state. The legislative scene was and is even more diffuse, with activities pertaining to South Asia occurring in committee, especially during the foreign aid appropriations process. The Senate, which tended to ignore the region, followed the State Department model. The House of Representatives either paired the area with the Near East, where it got overshadowed by ArabIsraeli issues, or with the Asia-Pacific region, where it was diminished by issues concerning China, Japan, and the Vietnam War. As a result, policy was made without structural or long-term direction. Successive administrations and congresses viewed South Asia as a problem area and dealt with it in terms of functional issues such as foreign aid, nuclear proliferation, and human rights concerns rather than on a bilateral basis.13 Moreover, Washington’s ties with New Delhi were complicated by USSoviet concerns and Indo-Pakistani rivalry. Pakistan was viewed by Washington as a strategic partner and an important bridge to the Muslim world. The US considered India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a British-educated Marxist, to be “clearly pro-Russian.”14 In Washington’s

134

Arthur G. Rubinoff

view, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, had a “visceral antipathy”15 towards the United States because of its tilt towards Pakistan during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 197116 when she served as prime minister (1966-77; 1980-84). Washington held her in even greater contempt for her stands on the American intervention in Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.17 New Delhi was especially resentful that its adversary in South Asia was a member of two American alliances, and as a frontline state in the campaign against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Pakistan received military assistance from Washington, despite its development of nuclear weapons in violation of US law. As a consequence, India was forced to purchase Soviet arms to counter the Pakistani buildup, thereby diverting scare resources from its developmental programs. Mutual distrust prevailed even after the end of the Cold War when Washington imposed sanctions against Pakistan for Islamabad’s development of nuclear weapons, following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In the midst of a foreign exchange crisis that occurred during the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly elected Congress government headed by Prime Minister Narashima Rao, which took office in June 1991, abandoned that party’s reliance on the discredited command economic model and India’s hostility towards the United States.18 In a significant policy departure in November 1991 that was a signal to Washington, India voted to repeal the United Nations resolution that equated Zionism with racism which it had cosponsored in 1975, and in January 1992 New Delhi established diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv.19 Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh recognized that substantial American investment and massive assistance from the International Monetary Fund were critical to the success of their new liberal economic policy. Indian politicians from all non-Communist parties felt that a consensus for a positive relationship with the United States had finally been established. However, it remained to be institutionalized and freed from its historic shibboleths.

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations

135

THE BELATED CLINTON TRANSFORMATION New Delhi expected even greater positive attention from the Clinton administration when it assumed office in 1993. It was anticipated that the new administration, which was pledged to support democratic regimes and encourage American investment abroad, would build on the foundation established by its predecessor and continue to improve bilateral ties.20 Instead, it initially pursued contradictory policies towards India that actually undermined bilateral ties. The new administration redirected assistance to Africa and reduced foreign aid appropriations by twenty percent. It reneged on the delivery of promised cryogenic rocket engines. The Clinton administration began renewing certain types of commercial sales to Pakistan prohibited by the 1985 Pressler Amendment, which attempted to punish Islamabad for developing nuclear weapons, in an effort to bolster the government of Benazir Bhutto, who was a friend of Bill Clinton when they both had attended Oxford University.21 The US pressured New Delhi to further liberalize its economy, but at the same time insisted that India sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and forego the development of a nuclear weapons capability.22 Finally, the Clinton administration’s promotion of human rights in Kashmir and the Punjab and other areas affected by civil strife also worked against the improvement of relations.

Preoccupied with a settlement in the Middle East, the Clinton administration, despite a concern for the gravity of the Kashmir issue, allowed an American diplomatic vacuum to persist in South Asia. After the departure of Thomas Pickering in March 1993, no ambassador was appointed until career diplomat Frank Wisner assumed the post in July 1994—even though the administration had indicated Stephen Solarz, the former chairman of the House Asia Pacific Subcommittee, who was sympathetic to India, would get the assignment. Worse yet, Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphael – like Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, a friend of Bill Clinton’s from his Oxford days – in a radical policy departure challenged the 1947 accession of the disputed state of Kashmir.

Congress aggravated the situation in 1995 by employing strident anti-India rhetoric when it passed the Brown Amendment, which diluted the Pressler

136

Arthur G. Rubinoff

Amendment sanctions against Pakistan for Islamabad’s conduct of a clandestine nuclear program.23 Bill Clinton had often referred to Kashmir as the most dangerous place on earth in light of the ongoing controversy between India and Pakistan, which constantly threatened to erupt in violence. However, like every American president, he was reluctant to become involved in their bilateral dispute, since the Pakistanis wanted American intervention as leverage against New Delhi. He was concerned that, “unlike the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, India and Pakistan knew little about each other’s nuclear capabilities and policies for using them.” 24 Yet, his administration treated South Asia “like a black hole,” as did the Reagan and Bush presidencies. President Clinton preferred to ignore problems like the Taliban regime’s support of global terrorism in Afghanistan rather than to deal with them.25 While Hillary Clinton had a successful visit to the region in 1995, a visit by Madeleine Albright, the first by a secretary of state in fourteen years, was cut short in November 1997 because of developments in Iraq, an indication of the administration’s global priorities. Clinton’s own visit to the region, the first by an American president since 1978, was delayed by his impeachment difficulties connected to the Monica Lewinsky affair and India’s decision to test nuclear weapons in April and May 1998.

It was the latter development that forced the Clinton administration to finally pay continuous attention to the Indian subcontinent.

NUCLEAR ATTENTION India’s nuclear program emanates from the late 1940s.26 For decades India had been pursuing a dual use program of nuclear ambiguity, ostensibly developing technology for peaceful purposes to satisfy its growing energy requirements, but all the while closing the gap for military deployment. India advocated nuclear disarmament, but reserved the right to militarize its reactors as long as other countries possessed such capabilities. New Delhi considered attempts by countries which possessed nuclear weapons to restrain its activities to be discriminatory. Following China’s acquisition of

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations

137

nuclear weapons in 1964, New Delhi accelerated its own program, which culminated in Mrs. Gandhi’s detonation of a nuclear device in May 1974, an act that motivated Pakistan to embark on its own campaign to acquire the capability.

After the tests, the United States increased pressure on India to conform to the nonproliferation regime, and New Delhi’s possession of nuclear weapons became the dominant issue in its relations with the United States.

South Asia became a testing ground of the global aspects of nonproliferation.27 The United States threatened to cut off foreign aid and reliable supplies of nuclear materials if international safeguards were violated. Successive administrations since Jimmy Carter’s presidency offered incentives to India, while Congress imposed the sanctions.28 Congress enacted legislation in 1976 stipulating that countries that did not have nuclear weapons but imported material to develop bombs and refused to put their nuclear installations under international safeguards were not entitled to American assistance. Congress passed the Symington and Glenn Amendments, sections 669 and 670 of the Foreign Assistance Acts of 1976 and 1977, which prohibited aid or arms sales to countries that delivered or received nuclear enrichment equipment or technology and did not accept International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Since 1981, Pakistan had been the target of the legislation, because India’s nuclear weapons program was considered dormant. After an incident in which a Pakistani citizen was arrested in Houston for attempting to smuggle electronic switches that trigger nuclear bombs, Congress in 1985 passed the Pressler Amendment (Section 620E of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961).

US presidents would now have to certify annually that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device. However, presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush ignored Islamabad’s clandestine nuclear program so long as Pakistan was a frontline state in Washington’s operations against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.29 The end of the Cold War and the winding down of the conflict in Afghanistan brought a dramatic deterioration of US-Pakistan ties and a corresponding improvement in US-India relations. In October 1990 President George H. W. Bush refused to certify that Pakistan did “not

138

Arthur G. Rubinoff

possess a nuclear device.” As a result, the United States suspended aid to Pakistan and also prohibited arms and technology transfers to Islamabad if it were to develop a nuclear device. As a stern warning to Pakistan at the behest of Senator John Glenn (D-OH), Congress inserted the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994 into the Foreign Relations Authorization legislation (P.L-103-236), which called for mandatory presidential sanctions against any country that conducted nuclear tests.30 To everyone’s surprise, that law, which uncharacteristically denied presidents discretion in making a sanction determination, would be applied to India before Pakistan even though Ambassador Wisner had dissuaded Indian Prime Minister Rao from conducting a nuclear test in December 1995.

In early 1998 the Bharitya Janata Party (BJP), which had long been committed to the nuclear option, came to power in New Delhi. In April of that year, India made assurances to Bill Richardson, the American representative to the United Nations, that it would not test. On May 12 and 13, however, New Delhi conducted a series of thermonuclear explosions at Pokhran. Clinton immediately decided to impose a raft of economic sanctions on India.31 The tests, which were predictably followed by detonations by Pakistan on May 28, posed a direct challenge to the Clinton administration’s policy of nuclear nonproliferation. The misleading assurances to Ambassador Richardson and the jubilation that India’s leaders displayed following the tests provoked widespread indignation and alarm in Washington. The fact that the administration learned of the tests from the media, rather than from the intelligence community, caused it additional embarrassment. Pursuant to the provisions of the Symington Amendment of 1976 and the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act (the so-called Glenn Amendment) of 1977, and Glenn’s Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994 which called for punitive measures against countries which tested nuclear weapons, President Clinton signed an order that enacted sweeping sanctions against both South Asian countries.

Yet, by the end of 1999, “in a stunning retreat from Capitol Hill’s decades-long reliance on punitive measures to block the spread of weapons of mass destruction,”32 Congress passed the India-Pakistan Relief Bill of 1998, more commonly called the Brownback Amendment (the legislation

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations

139

took the form of an amendment to an omnibus appropriations bill).

Legislators were responding to pressure from two sources: agricultural lobbies that had substantial sales in Pakistan and the aircraft industry which had significant contracts with India. The Brownback Amendment gave the president the authority to waive most sanctions against India and Pakistan, including those under the Glenn, Pressler and Symington Amendments, for a period of one year. In October 1999, Congress, as part of the defense appropriations bill (Brownback II), gave the president the authority to make the waiver permanent.33 Following the detonation of nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan in the spring of 1998, President Clinton, who had concentrated on other priorities such as the Balkans, could no longer neglect the South Asian region. As former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott recounts, after first protesting the tests, the Clinton administration began the longest bilateral dialogue in history.34 Talbott met Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh fourteen times in order that the two countries could manage their relationship in the twenty-first century. To cement the relationship, in March 2000 Clinton became the fourth US president to visit India, and the first since Jimmy Carter in 1978. The highlight of the trip was a Vision Statement which regularized high level bilateral contacts between the two countries. A reciprocal visit to Washington six months later by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee established a mechanism to coordinate growing economic, cultural, and scientific ties.

The Clinton administration had sacrificed its commitment to nonproliferation to better relations with India and Pakistan. However, its unprecedented close contacts with both countries enabled the White House to defuse the subsequent Kargil crisis engendered by an unprovoked Pakistani advance into a remote part of Kashmir and prevent it from escalating into a nuclear conflict. President Clinton met Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Blair House in Washington on July 4, 1999, and used his good offices to get Islamabad to withdraw under circumstances that did not reward “Pakistan’s wrongful incursion.”35 For the first time IndoAmerican relations became decoupled from those of Pakistan, a development that was reinforced in October 1999 when Pakistan had its

140

Arthur G. Rubinoff

fourth military coup while India was engaged in its thirteenth general election campaign.

THE CLINTON LEGACY IN SOUTH ASIA The transformation in bilateral relations that President Clinton began with a belated but historic visit to India in March 2000 is one of the few areas of his foreign policy not repudiated by his Republican successor. The normalization of relations with India continued unabated under President George W. Bush, and there was talk of partnership with New Delhi. Because of the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell made as many trips to South Asia as the Middle East in the first year in office. As the former Texas governor did not share his predecessor’s commitment to nonproliferation, nuclear issues were no longer an obstacle to improved relations. The new president’s appointment of Robert Blackwill, a China expert, as his first ambassador to India was indicative of Washington’s initial desire to enlist New Delhi in the containment of China.

Despite Washington’s increased dependence on Pakistan as a frontline state, India’s “unconditional and unambivalent” support of the United States in the war on terror after the attacks on September 11, 2001, is evidence of the reality that a new partnership exists. Although the two countries may not be the “natural allies” envisioned by Secretary Powell and Prime Minister Vajpayee, the improvement in bilateral relations begun by President Clinton, especially with regard to military cooperation, became institutionalized and continued under the Congress-led minority government of Manmohan Singh and its successor BJP government led by Narendra Modi.36 This collaboration culminated in the announcement by President Bush during his March 2006 visit to India that the United States would assist New Delhi’s civilian nuclear program. While policy differences regarding Iran illustrated that it was by no means certain that New Delhi and Washington would have complementary interests on every issue, the foundation for good relations had been laid.37

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations

141

Considering whether a paradigm shift has occurred, a skeptic conceded, “Compared with the past, there exists today, in both the United States and India, a far larger number of individuals and interests with a clear-cut stake in a flourishing bilateral relationship.”38 The growing relationship between Washington and New Delhi continued to be reinforced by business interests like General Electric and Pepsico, companies interested in marketing to India’s hundreds of millions of consumers and the over 1.8 million IndoAmericans who reside in the United States. With a median income nearly fifty percent higher than the average American, $60,093 compared to the national average of $38,885,39 they have transformed the image of India and Indo-Americans in the United States. The community, which included 200,000 millionaires at the close of President Clinton’s tenure in office,40 has a higher per capita income than any other group in the United States except for Japanese-Americans, and a larger percentage of its workforce (forty-six percent) holds a managerial or professional position than any other group save Japanese Americans. The Indo-American community has an especially high representation of doctors, engineers, scientists, architects and computer technologists.

These demographics make the concerns of the Indo-American community attractive to politicians, and Bill Clinton was no exception.41 The community’s growing political influence was reflected in the strength of the Caucus on India and Indian Americans in the US House of Representatives.

By 2005, the Caucus, founded in 1993, claimed 163 members, making it the largest country caucus in the 108th Congress. While the community’s political potential has yet to be realized, the caucus for the first time provided India “with an institutional base of support on Capitol Hill.”42 The dramatic shift in attitudes about India in Washington, from indifference or deepseated hostility to the current positive status,43 confirms the necessity for a foreign country to have a strong domestic base of support if it is to exert influence in the American political system.44 Though India ultimately declined to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, the fact that New Delhi would entertain doing so despite its close ties to Baghdad and disdain of big power interventionism is evidence of how much the Indo-American relationship improved during the Clinton years. The

142

Arthur G. Rubinoff

transformation of Indo-American relations promises to become one of the most important and lasting legacies of the administration of President William Jefferson Clinton.

ENDNOTES 1

The author acknowledges a Public Policy Fellowship in 2000 from the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars that made research possible for this article and support from the University of Toronto at Scarborough that enabled him to attend the conference.

2 William Jefferson Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 597.

3 David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Touchstone Books, 2002), 193.

4 Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies: India and the United States 1941-1991 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993).

5 Sulochana Raghavan Glazer and Nathan Glazer eds., Conflicting Images: India and the United States (Glenn Dale, MD: Riverdale Publishers, 1990).

6 See James Warner Bjorkman, “Public Law 489 and the Policies of Self-Help and Short-Tether: Indo-American Relations, 1965-68,” in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph eds., The Regional Imperative: US Foreign Policy towards the South Asian States (Atlantic Highlands New Jersey: Humanities Press, Inc., 1980), 201-62.

7 H.W. Brands, India and the United States: The Cold Peace (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

8 Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

9 Baldav Raj Nayar, “Treat India Seriously,” Foreign Policy, no. 18 (Spring 1975): 133-54.

10 See Karen Isaksen Leonard, The South Asian Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), for details.

11 Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1980 edition), xxxiii.

12 John W. Mellor, India as a Rising Middle Power (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 359.

13 See Arthur G. Rubinoff, “From Indifference to Engagement: The Role of the U.S. Congress in Making Foreign Policy for South Asia,,” in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph eds., Making U.S. Foreign Policy toward South Asia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 169-224..

14 US Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research, “India’s Political and Economic Position in the East-West Conflict,” OIR Report No. 5526, May 15, 1951, 1.

15 Arthur G. Rubinoff, “Legislative Perceptions of Indo-American Relations,” in Ashok Kapur, Y.K. Malik, Harold A. Gould and Arthur G. Rubinoff eds., India and the United States in a Changing World (New Delhi: Sage, 2002), 422.

16 Christopher Van Hollen, “The Tilt Policy Revisited: Nixon-Kissinger Geopolitics and South Asia,” Asian Survey 20, no. 4 (April 1980): 341.

17 See J. Mohan Malik, “Zhou, Mao, and Nixon’s 1972 Conversations on India,” Issues & Studies 38, no. 3 (September 2002): 192-94, which makes excellent use of the National Security Archives documents online at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/ch40.pdf.

18 C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Viking, 2003).

19 See Arthur G. Rubinoff, “India’s Normalization of Relations with Israel,” Asian Survey XXV, no. 5 (May 1995): 487-505.

20 Raymond E. Vickery Jr., The Eagle and the Elephant: Strategic Aspects of US-India Economic

The Transformation of Indo-American Relations

143

Engagement (Washington and Baltimore: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press and the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 37-38.

21 The Pressler Amendment, championed by Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD), made most US military and economic assistance to Pakistan contingent on the president’s certifying annually that Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons.

22 Arthur G. Rubinoff, “Incompatible Objectives and Shortsighted Policies, US Strategies toward India,” in Sumit Ganguly, Brian Shoup and Andrew Scobell eds., US-Indian Strategic Cooperation in the 21st Century (Oxford: Routledge, 2006), 38-60.

23 For details see Arthur G. Rubinoff, “Missed Opportunities and Contradictory Policies: IndoAmerican Relations in the Clinton-Rao Years,” Pacific Affairs 69, no. 4 (Winter 1996-97): 499517.

24 Clinton, My Life, 785.

25 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 264.

26 For an excellent discussion see George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

27 Norman D. Palmer, The United States and India (New York: Praeger, 1984), 216.

28 Peter Galbraith, “Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia,” in Glazer and Glazer eds., Conflicting Images, 72.

29 See Arthur G. Rubinoff, “Congressional Attitudes toward India,” in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly eds, “The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 155-78.

30 Randy Rydell, “Giving Nonproliferation Norms Teeth: Sanctions and the NPPA,” Nonproliferation Review 5, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 1-19.

31 Steven Lee Meyers, “Nuclear Anxiety: The Policy; Clinton to Impose Penalties on India over Atomic Tests,” New York Times, May 13, 1998, available at http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/13/world/nuclear-anxiety-policy-clinton-impose-penaltiesindia-over-atomic-tests.html.

32 Robert M. Hathaway, “Confrontation and Retreat: The US Congress and the South Asian Nuclear Tests,” Arms Control Today 30, no. 1 (January-February 2000): 9.

33 See Arthur G. Rubinoff, “Changing Perceptions of India in the US Congress,” Asian Affairs 28, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 37-60, and Robert M. Hathaway, “Unfinished Passage: India, Indian Americans, and the US Congress,” Washington Quarterly 24, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 21-24.

34 Strobe Talbott, Engaging India (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2004).

35 Clinton, My Life, 865.

36 Robert M. Hathaway, “India Transformed: Parsing India’s ‘New’ Foreign Policy,” India Review 2, no. 2 (October 2003): 7.

37 Teresita C. Schaffer, India and the United States in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2009), 217-18.

38 Robert M. Hathaway, “The US-India Courtship: From Clinton to Bush,” Journal of Strategic Studies 25, no. 4 (December 2002): 29.

39 New York Times, January 12, 2003, 4.

40 “US is the largest wealth market for Indians,” Yahoo! India News, May 15, 2003.

41 President Clinton managed to raise $1 million for the Democratic National Committee at a single California Indo-American event on October 23, 2000. Sadanand Dhume, “From Bangalore to Silicon Valley and Back: How the Indian Diaspora in the United States is Changing India,” in Alyssa Ayres and Philip Oldenburg eds., India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), 115-16.

42 Robert M. Hathaway, “Coming of Age: Indian-Americans and the US Congress,” in Kapur et al., India and America in a Changing World, 399.

43 Arthur G. Rubinoff, “From Indifference to Engagement: The Role of the US Congress in Making Foreign Policy for South Asia,” 169-224.

44 Arthur G. Rubinoff, “The Diaspora as a Factor in US-India Relations,” Asian Affairs 32, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 169-87.

IV. IRAQ AND ANTI-TERRORISM

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 10

US FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD THE IRAQI KURDS DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION Michael M. Gunter Department of Political Science, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, US

American involvement in Kurdistan dates back to World War I and President Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points, the twelfth of which concerned a forlorn promise of “autonomy” for “the other nationalities [of the Ottoman Empire] which are now under Turkish rule.”1 Resurgent Kemalist Turkey’s successful struggle to regain its territorial integrity,2 and British Iraq’s decision to maintain control over the oil-rich Kurdish region of northern Kurdistan, however, quashed nascent Kurdish hopes for independence or even some type of autonomy.3 The first brief stage of US foreign policy concern with the Kurds was over.

More than a half century later, the United States again became involved with the Kurds. In foreign policy, because of the NATO alliance, the United States supported the Turkish government's position on the Kurdish issue.

148

Michael M. Gunter

This was to deny the Kurds any minority rights as they might escalate into further demands that would threaten Turkish territorial integrity. 4 Thus, Kurds who came to support the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey became “bad Kurds” from the point of view of US foreign policy.5 In Iraq, however, the United States encouraged Mulla Mustafa Barzani's revolt in the early 1970s, and thus the Iraqi Kurds became “good Kurds” from the point of view of US foreign policy.6 The United States pursued this path for several reasons: (1) As a favor to its then-ally Iran, who hated Iraq; (2) As a gambit in the Cold War as Iraq was an ally of the Soviet Union; (3) As a means to relieve pressure on Israel so Iraq would not join some future Arab attack on the Jewish state; and (4) As a means to possibly satisfy its own need for Middle East oil. Thus US President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger first encouraged the Iraqi Kurds to revolt against Baghdad, but then with their ally Iran double-crossed the Kurds when the Shah decided to cut a deal with Saddam Hussein. To rationalize American actions, Kissinger argued that “the benefit of Nixon's Kurdish decision was apparent in just over a year: Only one Iraqi division was available to participate in the October Middle East War.” 7 Cynically, he also explained that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”8 Mulla Mustafa Barzani himself died a broken man four years later in US exile as an unwanted ward of the CIA.9 Years later Jonathan Randal argued that Barzani's son and eventual successor, Massoud Barzani, had “never forgotten Kissinger’s treachery in 1975, had never totally recovered from the humiliation of his years of enforced exile, which he blamed on the United States... [and] never stopped worrying about American constancy.”10 Massoud himself recently explained that “we have had bitter experience with the US government. . . . In 1975... it changed its alliances purely in its own interest at the expense of our people's suffering and plight.”11 Writing during the Clinton administration, Kissinger revisited what the United States had done under his stewardship.12 He argued that “those who afterward spoke so righteously about `cynicism' and `betrayal' – having remained silent, or worse, about the far vaster tragedy taking place in Indochina – never put forward an alternative course we could, in fact, have

US Foreign Policy toward the Iraqi Kurds …

149

pursued.” He maintained that “even from the perspectives of two decades, I like the alternates to the course we pursued even less,” although he admitted that “for the Kurdish people, perennial victims of history, this is, of course, no consolation.” More specifically, Kissinger explained that “saving the Kurds would have required the opening of a new front in inhospitable mountains close to the Soviet border.” Thus, “we did not have the option of overt support in a war so logistically difficult, so remote, and so incomprehensible to the American public.” Moreover, “the Shah had made the decision, and we had neither the plausible arguments nor strategies to dissuade him.” Kissinger concluded: “As a case study, the Kurdish tragedy provides material for a variety of conclusions: the need to clarify objectives at the outset; the importance of relating goals to available means; the need to review an operation periodically; and the importance of coherence among allies.” In other words, the Iraqi Kurds had played the role of dispensable pawns for US foreign policy.

The third stage of US foreign policy involvement with the Iraqi Kurds began with the Gulf War in 1991, continued during the Clinton administration, and played out in further stages in the post-Saddam era. This chapter, however, is mainly concerned with the immediate events leading up to and occurring during the Clinton administration.

As the Iraqi military was being ousted from Kuwait in 1991, Clinton's predecessor, US President George H. W. Bush, encouraged “the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands –to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.”13 Despite initial successes, however, neither the Iraqi Shiites nor the Kurds proved able to cope with Saddam's stronger military. As Saddam began to put the Kurdish rebellion down, the two Iraqi Kurdish leaders – Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – appealed to Bush for help by reminding the president: “You personally called upon the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship.”14 For a variety of reasons, however, the United States decided not to intervene in the internal Iraqi strife. Doing so could lead, it was feared, to an unwanted, protracted US occupation that would be politically unpopular in the United States, to an unstable government in Iraq, or even “Lebanization”

150

Michael M. Gunter

of the country and destabilization of the Middle East. Furthermore, the United States also concluded that Saddam could win. To support the Kurds against him might require an unwanted, permanent US commitment. Possibly too, the memory of overstepping itself in the Korean War by trying to totally replace the North Korean regime after initially liberating South Korea, also influenced US thinking. In addition, Kurdish success in Iraq might provoke Kurdish uprisings in Turkey, Syria, or Iran, states whose cooperation the United States felt it needed. A US Senate Foreign Relations staff report written by Peter Galbraith and issued a month after Saddam had put down the rebellion confirmed that the United States “continued to see the opposition in caricature” and feared that the Kurds would seek a separate state and that the Shiites wanted an Iranian-style Islamic republic.15 Once it became clear the United States was not going to intervene, the uneven struggle turned into a rout and some 1.5 million Kurdish refugees fled to the Iranian and Turkish frontiers where they faced death from the hostile climate and lack of provisions. This refugee dilemma quickly created a disastrous political problem for everyone involved, including the United States, Turkey, and Iran. After much soul searching, the United States reversed itself and took several steps to protect the Kurds. United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 of April 5, 1991, condemned “the repression of the Iraqi civilian population . . . in Kurdish populated areas” and demanded “that Iraq . . . immediately end this repression.” Under the aegis of Operation Provide Comfort (OPC) and a no-fly zone imposed against Baghdad, the Kurds were able to return to their homes in northern Iraq where they began to build a fledgling de facto state and government.

Turkey's permission and logistical support for OPC (since January 1, 1997, Operation Northern Watch) and the no-fly zone to protect the Iraqi Kurds proved indispensable. Without them, it would have been almost impossible for the United States to maintain the no-fly zone because there was nowhere else to base it. Furthermore, given the double economic blockade placed on the Kurds by the United Nations – Iraqi Kurdistan was still legally part of Iraq which remained under UN sanctions – and Baghdad itself, the ground outlet to Turkey became the Kurds' lifeline to the outside world. As Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign policy spokesman for Barzani's KDP

US Foreign Policy toward the Iraqi Kurds …

151

explained: “Turkey is our lifeline to the West and the whole world in our fight against Saddam Hussein. We are able to secure allied air protection and international aid through Turkey's cooperation. If Poised Hammer (OPC) is withdrawn, Saddam's units will again reign in this region and we will lose everything.”16 The continuance of OPC became a major political issue in Turkey, however, because many Turks believed it was facilitating the vacuum of authority in northern Iraq that enabled the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to enjoy sanctuaries there. Some even argued that OPC was the opening salvo of a new Treaty of Sevres (1920) that would lead to the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq as almost happened after World War I. Thus, went the argument, Turkey was facilitating its own demise by housing OPC. To abandon OPC, however, would alienate the United States and strip Ankara of important influence over the course of events. OPC, for example, enabled the Turks to launch military strikes into Iraqi Kurdistan against the PKK at almost any time. If the United States refused to allow such Turkish incursions, Turkey could threaten to withdraw its permission for OPC. Although it might have seemed ironic that an operation that was supposed to protect the Iraqi Kurds was allowing Turkey to attack the Turkish Kurds as well as inflict collateral damage on the host Iraqi Kurds, such was the logic of the Kurdish imbroglio and part of the dilemma for US foreign policy.

In May 1994, the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties, Barzani's KDP and Talabani's PUK, fell into a civil war that immensely complicated US policy toward them. How could the United States help and protect the Iraqi Kurds when they were busy killing themselves? In late January 1995, US President Bill Clinton sent a message to both Barzani and Talabani in which he warned: “We will no longer cooperate with the other countries to maintain security in the region if the clashes continue.”17 Finally, the United States attempted to play a mediatory role similar to one carried out by the French a year earlier. Robert Deutsch, the director of the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs in the US State Department, persuaded the warring parties to meet in Drogheda, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, from August 9 to 11, 1995, in the presence of senior US officials. Turkey sent observers. As in Paris the previous year, a solution initially seemed possible,

152

Michael M. Gunter

capped once again by a proposal to have Barzani and Talabani ratify the final settlement, this time by journeying to Washington at the end of September 1995.

At this point Turkey's security interests compounded the Kurdish divisions. When the US-brokered Drogheda talks appeared to be leading to a settlement of the Iraqi Kurdish civil war, as well as to security guarantees for Turkey in the form of the KDP policing the border to prevent PKK raids into Turkey, the PKK struck out at the KDP. For their own reasons such regional powers as Syria and Iran, as well as the PUK, encouraged the PKK. Syria and Iran did so because they did not want to see their US enemy successfully broker an end to the KDP-PUK strife and possibly go on from there to sponsor an Iraqi Kurdish state, while Talabani sought in effect to open a second front against Barzani.

Given these complications, the second round of the Drogheda talks in midSeptember 1995 failed, as the KDP and PUK proved unable to reach agreement on such key issues as the demilitarization of Irbil, held then by the PUK, and the collection of customs revenues by the KDP. Talabani also blamed Turkey for giving arms to the KDP. For his part, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the Iranian-supported Iraqi Shiite opposition party the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SARI), explained: “the talks failed because they were conducted with the aims of the US and Turkey behind them and were against the policies of Iran, Syria, and other neighboring countries.”18 The situation was then allowed to drift, with the United States declining to try harder to effect a cease-fire between the Iraqi Kurds or to contribute a mere $2 million to an international mediation force that might have forestalled the next round of fighting.19 In August 1996, a sudden renewal of the intra-Kurdish struggle seemed likely to result in a PUK victory given arms it had received from Iran. Desperate, Barzani did the unthinkable and invited Saddam in to help him against Talabani.

How could the United States enforce the no-fly zone against Saddam when the very people it was supposed to protect had invited Saddam in?

Halfheartedly, the United States responded by bombing a few meaningless targets south of Baghdad. Saddam used the few hours he had to capture and

US Foreign Policy toward the Iraqi Kurds …

153

execute some ninety-six Iraqis who had defected to the US-financed Iraqi opposition, Iraqi National Congress (INC). A senior INC official claimed, “in two hours, the Iraqi opposition [had] lost its entire infrastructure,”20 while a US official concluded, “our entire covert program has gone to hell.”21But since the United States’s ally Turkey was now supporting Barzani (to restrain the PKK), the United States was now partially on the same side as Saddam. Indeed, Iran, supporting Talabani, claimed that “Saddam's army moved into the Kurdish area with the US green light.”22 Although the line separating the KDP and the PUK eventually returned to virtually the status quo before this latest round of fighting, with the exception that the KDP now held Irbil, the Kurdish issue was clearly becoming more and more difficult for US foreign policy.

The so-called Ankara peace process initiated by the United States, Britain, and Turkey at the end of October 1996 sought to extend the tenuous cease-fire of exhaustion into a renewed search for peace through a new series of talks. The KDP's temporary alliance with Baghdad had put a strain on all of the Kurds' relations with the United States and made it more difficult to justify their military defense and continuing need for aid. The United States, for example, had closed down its small but symbolically important military coordination center in Zakho, Iraqi Kurdistan, and terminated most of its relief operations.

Furthermore, the following May 1997, some 50,000 Turkish troops entered Iraqi Kurdistan in an attempt to destroy the PKK units based there and to shore up the KDP forces Turkey hoped would help prevent future PKK attacks upon Turkey from the region. In contrast to earlier incursions, this time the Turks did not fully withdraw after completing their mission but maintained a military presence that amounted to an unofficial security zone. Talabani concluded, “Turkey has discarded its neutral role and is now an ally of Barzani.”23 Given this situation and their continuing differences, the Ankara peace process failed to resolve the continuing impasse between the KDP and the PUK. In October 1997, the PUK attacked the KDP and made initial gains.

This caused the Turks to intervene heavily on the side of the KDP, charging that Talabani was now actively cooperating with the PKK. This accusation was apparently not without some merit.24 Turkish tanks actually advanced to within a few miles of Irbil. By the middle of November 1997, the KDP

154

Michael M. Gunter

had reasserted control over all the territory it had lost during the PUK offensive the previous month.

New peace initiatives early the following year, however, led to significant developments and renewed attempts by the United States to bring the Kurds together. In a letter to Congress on the “Status of Efforts to Obtain Iraq's Compliance with UN Resolutions,” US President Bill Clinton argued that since “both Barzani and Talabani have made positive, forward-looking statements on political reconciliation,” the United States “will continue our efforts to reach a permanent reconciliation through mediation in order to help the people of northern Iraq find the permanent, stable settlement which they deserve.”25 The US president also declared that he sought “to minimize the opportunities for Baghdad and Tehran to insert themselves into the conflict and threaten Iraqi citizens in this region.26 In mid July, David Welch, the US principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, led a delegation of US state department officials and a Turkish foreign ministry official to Iraqi Kurdistan in an effort to galvanize these new initiatives. The Welch delegation met first with Barzani and then Talabani. Although no substantive agreement war reached, Welch invited both Kurdish leaders to Washington for talks.

Following a successful high-level meeting at the end of August between KDP officials and Talabani, in early September 1998 first Barzani and then Talabani actually journeyed to Washington. On the way, both stopped off for talks in Ankara. After separate individual meetings with US state department officials, the two Kurdish leaders finally met personally for the first time since the summer of 1994, when their fighting had first started.

After two days of lengthy sessions, they reached what came to be called the Washington Accord.

In announcing this achievement, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also made general promises of US support for the Kurds, contingent upon their continuing unity, by declaring, “the United States will decide how and when to respond to Baghdad's actions based on the threat they pose to Iraq's neighbors, to regional security, to vital US interests and to the Iraqi people, including those in the north.”27 President Clinton repeated Albright's tepid assurances, in letters to Congress on November 6, 1998, and again on

US Foreign Policy toward the Iraqi Kurds …

155

May 19, 1999.28 While announcing a halt to the four-day bombing of Iraq on December 19, 1998, however, Clinton seemed to make a much stronger guarantee by declaring, “we will maintain a strong military presence in the area, and we will remain ready to use it if Saddam . . . moves against the Kurds.

We also will continue to enforce no-fly zones in the North and from the southern suburbs of Baghdad to the Kuwaiti border.”29 In addition, on April 22, 1999, Martin Indyk, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, declared in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, “we maintain a robust force in the region, which we have made clear we are prepared to use should Saddam cross our well-established red lines. Those red lines include . . . should he move against his own people, especially in the north; or, should he challenge us in the no fly zone.”30 Indyk repeated these promises of protection for the Iraqi Kurds in testimony before the House International Relations Committee on June 8, 1999.31 Although these pronouncements did not constitute an ironclad agreement of protection, they were, in contrast to Nixon's and Kissinger's covert and unkept promises of a quarter of a century earlier, public declarations. Thus, they could not be so cavalierly ignored. Yet at the best, these guarantees applied only against Saddam. They did not apply to Turkey or Iran, both of whom continued to militarily intervene at will in Iraqi Kurdistan, especially Turkey in pursuit of the PKK. Whenever this occurred, collateral damage to Iraqi Kurdish life and property inevitably occurred. As Jalal Talabani tellingly observed, “the international protection is . . . against alleged or possible Iraqi oppression and is not for protection against Turkish or Iranian interference. . . . We believe that the Turkish military interference can sometimes be more dangerous than the Iraqi military interference.”32 Finally, the US guarantees apparently would not necessarily apply against a post-Saddam Iraqi government hostile to the Iraqi Kurds. The US concern for the Iraqi Kurds was largely motivated by its continuing animus toward Saddam. Once the Iraqi leader disappeared from the scene, it remained uncertain whether the United States would continue its support for the Kurds. Nevertheless, during the Clinton administration, the stage had been set for what eventually became an US-Iraqi Kurdish alliance during the war that removed Saddam Hussein from power in the spring of 2003.

156

Michael M. Gunter

ENDNOTES 1

See Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 5th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965), 626.

2 On Ataturk and the Turkish War of Independence following World War I, see Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 11, Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 340-72; Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed.

(London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 239-93; and Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994), 138-72.

3 For background, see C.J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks and Arabs: Politics, Travel and Research in North- Eastern Iraq, 1919-1925 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957).

4 For background, see Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds and the Future of Turkey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997); Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey's Kurdish Question (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); and Kemal Kirisci and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-state Ethnic Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1997).

5 In US domestic politics, however, the Greek and Armenian lobbies, plus a tradition of support for human rights, did create some sympathy for the plight of the Kurds in Turkey.

6 For background, see Edmund Ghareeb, The Kurdish Question in Iraq (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981). More recently, see Michael M. Gunter, The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).

7 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1979), 1265.

8 Cited in the unauthorized publication of US House of Representatives Pike Committee Report investigating the CIA published as “The CIA Report the President Doesn't Want You to Read,” The Village Voice, Feb. 16, 1976, 70-92. The part dealing with the Kurds is entitled “Case 2: Arms Support,” and appears on pages 85 and 87-88.

9 See David A. Korn, “The Last Years of Mustafa Barzani,” Middle East Quarterly 1 (June 1994): 12-27.

10 Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge What Forgiveness? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 299.

11 Cited in “Iraq: KDP's Barzani Urges Arab-Kurdish Dialogue,” AI-Majallah (London), Oct. 511, 1997, 29; as cited in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East & South Asia (97283), Oct.10, 1997, 2. Hereafter cited as FBIS-NES. 12 The following discussion and citations are taken from the chapter on the Kurdish tragedy in Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 576-96.

13 “ Remarks to the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” February15, 1991, cited in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush, 1991 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1991), 1:145.

14 Cited in “United States Turns Down Plea to Intervene as Kirkuk Falls,” International Herald Tribune, March 30, 1991.

15 See United States Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Civil War in Iraq: A Staff Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, report prepared by Peter

US Foreign Policy toward the Iraqi Kurds …

157

W. Galbraith, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., May 1991.

Cited in “Iraqi Kurds Reportedly to Block Terrorist Attacks,” Ankara TRT Television Network, 1600 GMT, Apr. 8, 1992; as cited in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, West Europe, April 9, 1992, 43. Hereafter cited as FBIS-WEU. 17 Cited in Selim Caglayan, “Clinton Reprimands Barzani and Talabani,” Hurriyet (Istanbul), January 28, 1995, 18; as cited in FBIS-WEU, February 1, 1995, 27.

18 Cited in “SARI Chief Interviewed on Internecine Strife,” Tehran Times, October 11, 1995, 2; as cited in FBIS-NES, October 26, 1995, 46.

19 Kevin McKierman, “The Kurdish Question and US Policy,” Independent (Santa Barbara, California), September 19, 1996, 16. Also see Katherine A. Williams, “How We Lost the Kurdish Game,” Washington Post, September 15, 1996, Cl. 20 Cited in Tim Weiner, “Iraqi Offensive into Kurdish Zone Disrupts US Plot to Oust Hussein,” New York Times, September 7, 1996, 4.

21 Cited in Kevin Fedarko, “Saddam's Coup,” Time, September 23, 1996, 44.

22 Tehran Times, September 3, 1996, 2; as cited in FBIS-NES, September 3, 1996, 1.

23 Cited in Ittihad (PUK), May 31, 1997; as cited in “Iraq: Talabani Interviewed on Turkish Operation, Other Issues,” FBIS-NES (97-152), June 1, 1997, 2.

24 “PUICKDP Truce Ends, Turkish Jets Raid Region,” Turkish Daily News, October 25, 1997.

25 Cited in Saadet Oruc, “Diplomatic Maneuvers in Iraqi Kurdistan,” Turkish Probe, July 26, 1998.

26 Cited in Oruc, “Diplomatic Maneuvers.”

27 Cited in Harun Kazaz, “Ambiguity Surrounds N. Iraq Kurdish Agreement,” Turkish Probe, October 11, 1998.

28 Letter to Congressional Leaders Reporting on Iraq’s Compliance With United Nations Security Council Resolutions, November 5, 1998, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1998 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1999), 2:1986; and Letter to Congressional Leaders Reporting on Iraq’s Compliance With United Nations Security Council Resolutions, May 19, 1999, Public Papers: William J. Clinton, 1999, 1:814.

29 Cited in Address to the Nation on the Completion of Military Strikes on Iraq, December 19, 1998, Public Papers: William J. Clinton, 1998, 2:2200.

30 Cited in “Amb. Martin S. Indyk Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, NYC April 22, 1999, available at https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/indyk.htm.

31 See “Martin Indyk Statement, House International Relations Committee, June 8,” Iraq News, June 11, 1999.

32 Cited in Salah Awwad, “Interview with Jalal Talabani,” Al-Quds al-Arabi, September 22, 1998, 3; as cited in FBIS-NES (98-266), September 23, 1998.

16

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 11

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BAGHDAD: CLINTON’S POLICY TOWARDS IRAQ Stefanie Nanes Department of Political Science, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

How did the US come to invade Iraq in March 2003? Setting aside the intelligence debate about weapons of mass destruction or the proclaimed US desire to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, it has become a point of accepted fact that the invasion of Iraq was solely a product of George W. Bush and his administration’s decision making process. Any comparisons to President Clinton on the right or left tend to emphasize the differences between Clinton and Bush. The left criticizes Bush’s singleminded unilateralism and rash decision to invade Iraq. The right criticizes Clinton for inaction on Iraq’s weapons program and general “softness” on Iraq. Both are wrong. Clinton, in fact, took multiple measures during his presidency to confront the challenge of a re-armed Iraq, including enforcing a devastating sanctions regime, mounting a military bombardment, funding the exile Iraqi opposition, and attempting a covert coup. Like George W.

160

Stefanie Nanes

Bush, Clinton had a foreign policy in relation to Iraq that was for the most part unilateral, not multilateral.

Once elected in 1992, Clinton inherited a policy of containment towards Iraq from his predecessor, George H. W. Bush. This policy included weapons inspections by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq to protect the civilian Kurdish and Shi’ite populations there, and a restrictive sanctions regime to prevent Saddam Hussein from rebuilding his weapons capabilities.

By the end of the 1990s, the sanction regime was routinely disregarded by the world community and loosened by the oil-for-food program. The inspectors had left Iraq in 1998, and the no-fly zones were used to bombard Iraq weekly, if not daily. Containment was clearly not working, but it had not been abandoned publicly by the United States. With the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, the Clinton administration had officially shifted US Iraq policy from containment to regime change. While Clinton did not appear willing to engage in direct military action in pursuit of regime change in Iraq, policies and decisions by and during his administration laid critical groundwork for the US invasion three years after he left office.

FOREIGN POLICY CONTEXT: THE END OF THE COLD WAR Bill Clinton was elected president partially as a rejection of George H. W. Bush, who was perceived as being too involved with foreign policy and not caring enough about domestic problems within the United States, particularly the recession of the early 1990s. An anti-status quo sentiment existed among the electorate.1 People were particularly anxious about personal concerns: the flight of well-paying industrial jobs abroad, rising costs of health care and college tuition, persistent poverty and urban decay.

Their concerns led them to elect “the man from Hope,” who campaigned as someone who would focus his energies on the challenges at home.

Slouching towards Baghdad

161

The international context compounded the domestic situation. After the Cold War ended in American victory, Americans wished to turn inward.

Military budgets had exploded in the 1980s, and the majority of Americans were ready for their peace dividend. However, it was precisely the fluid situation of the post-Cold War that would demand continued American engagement with the world.

The combination of the end of the Cold War and the general desire of the American public to focus on domestic rather than global concerns led to a number of outcomes. First, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the organizing principle for half a century of US foreign policy, confronting communism, evaporated.2 Second, as the sole remaining global superpower, the United States was able to pursue its goals with little or no opposition from the world community. Finally, many domestic constituencies were energized by the end of the Cold War. With the absence of great power rivalry and the US as the undisputed superpower, they saw a unique opportunity for the United States to pursue foreign policy options that had been suppressed in the overarching battle against Communism.

These goals included the promotion of democracy abroad, the protection of human rights, humanitarian intervention, regulating the arms trade, and stimulating economic growth. This domestic pressure led to the wide multiplication of US foreign policy goals or potential foreign policy goals.

There were simply too many demands, demands that often competed with one another, as in the promotion of trade and the protection of human rights in the case of China. As a result, Clinton’s early foreign policy was characterized as confused and lacking cohesion.

Despite being elected on a platform focusing on domestic issues, Clinton quickly became an activist president in terms of US interventionism. The American interventions in Haiti and Yugoslavia are the most prominent examples during Clinton’s early tenure. By the end of 1995, Clinton had ordered US forces into twenty-five separate operations.3 This number contrasts markedly with seventeen operations for Reagan during his two terms, and fourteen for Bush senior during his one term in office. This led some critics to call Clinton’s foreign policy “social work.”4 These interventions would become less frequent with the election of a Republican

162

Stefanie Nanes

Congress in 1994, which asserted the frustrated isolationist sentiment that had led many Americans to vote for Clinton in the first place.

This isolationism, however, came to be expressed as US withdrawal not from the international stage, but from international bodies and cooperation.

Thus, isolationism at home plus the lack of any strong counterbalancing force abroad morphed into unilateralism. In short, the US would remain involved in the world, but only on its own terms and not in cooperation with any international body. As the only remaining superpower, this was deemed America’s right. This trend would eventually reach full flower with the election of George W. Bush, but its stirrings began during Clinton’s administration.

CLINTON’S FIRST TERM During Clinton’s first term, Iraq hardly figured into the president’s prominent foreign policy efforts. Other foreign policy challenges had risen to the fore and the sanctions regime remained relatively intact and effective.

Still, the Clinton administration did maintain a policy towards Iraq called dual containment. Dual containment meant the US would try to contain both Iran and Iraq, viewing them both as threats to US interests in the region.

“Dual containment was envisaged not as a long-term solution to the problems of Gulf stability but as a way of temporarily isolating the two chief opponents of the American-sponsored regional order.”5 Regarding Iraq, this meant enforcing full-scale economic sanctions, weapons inspections and the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. Administration officials claimed this policy would be imposed until Saddam complied with continuing UN Security Council Resolution 687 calling for the end to its WMD program.

Dual containment was based on the theory of “rogue states” that became a hallmark of Clinton’s administration. Clinton did not originate the idea of rogue states; rather, the concept is rooted in President Carter’s terrorist lists of 1979, drawn up after the Iranian Revolution deposed the US’s primary client in the region, the Shah of Iran. Reagan called such states outlaw states.

Slouching towards Baghdad

163

In fact, the ‘rogue’ concept itself had no basis in international law. It constituted, rather, a realist component of the early “selective engagement” policy: a means of mobilizing domestic and international opinion, and ultimately of justifying unilateral American action, against regimes deemed to embody some kind of sustained threat to US interests. …It was in this latter context that Clinton used the phrase, “rogue nations” in his 1999 State of the Union address.6

George W. Bush later took up the concept of rogue states in calling Iran, Iraq and North Korea the “axis of evil.”

By Clinton’s second term, dual containment was no longer effective, as the Iranian threat appeared to recede with the election of President Mohammed Khatami in 1997, and the Iraqi threat appeared to grow with increasing troubles in the inspections and sanctions regime. By the beginning of Clinton’s second term, Iraq had moved from the foreign policy sidelines to front and center.

THE INSPECTIONS/SANCTIONS REGIME The 2003 American invasion of Iraq has its roots in the 1991 Gulf War. After Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August of 1990, the United Nations passed Resolution 660, which condemned Iraqi aggression and called on Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The UN also passed Resolution 661, which imposed a total economic embargo on Saddam’s regime to compel him to withdraw from Kuwait. After a UN military coalition led by the United States forced Saddam’s army to leave Kuwait, the international community passed Resolution 687 that called on Saddam to verify existing weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological and nuclear) and weapons programs and to destroy these weapons and all programs for their manufacture. The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was created to inspect Iraq’s weapons facilities (including biological and chemical weapons and long-range missile programs), verify their holdings, and then destroy them. The International Atomic Energy

164

Stefanie Nanes

Agency (IAEA), an already extant UN body, was to investigate Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. These inspections were central to the international effort to contain Iraq.

In the early years, UNSCOM was remarkably successful at finding much of Saddam’s stockpile. In the period that it was allowed access, UNSCOM demolished forty-eight Scud missiles, thirty chemical and biological missile warheads, sixty missile launch pads, nearly 40,000 chemical bombs and shells in various stages of production, 690 tons of chemical weapons agent, three million tons of chemical weapons precursor materials and the entire al-Hakam biological weapons production facility.7 By 1994, the IAEA declared Iraq’s nuclear program dead. Constant inspections by UNSCOM also made it difficult for Iraq to acquire and build new weapons capabilities. In June 2000, Scott Ritter, former UNSCOM official, affirmed that monitoring “allowed UNSCOM to ascertain, with a high level of confidence, that Iraq was not rebuilding its prohibited weapons programs and that it lacked the means to do so without an infusion of advanced technology and a significant investment of time and money.”8 There were stocks that were suspected, but could not be verified: 550 Mustard-gas shells, 500 chemical and biological bombs and substantial amounts of biological and chemical weapons materiel.9 Since no significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq after the US invasion, we must assume, in hindsight, that UNSCOM in fact did a reasonably effective job of destroying Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

(Author’s note: This fact was further confirmed well after this paper was presented, when it was revealed that the only large stockpiles of weapons that were found were ones that the United States had sold to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.)10 Saddam Hussein vacillated between cooperation and defiance in his relationship with weapons inspectors. He consistently tried to satisfy UNSCOM enough to get the sanctions lifted, while keeping as many weapons as he could. He would declare areas to which inspectors needed access as off-limits, primarily many of his presidential palaces. In the summer of 1995, Hussein Kamil, Saddam’s son-in-law and high ranking official in charge of the regime’s weapons of mass destruction, defected to

Slouching towards Baghdad

165

Jordan, where he revealed in fact how much of Saddam’s weapons programs had been concealed from inspectors, even as inspectors declared their progress. Thus began what is referred to as a “cat and mouse game” that lasted until 1998 when the inspectors left Iraq. This “game” featured UN inspectors demanding access to weapons sites, Saddam refusing access, the US using military pressure (such as bombing, moving US warships in as a show of force)11 to compel access and inspectors eventually attaining partial access. This obfuscation led to widespread suspicions that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction.

Inspections were half of containment policy. Sanctions were the other half. Initially imposed to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, the total economic embargo was extended by Resolution 687 at the end of the war.

In order to get the sanctions lifted, Iraq had to certify through UNSCOM that it had destroyed its stockpile of biological and chemical weapons. This was a far-reaching sanctions regime that slowly strangled the Iraqi economy and the Iraqi population. In a country previously known for its high standard of health care, infant mortality directly attributable to the impact of the sanctions for Iraqi children under age five ranged from five thousand to seven thousand per month.12 Malnutrition levels, despite the oil-for-food program, were at 30 percent. In a country known throughout the Arab world for its high educational standards, dropout rates ranged between 20-30 percent, as young people were forced to work to help support families. In short, the sanctions exacted a crippling toll on the Iraqi people, while strengthening Saddam’s hold on power. By the late 1990s, the sanctions were no longer achieving their goal of compelling compliance with inspections.

US POLICY SHIFTS FROM CONTAINMENT TO REGIME CHANGE Although the stated goal of sanctions was to compel Iraq to submit to inspections, by the end of the 1990s, it became increasingly common to hear

166

Stefanie Nanes

commentators openly state that a secondary goal of the sanctions was to remove Saddam from power. This sentiment arose in prominent foreign policy journals from authors both in favor of and opposed to continuing the sanctions regime. Gregory Gause III, arguing in favor of revising the sanctions regime, noted that “sanctions have been unable to achieve their other goal, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.”13 He also admits that UNSCOM, while “hardly a CIA front,” was indeed one of the few means of gathering intelligence inside Iraq.” In his conclusion he added “down the road . . . rollback might become a more promising alternative.”

Karl and John Mueller opposed sanctions precisely because they were not achieving their twin goals of “keeping Saddam Hussein from developing weapons with which he can once again threaten his neighbors” and “remov(ing) him from office.”14 Since the sanctions were a failure on both of these counts, these authors argued, they should be revised towards a much more limited program. Despite these arguments, removing Saddam from office, in fact, was not part of Resolution 687 as it was written.

We see clear evidence of this shift in US policy in the increasing use of unilateral bombing campaigns through the latter part of the 1990s and the move to covert, then overt, official commitment to overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The years 1991-1996 were quiet in terms of military action against Iraq. During those years, UNSCOM was making solid progress towards verifying and destroying Saddam’s weapons stores. The one exception occurred in June 1993 as a response to a Baghdad conspiracy to assassinate George H. W. Bush on visit to Kuwait. Clinton, possibly as a gesture of presidential friendliness, ordered limited raids against some neighborhoods in Baghdad, damaging government buildings and striking residential neighborhood, resulting in several civilian casualties.15 Other than this raid, the US used no military force against Iraq from the end of the Gulf War until the end of 1996.

The year 1996 was a turning point. In August 1996, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, an Iraqi Kurdish party losing an internal military struggle for power in a civil war with other Iraqi Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, called on the Iraqi government to intervene militarily on their behalf.

Needless to say, Saddam Hussein was pleased to be invited into territory his

Slouching towards Baghdad

167

army had been prevented from entering since 1991 due to the no-fly zones.

His actions, however, violated the no-fly zone. The US dropped forty-four missiles on defense installations in the south and central regions in September 1996.16 It is worth pointing out that although Saddam’s intervention was in the north, the US destroyed military installations in southern and central Iraq.

All was quiet again until December 1998, when the US with the help of Great Britain initiated Operation Desert Fox, a four-day intensive bombing campaign, “the most massive military strike on Iraq since Desert Storm.”17 This bombing campaign was ostensibly in response to Saddam’s announcing the end of Iraq’s cooperation with UNSCOM. However, Saddam did not order the inspectors out. UNSCOM withdrew from Iraq, complaining of obstruction by Iraq.18 Richard Butler, UNSCOM’s head, says he was instructed by the US ambassador to the UN that it would be wise for him to withdraw UNSCOM personnel before planned US and British bombing. It was this bombing campaign that marked the decisive end of UNSCOM’s inspections. There were no more weapons inspections after Desert Fox. Bombing frequency and intensity increased, such that by 1999, US and British warplanes were bombing Iraq on a weekly basis. By 2003, well beyond Clinton’s tenure, the no-fly zones were systematically being used to degrade Iraq’s air defenses and other military targets.19 While it seems unreasonable to believe that Clinton was intent on “softening Iraq up” for the invasion of 2003, his administration set a clear precedent of preference for use of force over diplomacy, for unilateral action over cooperation with allies and international bodies. Madeleine Albright dismissed criticisms of US action without international support, stating that with regards to Iraq, the US will act “multilaterally if we can and unilaterally if we must” because the US considers “this area vital to US national interests.”20 Even well before the Desert Fox campaign in December 1998, the United States had put itself on the path to regime change in Iraq, as evidenced by its sponsorship of a covert coup in June 1996 and approval of funding for the exile Iraqi opposition in May and October of 1998. The 1996 attempted coup was a CIA plan to use UNSCOM inspections to trigger a crisis that would create a pretext for a US military attack against the Special

168

Stefanie Nanes

Republican Guard, Saddam’s personal security force.21 After decapitating the Republican Guard, the plan went, defectors from Saddam’s regime who had been cooperating with the CIA would have an open field to take control of the country. In short, the coup collapsed well before it was even set into motion. Hussein’s intelligence services had set up their own, highly successful surveillance of UNSCOM and discovered the plot in June 1996.

The US bombing in September 1996, ostensibly in response to Saddam’s incursion in the north, may also be seen as part of a last ditch effort to enable the coup, although it appears by that time, the plotters had either escaped the country or been tortured and executed. Saddam understood that the plot was the CIA’s doing, not a UNSCOM plot, however, and therefore retained inspectors in the hopes of getting a clean bill and the removal of sanctions.

A new phase of the “cat and mouse” game had begun with the US asserting its commitment to inspections, using military force and sanctions to compel compliance, and becoming increasingly committed to a policy of regime change. In his book about the US relationship to weapons inspections, Scott Ritter describes the United States as “manipulating, suppressing and fatally undermining the inspections process in support of a different agenda – regime change.”22 The bombing campaigns and CIA coup should be understood in the context of increased lobbying activity by the Iraqi exile opposition and closer ties between these opposition groups and both the Clinton administration and Clinton’s neoconservative opponents. The Clinton administration had established ties to the exile Iraqi opposition as early as 1993. This exile organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), was formed in 1991 under the leadership of Ahmed Chalabi. It began to receive funding from the CIA in 1993 through the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group.

After the 1991 Gulf War, the INC operated under the protective umbrella of the no-fly zone in northern Iraq up through 1996. They were forced out of Iraq in Saddam’s push north in 1996. Consequently, they turned their lobbying efforts more forcefully on the US Congress. Congress obliged with a $5 million appropriation in May 1998 for the opposition to spend on media and other outreach activities. In October 1998, Congress upped the ante by passing the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated “it should be the policy of the

Slouching towards Baghdad

169

United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.”23 The act granted $97 million from the defense budget to this end. While this legislation included a provision for military training, most of the funding was to support “Iraqi democratic opposition organizations.” Notably, the final sentence in the bill reads: Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces in carrying out this act.24

CONCLUSION In his lobbying Congress on behalf of the Iraq Liberation Act, Ahmed Chalabi claimed: Give the Iraqi National Congress a base protected from Saddam’s tanks, give us the temporary support we need to feed and house and care for the liberated population, and we will give you a free Iraq, an Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction, and a free-market Iraq. Best of all the INC will do all this for free.25

We now know that Chalabi’s promise of a free Iraq for free was wishful thinking at best, a calculated misrepresentation at worst. It is not clear whether a Democratic administration (had Gore become president in 2000) would have moved to remove Saddam Hussein from power through direct military action. However, it is undeniable that Clinton recalibrated US foreign policy away from a policy of containment and towards a policy of regime change, away from multilateral efforts through the UN towards a unilateral approach, based on US support for exiled Iraqi groups dedicated to overthrowing Saddam Hussein. After becoming president in 2000, George W. Bush appointed leading neoconservatives to key positions in his administration. Many of these individuals had already publicly stated their support for a US policy of regime change in Iraq.26 The Bush administration

170

Stefanie Nanes

just picked up the ball where Clinton had left it and ran much, much further with it.

ENDNOTES Daniel Yankelovich, “Foreign Policy After the Election,” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 4 (Fall 1992), 1.

2 James Schlesinger, “Quest for a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 1 (Fall 1992/93), 18.

3 John Dumbrell, “Was There a Clinton Doctrine? President Clinton’s Foreign Policy Reconsidered,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 13, no. 2 (June 2002), 52.

4 Michael Mandelbaum, “Foreign Policy as Social Work,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1, (January/February 1996).

5 Zbignew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and Richard Murphy, “Differentiated Containment,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 3 (May/June 1997): 22.

6 Dumbrell, “Was There a Clinton Doctrine?,” 54.

7 F. Gregory Gause III, “Getting It Backward on Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 3 (May/June 1999), 57-8.

8 From Arms Control Today, June 2000, quoted in Walid Khadduri, “UN Sanctions on Iraq: Ten Years Later,” Middle East Policy 7, no. 4 (October 2000), 158-9.

9 Gause, “Getting It Backward on Iraq,” 57-8.

10 CJ Chivers, “Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons,” New York Times, October 14, 2014.

11 Clinton weaves Iraq into his larger narrative in his biography, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). For example, this short note, sandwiched in between discussions of fast track trade negotiations and Kyoto global warming talks in 1997: “In mid-month (October), we had a new crisis in Iraq, when Saddam expelled six American members of the UN weapons inspections teams. I ordered the USS George Washington carrier group to the region, and a few days later the inspectors returned.” Clinton, My Life, 769.

12 These statistics are drawn from Denis J. Halliday, “The Impact of UN Sanctions on the People of Iraq,” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 2 (Winter 1999). Halliday was assistant secretary-general of the United Nations until his resignation at the end of October 1998 in protest against the impact of sanctions on Iraqi civilians. He was the UN humanitarian coordinator of the Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq from September 1997 to September 1998.

13 Gause, “Getting it Backward on Iraq,” 57-8.

14 John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 3 (May/June 1999), 50.

15 The evidence for the assassination attempt was never made public; however, it is mentioned as one of the justifications for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.

16 Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 2nd ed. (Westview Press: Boulder, 2004), 287, and Stephen Zunes, Tinderbox (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press 2003), 86.

17 Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 289. This four-day bombing campaign coincided with Clinton’s impeachment hearing in the House of Representatives for the Lewinsky scandal.

18 “UN Weapons Inspections,” Simon Jeffrey and Philip Paul, The Guardian, December 9, 2002.

In 1997, however, Iraq expelled American inspectors.

19 Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 290.

20 Middle East International, October 21, 1994, 4.

21 Scott Ritter, “The Coup That Wasn’t,” The Guardian, September 28, 2005.

1

Slouching towards Baghdad 22

171

Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermined the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein. (Nation Books: New York, 2005) 6.

23 Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, Public L. No. 105-338, 111 Stat. 3178 (1998), Section 3.

24 Except as proved in section 4(a) (2), which is where the provision for “military education and training” is specified. Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, Section 8.

25 Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollack and Gideon Rose, “The Rollback Fantasy,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 1999), 29.

26 In an open letter to President Clinton dated January 26, 1998, notable members of the foreign policy establishment, many of them neoconservatives, argued that the sanctions on Iraq were no longer working and that the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power should be the US policy goal in Iraq. Many of the signatories to this letter became high-ranking individuals in the Bush Administration. “Letter to President Clinton,” Project for a New American Century, January 26, 1998, available at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ article5527.htm. (Notably, the website for the Project for a New American Century no longer exists.)

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 12

TOWARD 9/11: CONFRONTING TERRORISM, FROM CLINTON TO BUSH Michael D’Innocenzo Department of History, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

Richard Clarke’s televised testimony, under oath, before the 9/11 Commission was dramatic: I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum when I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11. To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you; and I failed you . . . . And for that failure, I would ask – once all the facts are out – for your understanding and for your forgiveness.1

As we seek appraisals of Bill Clinton’s presidency at Hofstra University’s conference, several aspects of Clarke’s judgments need attention. First, why did the tragedy of 9/11 occur? Second, how effectively did leaders and government agencies try to deal with threats of terrorism prior to 9/11? Third, is Clarke’s view of “failure” more applicable to some leaders and some government agencies than it is to others?

174

Michael D’Innocenzo

Although the 9/11 attacks took place during the presidency of George W. Bush, we need to inquire about the level of alertness to the dangers of terrorism that William Jefferson Clinton left for his successor, as well as the mechanisms he passed along for dealing with such threats. How did the Bush administration address issues of al-Qaeda and terrorism prior to 9/11, particularly in light of the record and legacies of Bill Clinton and his administration? How can we gauge the roles played by other leaders and by the media in addressing issues of terrorism during the Clinton years and for the first seven months of the Bush administration?

To pose these questions is not to descend into what some partisans refer to as “the blame game,” nor is it to eschew critical evaluation of both administrations, or of other leaders and sectors of American society. Rather, it is an attempt to fix responsibility of leaders, policies and agencies, in and out of government, for dealing with major social issues. Democracy demands accountability. Deference to high officials – even in times of crisis – is the death of democracy.

GOVERNMENT SECRECY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND INFORMED CITIZENS Seeking to compare the ways Clinton and Bush addressed issues of terrorism prior to 9/11 is a complex process, because much of the essential data on which to base such an analysis remained classified in the years immediately following the attacks. The extent to which leaders should enhance transparency over secrecy (and make classified records available sooner rather than later) remains a major issue for our nation.

The 9/11 Commission had difficulty gaining access to sources and then limited its own calls for disclosure of records. In “Secret Intelligence and the ‘War on Terror’” Thomas Powers warned about the White House use of executive privilege and classified data to “control the flow of information to ensure that good news reaches the public while bad news remains secret, compartmentalized, and code worded – protected from the scrutiny of

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

175

Congress and the public alike.”2 Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) called for an investigation into the “declassification process” when it became evident that the White House had blocked for five months the release of 9/11 Commission staff findings that detailed the extent of intelligence available to the Federal Aviation Administration concerning the likelihood of plane hijackings and their use as weapons. Waxman charged that the Bush administration refused to declassify until January 28, 2005 (notwithstanding that the Commission completed its work on August 24, 2004). Waxman said this was an effort to protect the Bush administration from criticism prior to the 2004 presidential election and to wait until after Condoleeza Rice had been confirmed as secretary of state; the declassification was made fortyeight hours after that vote.3 As the summer of 2005 drew to a close, issues of public access to data about the pre-9/11 conduct of government officials were making headlines, although only in a few newspapers and magazines – usually on the interior pages. These were rarely, if ever, mentioned on television and radio, or in the tabloid press. “Internal Report Said to Fault C.I.A. for Pre-9/11 Actions,” read the page 11 headline in The New York Times for August 25, 2005. This classified report (a few hundred pages) by the inspector general of the CIA, John L. Helgerson, is said by unnamed officials who claim to have seen it, to have censured Director George Tenet and many of his staff. The report called on then CIA Director Porter Goss to convene “accountability boards” that could propose personnel actions for officials who failed “to develop and carry out a strategy plan to take in the years before 2001.” Eleanor Hill, staff director for the earlier congressional inquiry into September 11, said: “The families of the victims had repeatedly asked for some kind of accountability,” but the congressional group did not have the time to do “the kind of painstaking work necessary to assess individual responsibility.”4 In Douglas Jehl’s page-nine story in the Times on September 17, 2005, the headline read: “Republicans Join in Call for Release of Report on C.I.A.” It is striking to note that members of both parties had pressed a year before for the CIA inspector general’s report.

In a related matter regarding pre-9/11 intelligence, the New York Times on September 21, 2005 had a page-fifteen headline: “Pentagon Bars Military

176

Michael D’Innocenzo

Officers and Analysts from Testifying.” This was followed the next day with a page twenty-nine headline: “Senators Say Defense Dept. Is Obstructing 9/11 Inquiry.”5 Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee from both parties registered protests, because the Pentagon had blocked several witnesses from testifying about whether a highly classified program known as “Able Danger” had identified Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers before 9/11. As was the case regarding terrorism information and actions prior to September 11, 2001, few news sources covered these topics, and when they did they buried them deep in the paper, with little or no followup attention.

If the leaked information about the CIA report is accurate, it is highly relevant in assessing the Clinton years in office, because most of the evaluation applies to the 1990s and to the transition to the Bush presidency.

It is also likely to provide perspectives on the relationships between the CIA (particularly its director), President Clinton, and other staff and agencies that were dealing with terrorism issues in the 1990s.

MEDIA PARTISANSHIP AND THE QUEST FOR RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE CIA Director George Tenet received the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, but Bill Clinton was excoriated by squads of conservative, radio, and TV talk show hosts who blamed him for not capturing bin Laden, for not retaliating after the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, for weakening the military, the CIA, the FBI, and for leaving the nation vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks. While one might question how much attention the views of these commentators merit, Rush Limbaugh proudly proclaimed that the judgments offered repeatedly by him and his broadcast soul mates – Hannity, Levin, Savage, Grant, Ingraham, O’Reilly, and Newscorp (print and broadcast) – became an “echo chamber” that shaped citizens’ views more effectively than what his group mockingly described, almost daily, as the “liberal mainstream media.”

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

177

It is essential when considering the topic of confronting terrorism (as on all issues affecting the civic life of this nation) to examine the role of the media in fostering an informed citizenry that has access to reliable knowledge. This issue warrants more attention than time permits for this discussion, but I would submit that it is a huge matter of concern for the health of our democracy. James Fallows subtitled his Breaking the News book, How the Media Undermines Democracy.6 Tom Fenton, in his unsettling 2005 volume, Bad News, provided support for Richard Clarke by saying that he deeply regretted the failure of the media to investigate and report on the failures of the government. Fenton wrote: What happens when officials are asleep at the switch? Whose task is it, if not the news media’s, to prod and goad and awaken them to their duties. Had there been a drumbeat of segments on network news showing the steadily rising Islamist threat abroad, we might be living in a different world now.”7

A column in the Palm Beach Post underscored this deficiency, concluding: “The terrorist trials [for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, which ran concurrently with that of O. J. Simpson] never got the kind of attention the celebrity trial did. If they had, 9/11/01 would have held fewer surprises for America the somnolent.”8 A major example of media failure was the total lack of coverage in major journals (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, major TV network news programs) and the minimal, one-shot coverage in other publications, of the first report of the US Commission on National Security/21st Century, or Hart/Rudman Commission.9 The bipartisan commission was established in 1998, jointly supported by President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress. It issued three reports, in 1999, 2000 and February 2001. Co-chair Warren Rudman, former US senator from New Hampshire, said this “was the first comprehensive rethinking of national security since Harry Truman in 1947.” The Columbia Journalism Review entitled its commentary on the commission’s work prior to 9/11 as follows: “Warning Given . . . Story Missed – How a Report on Terrorism Flew Under the Radar.”10 Many of the

178

Michael D’Innocenzo

commission members expressed feelings ranging from dismay to rage about the lack of media attention. Former Senator Rudman was quoted saying: “The New York Times deserves its ass kicked.” It is worth noting that, prodded by criticism from the the New York Review of Books, the Times and the Washington Post subsequently apologized for their inept reporting on the coming of the war with Iraq. Critics said that the chief Times reporter, Judith Miller, and her associates essentially functioned as “stenographers” for the war hawks in the Bush administration and for Ahmed Chalabi.11 The Times editor’s note of apologies had been buried on page ten on May 26.

The CJR article pointed out that Congress was paying attention to the Hart-Rudman report and had scheduled hearings for May 7, 2001, but the White House stymied the move. It did not want Congress out front on the issue, not least with a report originated by a Democratic president and an ousted Republican speaker [Newt Gingrich]. On May 5, the administration announced that, rather than adopting Hart-Rudman, it was forming its own committee headed by Vice President Cheney, who was expected to report in October. ‘The administration actually slowed down response to Hart-Rudman when momentum was building in the spring,’ says Gingrich.12

On October 24, 2002, the Council on Foreign Relations issued a news release: “A Year after 9/11, America Still Unprepared for a Terrorist Attack, Warns New Hart-Rudman Task Force on Homeland Security.”

FAILURES TO PREVENT 9/11 Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that success usually has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan. But Gerald Posner’s Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, according to Mead, “goes far to prove the opposite,” showing that 9/11 occurred because of failures throughout the nation: the CIA, the FBI, Congress, the State Department, the foreign policy establishment, the media, the White House, and the general climate of public

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

179

opinion.13 The difficult task for historians, political scientists, social analysts, and citizens is to apportion weights of responsibility to different groups and individuals.

As we attempt to sort through the public data available to us, it is appropriate to try to place Bill Clinton in the context of the two presidents who preceded him and who also had to deal with terrorism. In the updated paperback edition of Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, Richard Clarke offers his evaluation of the leadership progression from Reagan to Bush I to Clinton to Bush II.14 As Clarke testified before the 9/11 Commission, and then when his book was first published, there were massive attacks on him personally by members of the Bush administration and by the right-wing media. The efforts to discredit Clarke should be assessed in terms of two major factors. First, Clarke had a 30-year record of nonpartisan, distinguished public service for four presidents, three Republicans and one Democrat. Second, the attacks on Clarke were mostly personal and raised questions about his motivation or political ambition (which he countered under oath). One can ask whether substantial external evidence, beyond Clarke’s own insider views, supports and extends his perspectives.

FROM REAGAN TO CLINTON: EMERGENCE OF A “TERRORISM TRIANGLE” President Clinton’s leadership regarding terrorist issues can be examined in several contexts: 1) reactive responses to provocations, 2) proactive initiatives that constitute agenda setting, both short term and long range, 3) the extent to which rhetoric was backed up by timely and effective action, 4) the nature of coordination, cooperation and oversight of other leaders and agencies within the government, 5) the degree to which the presidency was used as a bully pulpit to inform, alert and educate the public and the media about terrorism as a national priority, and 6) appraisals of Clinton’s overall conduct regarding terrorism, especially when compared

180

Michael D’Innocenzo

with predecessors Reagan and Bush I and with his successor, George W. Bush.

Richard Clarke, who had the opportunity to observe the administrations of four presidents up close, points out that when Clinton came to the executive office, terrorism was not a priority issue on his agenda. But Clarke immediately adds: “Terrorism had not been a major issue in the preceding Bush administration either. George H. W. Bush had issued no formal policy on counterterrorism and had chosen to deal with the single major anti-U.S. act of terrorism during his tenure (the bombing of Pan Am 103) through diplomacy, not the use of force.”15 Clarke is also critical of President Reagan, who he says “did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in Beirut and who violated his own terrorism policy by trading arms for hostages in what came to be called the Iran-Contra scandal.”16 According to Clarke, Reagan’s invasion of Grenada as a demonstration of US power did not compensate for the withdrawal of marines from Lebanon; it left the impression on Osama bin Laden that America was an infidel nation that could be resisted. Clarke also points to the Reagan administration’s role in assisting, supporting and sanitizing Saddam Hussein during his 1980s war with Iran, proceeding from removing Iraq in 1982 from the list of nations that sponsored terrorism, to full diplomatic relations in 1984, to sending Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Saddam to help coordinate US support, including providing satellite intelligence for the military actions against Iran, to “reflagging” Kuwaiti ships as US ships so that they could carry Saddam’s oil with greater armed protection. Clarke concludes that “although Reagan had checkmated the Iranians by strengthening Saddam Hussein,” his actions during the 1980s left a military presence in the Gulf and a growing military alliance with Israel that became grievances for Islamic leaders. The Reagan preoccupation with opposing the Soviets in Afghanistan also had the unintended consequences of enabling Pakistani-mujahedeen alliances to be formed, as well as close ties between the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, and Osama bin Laden. When the Soviets pulled out in 1989, the Reagan-Bush administration was so disengaged from Afghanistan that the PakistaniTaliban-bin Laden-Saudi association was able to flourish, with Osama

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

181

concluding that he and his band of Islamic recruits could defeat a superpower.17 This view of a “terrorism triangle” is fully developed in Gerald Posner’s Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. In his final chapter, Posner claims that CIA agents, in James Bond fashion, maneuvered Abu Zubaydah, Osama’s “operations chief,” after his capture on March 28, 2002, to reveal secret connections linking Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Osama bin Laden.

Posner relies on two unnamed “highly placed” US sources. Bush administration as well as Saudi and Pakistani officials have denied the connections that are described. Posner acknowledges, perhaps ironically, that it might just be coincidental that four of the five key bin Laden terror associates who were identified from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan died suddenly, in a period of little more than a week, once US officials were said to notify the Saudis of the Zubaydah “confessions.”

The big issues here are these: what awareness did Clinton and both Bush administrations have of an emerging “terrorism triangle?” What did they seek to do about it? Posner concludes that George W. Bush did not want to confront the Saudis and Pakistan because he wanted their assistance in dealing with post-9/11 terrorism in Afghanistan, and particularly because he needed Saudi support for his buildup for a possible invasion of Iraq. The relationship of the Saudis to the rise of anti-American terrorism has fueled more debate because the congressional inquiry into 9/11 censored twentyeight pages from its official report18 which offer the speculation that some top Bush officials, dismayed by Saudi behavior, were eager to leak the Zubaydah claims to Posner.

CLINTON’S FIRST TERM: DEALING WITH TERRORISM, 1993-1996 Richard Clarke clearly was pleased and surprised that he was asked by Clinton’s national security adviser, Tony Lake, to stay on in the new administration.19 The 9/11 Commission Report indicates that Clinton

182

Michael D’Innocenzo

decided to shift coordination of counterterrorism to the White House, and Clarke’s role expanded over time to heading the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), with direct access to principals and to Clinton himself. This was a significant step up from Clarke’s previous tasks with Bush I dealing with crime, narcotics and terrorism, “a portfolio often known as ‘drugs and thugs.’”20 Clarke reflectively points out that al-Qaeda had been formed by bin Laden in 1990 out of the Afghan Services Bureau. He observes that bin Laden had ties to El Sayyid Nosair, who was accused of assassinating Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990,21 and to the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing.22 However, Clarke says that in 1993 “no one” in the CIA and FBI had heard of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.23 He further states: “Beginning in 1993 Lake and Nancy Soderberg joined me in pestering CIA for more information about the man [Bin Laden] and his organization. CIA doubted initially that there was an organization.” They told Clarke’s Counterterrorism Security Group that Osama was a “radicalized rich kid” and that the Afghan Service Bureau “was what it purported to be, a sort of Veterans of Foreign Wars for Arabs who had fought in Afghanistan.”24 It appears that the earlier Reagan and Bush I reliance on Saudi and Pakistani intelligence left US intelligence with inadequate sources on the ground among Muslim groups.

Clinton’s willingness to use force to retaliate against terrorists in order to destroy and deter them on two occasions in 1993 was an emerging sign of the strength of his leadership, according to Clarke. In June 1993, Clinton authorized missile attacks on Baghdad to retaliate for Iraqis’ plans to assassinate the first President Bush. Although Clarke initially wondered whether the military response of twenty-three missiles destroying Iraqi intelligence headquarters in central Baghdad had been strong enough, and although he heard complaints from Bush adherents that it had not been sufficient, he subsequently concluded that Clinton had been successful because there was “no evidence of further Iraqi support for terrorism directed against Americans until we invaded Iraq in 2003.”25 While acknowledging the effectiveness of limited retaliation with air power, the 9/11 Commission observed: “What remained was the hard question of how

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

183

deterrence could be effective when the adversary was a loose transnational network.”26 Clarke also concluded that Clinton’s military buildup and response were appropriate regarding the Somalia militia attack on two US helicopters on October 3, 1993 (eighteen Americans were killed in an incident that became known as “Black Hawk Down”). He pointed out that there was little or no publicity, but American snipers shot terrorists in Somalia and more than one thousand Somalis were killed in a single day. Clarke doubted that any stronger action could have deterred al-Qaeda. He concluded that Clinton successfully turned the operation over to the UN six months later, as he had planned, and without a single additional American death.27 President Clinton was also proactive, as the 9/11 Commission notes, in his State of the Union message in January 1995. Clinton called for “‘comprehensive legislation to strengthen our hand in combating terrorism, whether they strike at home or abroad.’”28 He sent Congress extensive proposals in February, and, after the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, Clinton expanded the funding for the FBI and CIA, as well as for local police.29 In June, Clinton, who had been alarmed by the nerve gas attack in Tokyo two months earlier, issued a classified directive, Presidential Decision Directive 39, which assigned responsibilities to various agencies but also gave the president’s highest priority to responding to terrorism that involved chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. This focus continued to define Clinton’s major terrorist concerns, but the president also regularly increased funding and support for the FBI and CIA and sought cooperation with other nations to deny sanctuary and funding for terrorists.30 Clinton highlighted these themes in a speech to the United Nations on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in 1995.31 Four suicide bombings in Israel in March 1996 killed sixty-two people in nine days. Such bombings have become all too commonplace in recent years, but they shocked most nations at that time. President Clinton took the initiative in calling for an International Summit on Terrorism that was hosted

by Egypt and attended by twenty-nine nations. Clarke concluded: “The International Summit on Terrorism produced proof that Arab governments

184

Michael D’Innocenzo

rejected terrorism. Iran did not attend.”32 The Clinton administration continued to suspect Iran of promoting terrorism.33 Clinton had issued Executive Order 12947 on January 23, 1995, authorizing the FBI and the Treasury Department to prevent financial support of terrorism, both in the US and abroad; the president had explicitly cited terrorists’ disruptions of the Middle East peace process. Richard Clarke wrote that this effort encountered resistance from the secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin, who worried that the sanctity of bank secrecy for international financial dealings could be impaired.34 Posner noted that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had had a “well-deserved reputation for horrendous record keeping,” and for years, “terror’s independent finance slipped unimpeded through the system.”35 Because Clinton only employed midlevel officials to check on terror financing, and because he got “courtesy” rather than cooperation from the Saudis and Kuwaitis, little was accomplished, Posner concludes.36 On June 25, 1996, the US Air Force housing complex was bombed in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Nineteen Americans died; hundreds of others were wounded. Six months earlier, in November 1995, the US military headquarters at Riyadh was bombed, killing five Americans. In this latter instance, the Saudis had arrested four men within days and beheaded them without giving Americans a chance to participate in the investigations.37 Clarke and National Security Adviser Tony Lake concluded that Iran had sponsored the Khobar bombing, and they were puzzled as to why the CIA did not reach the same conclusion. This investigation resulted in rising conflict with FBI Director Louis Freeh, who Clarke argued was hostile to President Clinton and his staff, saying they “were all ‘politicals’ who could not be trusted.”38 Clarke did not trust Freeh, who continued to bad-mouth Clinton and who cultivated “back channels” with Republican supporters. For his part, Freeh pointed out in a CBS 60 Minutes interview that he refused to resign in order to deny Clinton the opportunity to name his successor. 39 Freeh’s criticism of Clinton for his handling of the bombings of Americans in Saudi Arabia and his defense of his leadership of the FBI prior to the 9/11 attacks is mostly disputed by the 9/11 Commission. A report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, released after months of legal wrangling, concluded that “the FBI’s ‘widespread and longstanding

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

185

deficiencies’ contributed to the United States’ failure to stop the Sept. 11 terror plot.” Fine’s investigation also found “significant systemic problems with information sharing between the CIA and FBI,” as well as insufficient priority to anti-terrorism efforts and to oversight of employees assigned to work with the CIA.40 Following Freeh’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission that he “did not have an experience” of meeting directly with Bush prior to Septemeber 11, 2001, this “dearth of communication” and many other FBI problems were cited as impediments to addressing terror threats.41 Clarke and Clinton did not trust the new Saudi leaders. While saying they would cooperate in the investigation of the attacks on the US, they actually made a secret deal with Iran: “Iran would not sponsor or support terrorism in Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia would not permit the United States to launch attacks on Iran from the Kingdom.”42 After the Khobar bombing, Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University “declaring a ‘war on terror’ before the term became fashionable.”43 Posner points out that a journalist for the London Independent newspaper interviewed bin Laden in Afghanistan after the June 25 bombing, and bin Laden said the bombings were “the beginning of the war between Muslims and the United States . . . . The Saudis now know that their real enemy is America.” 44 But there was no report of this interview in the American media. Its focus instead was on the summer Olympics, Whitewater, “Filegate,” and the upcoming presidential election. In Posner’s judgment, when Clinton called on his early adviser, Dick Morris, to check public responses to terrorist threats and actions, he slipped into an approach of “tough talk” rather than action because that seemed to be boosting his popularity in polls.45 Questioning the depth of Clinton’s engagement, Posner stated that after the World Trade Center blast in 1993, the president “never visited the site and only mentioned it once publicly.” Also, Clinton did not meet privately with CIA Director R. James Woolsey for two years after that attack, “and never asked for a single briefing on it.”46 Woolsey, who became an ardent supporter of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy, has stated that he resigned as CIA director “over my continuing lack of access to the president.”47

186

Michael D’Innocenzo

Clinton’s critics have focused major attention on the purported offer by Sudan to turn Osama bin Laden over to the US in 1996. Posner, in Why America Slept, cites several Clinton officials who deny that there were realistic prospects to cooperate with Sudan in capturing bin Laden in 1996.

However, Posner agreed with the US ambassador to Sudan, Timothy Carney, who contended that the “rigid Clinton staff missed a major opportunity in 1996.”48 Yet, it should be noted that The 9/11 Commission Report “has found no credible evidence that this was so.”49 Posner’s book, published before the 9/11 Report, concluded: “After 9/11, Clinton told a New York dinner guest that his failure to get bin Laden in 1996 was ‘probably the biggest mistake of my presidency.’”50 Interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes, Clinton was asked by Dan Rather to respond to the view of 9/11 Commission member and former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE) that he had “let pass opportunities to arrest or kill the al-Qaeda leadership.” The president responded: “I signed several authorizations to use lethal force against bin Laden and his top lieutenants.”51 The CIA had formed a “Bin Laden Unit” in 1996. According to the 9/11 Commission, it considered bin Laden’s move to Afghanistan in 1996 “a stroke of luck” because the US had reestablished more operatives there and were confident that they could apprehend Osama. Clarke asserted, “The CIA had no capability to stage significant operations against al Qaeda in Sudan, covert or otherwise.”52 Posner was in agreement here, stating that at the start of July 1996, the CIA had little reliable data on Osama and no reliable sources.53 Clark wrote that Clinton wanted to take action, but the military and CIA “did not and made it almost impossible for the president to overcome their objections . . . . The fact is, President Clinton approved every snatch that he was asked to review. Every snatch CIA, Justice, or Defense proposed during my tenure as CSG chairman, from 1992 to 2001, was approved.”54 On March 24, 2004, Sandy Berger, national security adviser during Clinton’s second term, testified before the 9/11 Commission that the president had ordered “the full measure of the CIA’s capabilities” to eliminate bin Laden. Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton questioned, “So what went wrong?” He quoted Berger’s view: “If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never communicated to me, nor to the President.” 55

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

187

The issue of where oversight resides to insure the execution of policy is central to resolving this important matter.

After his reelection in 1996, Clinton cited terrorism first in a list of challenges facing the nation. In this instance, as throughout the decade preceding 9/11, there was little media attention to this issue, nor did Congress provide leadership or much oversight.56

CLINTON ADDRESSES TERRORISM, 1997-2001 In his second administration, Clinton took the advice of his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, and gave Clarke a new position as national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism.

Clinton also issued two more Presidential Decision Directives (62 and 63) that built on PDD 39 in defining ten program areas for counterterrorism. The 9/11 Commission concludes that these were excellent steps “on paper,” but it was not easy for Clarke to exert authority over other agencies and be sure of their cooperation and coordination.57 Much of The 9/11 Commission Report emphasizes the turf battles in all administrations and among the bureaucracies, the failures to share knowledge and to act in concert. At his commencement address at the Naval Academy in May 1998, Clinton emphasized the need to implement “our new integrated approach” to fight all forms of terrorism.58 The 9/11 Commission noted: Clearly, the president’s concern about terrorism had steadily risen.

That heightened worry would become even more obvious early in 1999, when he addressed the National Academy of Sciences and presented his most somber account yet of what could happen if the United States were hit, unprepared, by terrorists wielding either weapons of mass destruction or potent cyberweapons.59

Raymond A. Zilinskas praised President Clinton’s “wide range of measures aimed at preventing terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction” in light of the then recently released book, America’s Achilles’ Heel:

188

Michael D’Innocenzo

Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack.60 Clinton is particularly commended for greater funding and training of first responders, but the reviewer concludes that assessing the effectiveness of most of Clinton’s measures “will be difficult to do because their contents are mostly classified.”

In August 1998, when US embassies were bombed within four minutes of each other in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (450 miles apart), Clinton was mired in the Monica Lewinsky grand jury proceedings.

After consulting with his staff, he decided to retaliate by bombing al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, that was believed to be manufacturing chemicals used in nerve gas. Clinton had just admitted to his wife that he had lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and he had gone through a difficult testimony before the grand jury. His staff insisted that his military response was undertaken in the national interest. Even so, staffers were cognizant of the likely partisan opposition and negative public response, especially in light of the movie that was popular at the time, Wag the Dog (in which a president manipulates military action to deflect attention from his sexual improprieties). The negative response to Clinton, not only from Republicans, but also people like investigative journalist and New Yorker contributor Seymour Hersh, may have left him less inclined to take strong actions against terrorism thereafter, in the judgment of Posner and a host of commentators on the political right.

Clinton did act to impose sanctions on bin Laden and al-Qaeda on the same day he authorized the launching of the missiles. A few months later, he extended the sanctions to the Taliban in Afghanistan,61 including freezing assets of the Taliban, which had $220 million in gold reserves deposited in the US.62 Appearing at the National Academy of Sciences on January 22, 1999, a few days after his State of the Union Address, Clinton “grieved” over the loss of American lives to terrorists, abroad and at home. He spoke of mounting “an aggressive response to terrorism . . . . Since 1993, we have tripled funding for FBI anti-terrorist efforts.” He said the US had tracked down and brought perpetrators of terrorism to justice, and as the 1998 air strikes showed, “we are prepared to use military force against terrorists who

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

189

harm our citizens.” As he had done on earlier occasions, Clinton took this opportunity particularly to highlight the need to address cyberterrorism, and dangers of terrorists using biological and chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction. He thanked Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel laureate, for assembling a panel to prepare a report on dealing with bioterrorism. Clinton again called for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty “to end nuclear tests once and for all.” He urged compliance with the biological weapons convention, and implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

As emphasized in his State of the Union, Clinton again said: “We should substantially increase our efforts to help Russia and other former Soviet nations prevent weapons material and knowledge from falling into the hands of terrorists and outlaw states. In no small measure we should do this by continuing to expand our cooperative work with the thousands of Russian scientists who can be used to advance the causes of world peace and health and well-being, but who if they are not paid, remain a fertile field for the designs of terrorists.” This was Clinton as agenda setter, making use of the presidential bully pulpit. These views also represent Clinton’s calls for shared, international cooperation with other nations. How much the media, Congress, and citizens paid attention is another matter, and how much Clinton and his staff followed up is also of issue. “For too long,” Clinton said, “the problem has been that not enough has been done to recognize the threat and deal with it. And we in government, frankly, weren’t as wellorganized as we should have been for too long.” Clinton emphasized: “I have tried as hard as I can to create the right frame of mind in America for dealing with this.”63 Clinton also praised the work of Richard Clarke and announced that he was asking Congress for $10 billion “to address terrorism and terrorismemerging tools.” A short time later, Clinton was given the preliminary findings of the blue ribbon panel he had helped to create with Newt Gingrich, the Hart-Rudman Commission. The bipartisan, fourteen-member commission had spent two years on these issues, visiting twenty-five nations during its data gathering. The report received little to no press coverage, causing co-chair and former US Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) to lament: “To

190

Michael D’Innocenzo

this day, it still bothers me that not even the New York Times gave us even a small mention.” The administration did an equally bad job of calling attention to the report. “No one in the administration championed a single recommendation in that report,” Posner concluded.64 According to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, during 1999, the FBI “repeatedly” assured administration officials “that al-Qaeda lacked the ability to launch a domestic strike.”65 Clarke points out that in March 2000, Dale Watson, FBI antiterrorism chief, held a Washington meeting of all supervising agents from the bureau’s fifty-six offices to address the dangers of terrorism. Most agents displayed little knowledge or engagement on this issue; Watson observed that many field offices “had done virtually nothing on terror investigations.” Posner commented: “On September 11, 2001, there were fewer FBI agents assigned to counterterrorism than there had been in 1998, at the time of the East Africa embassy bombings.” Posner further concludes: “There was little direction from the Clinton administration that might have changed their minds.

Clinton had concentrated on pushing the Taliban to dislodge bin Laden, but was not focused on preempting a potential domestic terror strike.”66 Clarke demurs from this view, emphasizing that because “the US military had been unable to come up with a way of attacking al-Qaeda leadership effectively,” the “principals accepted the idea that we needed to examine our policy on targeted assassination.”67 To Clarke and others, it seemed absurd that we could fire missiles into Afghanistan and drop bombs “with the intention of killing al-Qaeda leaders, but we could not ask an Afghan to go shoot bin Laden.”68 President Clinton and Sandy Berger “did not want a broad assassination policy and hit list, but the president’s intent was very clear: kill bin Laden. I believe that those in CIA who claim the authorizations were insufficient or unclear are throwing up that claim as an excuse to cover the fact that they were pathetically unable to accomplish the mission.”69 Richard Clarke credits the Clinton administration for its effectiveness in dealing with the millenium terror alerts and with expanding embassy security.70 Clarke explains that Clinton did not retaliate for the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 which killed seventeen American sailors, because

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

191

the CIA and FBI said they could not provide a finding that al-Qaeda was responsible. When the intelligence agencies did state definitively that alQaeda was responsible, the election of 2000 was over, and it seemed appropriate to leave the response to the new administration.

PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION: FROM CLINTON TO GEORGE W. BUSH The word “terrorism” was mentioned only once during the 2000 presidential campaign, asserts Posner, and then it was uttered only briefly

by Al Gore during the final debate.71 Posner concludes that the Bush administration viewed al-Qaeda and terrorism “largely as an intelligence problem” and focused its priority on ballistic missile defense. Despite the now decisive CIA review of the Cole bombings and the January 25, 2001, memo from Richard Clarke, the Bush administration took no action in response to the Cole bombing. Clarke found this particularly ironic because, while he was complimented to be asked to stay on with Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice told him the new administration would not continue Clinton’s “empty rhetoric that made us look feckless.”72 At Rice’s request, Clarke developed a new policy proposal on terrorism, but Posner observes, “It languished for months as the new administration lumbered through the transition process.”73 Clarke compared the leadership of his last two presidents on terrorism threats: Clinton was the person “who identified terrorism as the major postCold War threat and acted to improve our counterterrorism capabilities, who (little known to the public) quelled anti-American terrorism by Iraq and Iran and defeated an al Qaeda attempt to dominate Bosnia, but who, weakened by continued political attack, could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and the FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat.”74 Although bin Laden was still alive when Clinton left office, the president had “authorized actions to eliminate him and to step up the attacks on al Qaeda . . . . He had seen earlier than anyone that terrorism would be the major new threat facing America,

192

Michael D’Innocenzo

and therefore had greatly increased funding for counterterrorism and initiated homeland protection programs.”75 On the other hand, Clarke says it was Bush “who failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks, and who launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide.”76 The 9/11 Commission Report factually shows the extent of Bush’s disengagement on the terrorism issue. Bush did get daily briefings from CIA Director Tenet, usually with Rice, Vice President Cheney and Chief of Staff Andrew Card present. The commission reported “(t)here were more than forty intelligence articles in the PDBs [presidential daily briefings] from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to bin Laden.”77 However, one searches in vain for examples of Bush leadership on the “increasingly alarming reports, briefed to the president and top officials,” even as the “reporting on terrorism surged dramatically” in the spring.78 The commission does report that Mr. Bush and outgoing President Clinton had a one-on-one meeting in December. Clinton told the commission that he had said to Bush: “I think you will find that by far your biggest threat is bin Laden and al Qaeda.” Bush told the commission that he “felt sure that President Clinton had mentioned terrorism but did not remember much being said about al Qaeda.”79 National Security Adviser Rice says that on one occasion in March, Bush said: “I’m tired of swatting at flies.”80 The commission indicates that Bush did not recall discussing the August 6 presidential daily briefing headed “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,” which caused quite a stir at the 9/11 hearings. He said “that if his advisers had told him there was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it.” In fact, although the August 6 PDB made that point, as did Clarke in several discussions with Rice, as well as other agencies, action

by Bush “never happened.”81 The 9/11 Commission Report states that in May President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would lead an effort “looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

193

and at more general problems of national preparedness.”82 The 9/11 Commission totally neglected to mention that the Cheney assignment was done deliberately to block the growing attention in Congress to the nearly three-year study by the Hart-Rudman Commission. The Cheney announcement came two days before congressional hearings were to begin; because of the Cheney announcement and White House pressure on the Republican leadership of Congress, those hearings were cancelled. 83 The commission does not indicate what Cheney accomplished prior to September 11, though it does indicate that Rice called the first meeting of the principals to address terrorism on September 4, 2001, notwithstanding that chief antiterrorism adviser, Clarke, had been calling for such a meeting since January 25. It is not surprising that by the end of May, Clarke, recognizing that his views were not being treated seriously, asked to be shifted to a different assignment.84 He was particularly appalled that the antiterror policy of September 4, which Rice claimed she had spent seven months developing, was virtually identical to the plan he had handed her in January.

CONCLUSION After the August 6 memo, the commission concluded: “We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the president [Bush] and his top advisers on the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack on the United States.”85 Newsday columnist Marie Cocco has reported that one can get a sense of Bush’s priorities from the Federal News Service, “which transcribes every presidential utterance - speeches, news conferences, impromptu musings at photo ops, off-the-cuff remarks made striding toward a helicopter, official comments with foreign dignitaries.”

From January 1, 2001 to September 10, Bush made “zero references to al Qaida.” The search used the phrase “al Q” – to capture every possible spelling and translation for al-Qaeda, and the result was still zero references.

Of Bush’s twenty-four references to “terrorism,” eight were to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict; another eight referred to conflicts in Europe, and the

194

Michael D’Innocenzo

remaining eight were associated with his project for countering such attacks, developing a missile defense system. Bush frequently referred to this project and to cutting taxes, with fifty-four references to ending the “death tax” (the inheritance tax that affects the wealthiest two percent of Americans). Cocco concludes: “Presidents use public statements for a purpose: to promote their agenda and to prepare the public for what might come.”86 Here is the final assessment by the 9/11 Commission regarding the Bush administration prior to September: “In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did not have a plan to initiate.”87 In Bush at War, Bob Woodward reports that President Bush said he “was not on point” before the 9/11 attacks. “I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice and would have given an order to do that . . . But I didn’t feel that sense of urgency.” 88 Richard Clarke offers a blistering view of “seven damning facts” about the Bush administration that “now most Americans accept.” Among these are: “Bush did little or nothing about terrorism before 9/11; the Bush administration began plotting to invade Iraq well before 9/11; there was no Iraqi threat to the US; there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement with alQaeda attacks on the US (also confirmed by the 9/11 Commission); there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war – it was based on “phony evidence” that led to a “deceitful invasion of Iraq.”89 Another criticism is offered by career CIA officer Gary Bernsten in his 2005 book, Jawbreaker, in which he argues that bin Laden could have been caught at Tora Bora in 2001 had it not been for the ineptness of Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration.90 Albert Hunt, writing in the Wall Street Journal, contends that Bush went beyond “credibility gap” to a “credibility canyon.”91 In retrospect, one can point to areas where the Clinton administration could have taken more or stronger actions, or where there could have been better coordination and oversight. Clinton’s strained, even hostile, relationships with FBI and CIA leaders obviously affected the ability to coordinate and integrate coherent anti-terrorism policies, particularly in light of the 9/11 Commission’s documentation of the massive ineptness in both

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

195

of those agencies. How much of the responsibility should rest with Clinton and his advisers for direction and reform of these groups, rather than with professional leaders of government agencies? When compared to Bush, however, there is no doubt that Clinton sought to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to alert the nation to the challenges posed by the new terrorism threats.

It is also clear that Clinton helped to establish more mechanisms for dealing with terrorism as his years in office proceeded. The 9/11 Commission challenges the views of Clinton’s critics that it would have been easy (or even feasible) to capture or kill bin Laden, and that Clinton was deficient in not retaliating for the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.

On January 25, 2001, CIA Director Tenet gave Bush the same briefing he had given Clinton in November: that the “preliminary judgment” was that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack, “but no evidence had been found that bin Laden himself ordered the attack.”92 Some critics, including Condoleeza Rice, say that Clinton was more talk than action, but with Bush, the nation got neither words nor deeds prior to September 11, 2001. Clinton was at least cognizant of the importance of trying to engage the media and the public on the new and changing terrorist threats. That he fell short of using his impressive presidential bully pulpit skills reflects in part the poor priorities of the media, but also the extent to which his own personal and political problems deflected him from cultivating an important public presence in the public interest.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

AP Archive, US Terror Hearing 3, March 24, 2004, accessed at http:// www.aparchive. com/metadata/youtube/ 1e6b764b0af3e008816477da43e91b4a.

Thomas Powers, “Secret Intelligence and the War on Terror,” New York Review of Books, December 18, 2004. Accessed online at http://www.nybooks.com. ezproxy.hofstra.edu/ articles/2004/12/16/secret-intelligence-and-the-war-on-terror/.

“Waxman Wants Rice/9/11 Hearings,” http://www.truthout.org/docs, February 10, 2005; and Eric Lichtblau, “9/11 Report Cites Many Warnings About Hijackings,” New York Times, February 10, 2005, A1.

Shane Scott and James Risen, “Internal Report Said to Fault CIA for Pre-9/11 Actions,” New York Times, August 26, 2005, A11.

196 5

Michael D’Innocenzo

The authors of these articles were Philip Shenon and Douglas Jehl respectively.

James Fallows, Breaking News: How the Media Undermine Democracy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 5.

7 Tom Fenton, Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All (New York: Harper Collins, 2005).

8 Tom Blackburn, “Awake for O.J., Asleep for Terror,” Palm Beach Post, September 16, 2003, Factiva.

9 Commission on National Security/21st Century, New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, September 1999).

10 Harold Evans, “Warning Given . . . Story Missed: How a Report on Terrorism Flew Under the Radar,” Columbia Journalism Review 40, no. 4 (November/December 2001): 12-14.

11 Okrent, Daniel, “Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?” Public Editor column, New York Times, May 30, 2004, WK2.

12 Evans, “Warning Given,” 14.

13 Walter Russell Mead, “The Tragedy of National Complacency: The Ratings Race,” New York Times, October 29, 2003, E9; Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 (New York: Random House, 2003).

14 Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, (New York: Free Press, 2004).

15 Clarke, 73, 75.

16 Clarke, xxii.

17 Clarke, 42-54.

18 The pages were said to refer to Saudi Arabia and its activities. See Adam Zagorin, “Teaming Up Again,” Time, September 1, 2003, 15; Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties (New York: Scribner, 2004).

19 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 73.

20 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Thomas H. Kean, and Lee Hamilton, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (Washington, DC: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, 2004), 100.

21 The investigation of Nosair’s extremist ties to al-Qaeda was botched by New York police and the FBI. 22 See also Posner, Why America Slept, 34-38.

23 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 79.

24 Clarke, 96.

25 Clarke, 84.

26 Clarke, 98.

27 Clarke, 86-89.

28 Clarke, 100.

29 Clarke, 100.

30 Clarke, 101, 97 and 130.

31 Clarke, 129.

32 Clarke, 104.

33 Clarke, 112, 116-17.

34 Clarke, 98.

35 Posner, Why America Slept, 121.

36 Posner, 25.

37 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 112-13.

38 Clarke, 114.

39 “Freeh: Scandals Ruined His Relationship with Clinton,” Newsday, October 9, 2005, A14; also see David E. Rosenbaum, “In New Book, Ex-Director of the FBI Fights Back,” New York Times, October 10, 2005, A16, and Louis J. Freeh, My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, 6

Toward 9/11: Confronting Terrorism, from Clinton to Bush

197

Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005).

40 Lawrence Arnold, “FBI Intelligence Work in Sept. 11 Faulted in Report,” Update 1, Bloomberg News, June 10, 2005.

41 “9/11 Commission Hearings: Debate Over Legal Snares,” Newsday, April 14, 2004, A4.

42 Posner, Why America Slept, 108.

43 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 129.

44 Posner, Why America Slept, 108.

45 Posner, 109-10.

46 Posner, 110.

47 James Woolsey, “Unprepared: ‘Why America Slept’ before September 11,” Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2003, Factiva.

48 Posner, Why America Slept, 101-2.

49 Posner, 110.

50 Posner, 104.

51 Robert Anderson and Mike Wallace, “My FBI,” Interview with Bob Kerrey, CBS 60 Minutes, June 25, 2004.

52 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 141.

53 Posner, Why America Slept, 107.

54 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 145.

55 James P. Pinkerton, “The 9/11 Commission; Needed: the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth,” Newsday, March 26, 2004, A51.

56 See the harsh judgments of congressional lethargy and neglect in The 9/11 Commission Report, 103-107.

57 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 101.

58 9/11 Commission Report, 101-2.

59 9/11 Commission Report, 102.

60 Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Book Review: Countering Terrorism,” Issues in Science and Technology 15, no. 4 (Summer 1999), available at http://www.issues.org. See also Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman, and Bradley A. Thayer, America’s Achilles’ Heel: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).

61 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 190.

62 Posner, Why America Slept, 145.

63 Remarks at the National Academy of Sciences, January 22, 1999, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1999, 1:85-88.

64 Posner, Why America Slept, 145.

65 Posner, 145.

66 Posner, 144.

67 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 203.

68 Clarke, 203-4.

69 Clarke, 204.

70 Clarke, 206.

71 Posner, Why America Slept, 151.

72 Posner, 152.

73 Posner, 152. Here Posner refers to the principals committee of the National Security Council, whose regular attendees at that time included the national security adviser, secretary of state, secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and United States ambassador to the United Nations.

74 Clarke, Against All Enemies, xxiv.

75 Clarke, 225.

76 Clarke, xxiv.

77 9/11 Commission Report, 254.

198 78

Michael D’Innocenzo

9/11 Commission Report, 204.

9/11 Commission Report, 199.

80 9/11 Commission Report, 202.

81 9/11 Commission Report, 260.

82 9/11 Commission Report, 204.

83 see Evans, “Warning Given . . . Story Missed.”

84 9/11 Commission Report, 204-5.

85 9/11 Commission Report, 262.

86 Marie Cocco, “‘Al-Qaida’ Didn’t Rush to Bush’s Lips,” Newsday, March 30, 2004, A39.

87 9/11 Commission Report, 265 88 Michiko Kakutani, “Berating Bush about Iraq with Charges Heard Before,” New York Times, April 1, 2004, E11.

89 Clarke, Against All Enemies, xvi-xvii.

90 Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker (New York: Random House, 2005), as reported in Newsweek, August 15, 2005.

91 Albert R. Hunt, “Bush’s Credibility Canyon,” Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2004, 92 9/11 Commission Report, 201.

79

V. NORTHERN IRELAND

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 13

PRESIDENT CLINTON AND NORTHERN IRELAND: GULLIVER IN LILLIPUT John Dumbrell1 and Timothy J. Lynch2 1

Emeritus, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, UK 2 School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia

Nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (II:1;5)

INTRODUCTION The prospect of some irresistible external force, some deus ex machina, intervening to bring resolution to conflict in Ireland is a familiar one to all students of that island’s long “troubled times.” To James Joyce’s one-eyed citizen, in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses, salvation would arrive at the hands of the greater Irish diaspora.1 In more recent times, hopes (and fears) have been pinned on Washington DC. Especially in the post-Cold War

202

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

unipolar world order, the involvement of official Washington in the affairs of Northern Ireland assumed the aspect of Gulliver in Lilliput. The outside giant might find himself tied down by diminutive participants in ancient, and sometimes obscure, quarrels. However, the giant’s very presence threw these quarrels into new relief, with the consequent disturbance opening up new possibilities for resolution.

During the Clinton era, the American Gulliver descended into Northern Ireland’s Lilliput. The historical significance and ramifications of this descent were immense. Ancient enmities were reconfigured, or at least shifted to new battlefields (if only in the form of Washington DC around St. Patrick’s Day). A political resolution of sorts, the Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement of 1998, was achieved, “a fine piece of work,” Clinton later wrote.2 Perhaps more important even than the agreement, however, was the positive transformation of everyday life in Northern Ireland during the 1990s. Even the otherwise skeptical Spectator magazine observed the revolution in Northern Ireland’s situation, captured in the title of a 2005 article: “Beautiful, Peaceful Northern Ireland.”3 This chapter offers a descriptive analysis of Clinton’s activism in Northern Ireland. Following a glance at the history of post-1969 US Irish interventions, emphasizing the novelty – though not entirely unprecedented nature – of Clinton’s policy, we provide a summary recapitulation of key events between 1993 and 2001. We then trace the internal administration evolution of the policy, laying particular stress on bureaucratic divisions.

Rather than wholly duck normative considerations, we offer the case against Clinton’s intercession in terms of its deleterious impact on Northern Ireland politics, and we offer correctives to this pessimistic reading. The chapter concludes by attempting to account for the extent and intensity of Clinton’s commitment to Irish peace.

Our judgment on Clinton’s Irish policy is fundamentally, though not exclusively, a positive one. The politics and prospects of Northern Ireland were changed radically during the 1990s, and Washington’s involvement was an inescapable aspect and cause of this transformation. We appreciate the risks of being judged naïve. We also accept that there was a rather uncritical cult of Clinton worship in contemporary Europe in the early 21 st

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

203

century. In Western Europe at least, George W. Bush was, fairly or unfairly, unquestionably the most unpopular US president in living memory.

Clinton’s star, by complementary contrast, rose. He is remembered as the American leader who, in stark contrast to his successor, “talked European,” the president whose 1995 Belfast visit is still recalled as the moment when “hope and history rhymed.”4 Barack Obama, despite his 2009 Nobel Prize, surely did not match his Democratic predecessor’s peacemaking status.

Lest we be dismissed as uncritical Clinton cultists, we wish, at the outset, to enter some caveats regarding our generally positive verdict on Clinton’s Irish interventions. Firstly, we note the limited nature of the breakthrough represented by the Belfast Agreement. By 2005, the Agreement, and in effect the entire peace process, was suspended. Lack of communal trust, the arms decommissioning issue, the continuation of paramilitary violence (seen most spectacularly in the second largest bank heist in UK history in 2004 and most horrifyingly in the 2005 murder of Robert McCartney by members of the Irish Republican Army, IRA): these factors, and a host of others, frustrated the hopes of the 1990s. In parts of Northern Ireland, paramilitary violence and thuggery have continued unabated. Sectarianism is a continuing, arguably even a deepening, feature of life in Northern Ireland. We also appreciate that the 1998 Agreement was, in itself, far from novel. As Social Democratic and Labour Party politician Seamus Mallon (in a reference to the failed power-sharing initiative of 1974) famously put it, the Belfast Agreement was “Sunningdale for slow learners.”

The Belfast Agreement has not yet collapsed in so spectacular a manner as did Sunningdale; it cannot be pretended, however, that it survives in more than a state of extremely frozen animation.

It should be emphasized also that the key breakthroughs of the 1990s, the 1994 IRA ceasefire and the 1998 Agreement, had complex causes. They were in no sense “imposed” by Washington, nor even primarily the result of Clinton’s activism. Cross-community war weariness, demographic projections, the impact on the IRA leadership of the ending of the Cold War, new cooperative strategies between Dublin and London – these factors, and a host of others, were also vital.5 As Richard Haass, adviser on Northern Ireland to both Presidents Bush, wrote in 1990, successful American

204

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

intervention in regional disputes requires the “ripeness” of local conditions.6 It was Clinton’s achievement to recognize that, by the early 1990s, local conditions in Northern Ireland had “ripened” in such a way as to maximize the chances for US interventionist success.

THE US AND NORTHERN IRELAND BEFORE CLINTON Before 1993, the substantial “American dimension” to the Northern Ireland conflict involved interactions between Irish America and (primarily) nationalist republican forces on the island. The US was a source of arms for the IRA, while NORAID (NORthern AID, the Bronx-based support group for the Provisional IRA) coordinated the money flow. The attitude of Catholic Irish America towards the IRA ebbed and flowed, responding to events in Northern Ireland. Bomb outrages notwithstanding, some groundswell of sympathy for the old cause of Catholic Irish America was a consistent feature of the troubled years. A small body of congressional opinion – coalescing around figures like Congressmen Mario Biaggi (D-NY) and Peter King (R-NY) – could also generally be relied upon to back the IRA line (though Senator Edward Kennedy, D-MA, remained deeply suspicious of the IRA). At times, notably during the IRA hunger strikes of the early 1980s, Catholic Irish America positively rallied to the cause.7 Washington’s response to the conflict was far more cautious. In the official State Department line, London was a valuable ally (not least in its role as host to important Cold War US air bases), and London’s wishes should be respected. Strife in Northern Ireland was a UK problem. Though London and Washington frequently clashed over the latter’s apparent lack of enthusiasm in halting arms and money flows to the republicans, the pre1993 era was characterized by a general mutual acceptance as to the proper scope of US intervention. Anything approaching a direct intervention would be “cleared” with London. Washington was also acutely aware that any direct intervention, especially one instigated by a Democratic president, would be universally interpreted as leaning towards the nationalist side of the conflict, and hence was likely to do more harm than good.8

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

205

Prior to the Clinton years, the chief exception to this tradition of official American caution occurred during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. In 1977, Carter issued a statement on Northern Ireland, effectively holding out the prospect of substantial US public and private investment in the province as a reward if resolution were achieved through power sharing. Partly the product of Carter’s wider human rights and peace-promotion agenda, the 1977 statement was an important precursor to the Clinton initiatives. It also reflected Dublin’s changing diplomatic agenda, notably the recruitment of leading Irish American political leaders, including Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill (D-MA), New York Governor Hugh Carey and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), to the cause of peaceful, constitutional nationalism. Carter’s (and Dublin’s) approach was kept alive in the Republican presidential era of the 1980s, with US President Ronald Reagan applying pressure to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to accept the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.9 Though Clinton’s activism and general approach were not entirely without precedent, it should be stressed that his 1992 election heralded an intensification and qualitative step-change in the official Washington stance towards the Irish conflict. A brief survey of the hectic and heady events of the 1990s will set the stage for further analysis.

THE CLINTON YEARS Ten days prior to the 1992 election, candidate Bill Clinton issued his own statement on Northern Ireland, apparently modelled on Carter’s. It signalled a new activism and a clear departure from the cautious noninterventionism of the later Reagan and George H. W. Bush years. It condemned the “wanton use of lethal force by British security forces” and committed a Clinton administration to the MacBride principles (state-level efforts to link US private investment to equal, non-sectarian employment practices in Northern Ireland). Clinton would also appoint an Irish peace envoy, in direct opposition to the expressed wishes of the Conservative government in London, under Prime Minister John Major. Clinton’s

206

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

statement was associated with a new force in the Democratic party: Irish Americans for Clinton and Gore, founded by former Connecticut congressman and long-term Clinton buddy Bruce Morrison. The new group, later organized as Americans for a New Irish Agenda, reflected the peaceful nationalist agenda of business-oriented Irish America. Figures such as IrishAmerican businessman William Flynn and publisher Niall O’Dowd looked to incorporate moderate loyalism into an updated version of the Dublin-led strategy that had produced Carter’s 1977 statement. Touching key IrishAmerican bases, Clinton’s 1992 undertaking was actually written by Nancy Soderberg, former assistant to Senator Edward Kennedy, and the NSC staff director in Clinton’s first term.10 Once elected, the Clinton administration, in the face of open opposition from London, held back on appointing a peace envoy. Signals emerged from all parts of the administration, however, that Washington was looking for swift movement to unfreeze Northern Ireland’s political glaciers. Raymond Seitz, US ambassador to London, told a meeting of Belfast business people that Northern Ireland was not one of those ethnic conflicts that “are so primordial that they lie beyond the reach of rational resolution.” In Northern Ireland, a “little boldness can overcome a lot of suspicion.”11 The issue which dominated 1993 was the possible granting of a visa to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, allowing him to visit the USA. Adams having been twice denied entry in 1993, the granting of the visa in early 1994 was the product of a major White House policy review on Northern Ireland.

The review, in turn, reflected Washington’s response to the Downing Street Declaration, issued in December 1993 by the Major government in London and the new Albert Reynolds government in Dublin. Washington and Dublin drew closer, affirming the Declaration – which set forth a commitment to no “selfish” British interest in Northern Ireland – as a breakthrough. An impressive concatenation of forces emerged: Reynolds in Dublin, Jean Kennedy Smith (sister to Edward Kennedy and the new Clinton ambassador to Ireland), the Americans for a New Irish Agenda, Kennedy-oriented figures like Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume.

In Dublin, Reynolds presented the view that bringing Sinn Féin in from the cold might lead to an IRA ceasefire: “No fundraising, short-term visa, send

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

207

him home with a message, that you want him to join the peace train and leave violence behind and that if he doesn’t he’ll never get another one.” 12 Nancy Soderberg later described President Clinton as deciding “that it was worth the risk of reaching out to Adams, a little bit in the hope he would then deliver on the ceasefire.”13 Adams’s brief American visit in February 1994 was the occasion of deep divisions, both within the American bureaucracy and presidential advisory system, and between Washington and London. Inside the administration, Tony Lake and Soderberg (the NSC staff’s no. 1 and 3, respectively) clashed with anti-visa forces in the London embassy, the State Department and the CIA. To official London, the granting of a visa to a terrorist enemy of the British state was an act of American treachery. Journalist Simon Jenkins echoed the views of Major’s government when he condemned Clinton’s “crassness” and urged the British leader to “invite Haiti’s General Cedras to a taco party on the British embassy lawn in Washington.”14 By the early 1990s, the US was contributing around twenty million dollars annually to the International Fund for Ireland. Administration representatives encouraged speculation that peace in the province would be greeted by an injection of new American investment. Also central to the White House strategy was the wooing of influential loyalist opinion.

Memories of earlier power-sharing initiatives, destroyed by mass Protestant protest, were fresh. Though attacked by Raymond Seitz as an apologist for the IRA, Ambassador Kennedy Smith opened up a dialogue with official Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader James Molyneaux. An important, and much more substantial, unionist-administration link was established with Vice President Al Gore. The US initiatives of the 1990s, quite unlike earlier counterparts, also involved efforts to reach out even to the further peripheries of loyalism. In October 1994, for example, a delegation of six senior figures from fringe parties close to the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association visited the US, meeting representatives of the group organized by Bruce Morrison.

By the time of the loyalist visit, the general situation had been transformed by the announcement of the IRA ceasefire two months earlier.

Morrison’s group had visited Belfast immediately prior to the

208

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

announcement, acting as the White House’s unofficial (and plausibly deniable) representative. The US view was that, to quote Clinton in 1993, the conflict would not “be resolved by the language of victory or defeat.”15 As foreshadowed in Carter’s 1977 statement, US investment would be likely to follow some resolution rooted in power-sharing. Washington alone would have the clout to assemble a coalition which would carry through a deal.

The period following the ceasefire announcement witnessed hectic and headlong progress, usually with Washington at or near its center, punctuated by dramatic setbacks. Later in October, following the loyalists’ trip to the US, the Combined Loyalist Military Command announced its ceasefire. In December 1994, the White House finally named George Mitchell as peace envoy, with Clinton announcing: “There must be a peace dividend in Ireland for the peace to succeed. Peace and prosperity depend upon one another.”16 In early 1995, Dublin and London issued a framework document. Clinton’s November 1995 Dublin and Belfast visits were massive emotional successes. At the practical level, they breathed life into what was called the “twin-track” approach (starting cross-party talks, while attempting to deal separately with arms decommissioning). In February 1996, the Provisional IRA broke its ceasefire by bombing Canary Wharf in London, killing two people. With multi-party talks underway, the ceasefire was resumed in July 1997.

The years 1996-1997 appeared to see the Clinton initiatives running into the rocks. To many, Clinton seemed merely the latest well-intentioned outsider to be deceived into imagining that there was a way out of the Northern Ireland political thicket, and that any progress could come from talking to terrorists. What ended this period of near despair was the May 1997 British general election, and the coming to power of Tony Blair’s Labour government. While John Major’s government had come to accept direct US involvement in Northern Ireland affairs as an inescapable part of any peace dynamic, resentments (and after the Canary Wharf bombing, Itold-you-so’s) remained close to the surface of Washington-London relations. Blair, by contrast, openly welcomed Clinton’s activism. Where Major to some extent had to court unionist votes at Westminster in order to stay in power, Blair now enjoyed a huge parliamentary majority. As

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

209

journalist John Carlin put it, in 1997-1998, public statements emanating from Washington, London (usually in the person of Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam) and Dublin appeared “carefully orchestrated and jointly rehearsed.”17 David Trimble, the new leader of the UUP, was recruited into the peace process ranks, meeting Clinton during the 1998 St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washington. The president’s personal role in the actual Belfast Agreement negotiations was considerable. He was available on the telephone to speak to any or all parties for a period of at least thirty hours. As George Mitchell put it, all parties “were impressed that he would stay up all night, to follow the negotiations, to talk with them.”18 US involvement continued after the Agreement, with Mitchell presiding over a review of its implementation and Clinton visiting Belfast once more in September 1998. The president seems to have been persuaded not to campaign in person during the referendum and assembly elections. Despite all the progress and the recruitment of Trimble, large sections of Protestant opinion in the province still saw American involvement as necessarily, and ultimately, helpful to the nationalist cause. Clinton contented himself with calling for a “vote for peace.” The Omagh bombing of August 1998 (perpetrated by the breakaway “Real” IRA) indicated that opposition to the peace process did not come entirely from the ranks of loyalism. Clinton’s legacy was an uncertain and stuttering peace dynamic, but one that had been immeasurably strengthened and sustained by this extraordinary example of Gulliver entering Lilliput.

INTRA-ADMINISTRATION POLICY DEVELOPMENT Clinton’s Northern Ireland policy necessarily affected the dynamics of war and peace in Northern Ireland. Less explored is the impact of Northern Ireland on the decision-making process of his own administration. Clinton had always been sceptical of the cautious, don’t-rock-the-boat State Department. The State Department bureaucracy, viewed with perennial suspicion by those on its outside, had been largely responsible for keeping US policy toward Northern Ireland under glass and tied to British

210

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

government concerns. Clinton’s most decisive bureaucratic maneuver was to remove State from its position of primacy. Instead, he vested control of Northern Ireland policy in his own office. His much beleaguered first term secretary of state, Warren Christopher, was essentially removed from the Northern Ireland loop. Christopher’s traditional bureaucratic opponents, notably National Security Adviser Lake and the wider NSC staff, were empowered to deal directly with Northern Ireland actors. Lake claimed his own direct diplomatic involvement was one of the intervention’s more usual aspects.19 On all most every level consequential to the policy’s development, the NSC staff and State Department were behaving, pulling, thinking in opposite directions. The two institutions have very different characteristics which were reinforced by the Northern Ireland policy. One is large and old, the other small and young. State’s staff are permanent; the NSC staff temporary.

Because they will ultimately share the president’s fate, the NSC staff are especially attuned to domestic political currents. In Clinton’s case, his NSC team had been his top foreign policy advisers on the 1992 election team.

Concerns with political survival and success which conditioned the White House/NSC staff approach were further advantaged in the bureaucratic tussle by Clinton’s diplomatic style, described by one NSC staffer as “unstructured, rapid-fire, kinetic diplomacy . . . completely freeform.”20 Clinton’s personal intercessions worked especially well in Northern Ireland. The US State Department, so long the arbiter of Washington’s non-policy in the conflict, had no countervailing strategy.

The State Department’s impotence was not unique. The usually dominant institutions of the American government were similarly incapable of doing much to alter the direction of the Clinton initiative. This is an especially interesting and problematic feature of Clinton’s Irish activism.

Given the interest of the CIA, FBI, Defense and State Departments in American counterterrorism generally, and thus in defending the British position on Northern Ireland specifically, we might have expected a far more cogent response from them to Clinton’s visa diplomacy. But intragovernmental differences did not negate White House efforts. Such differences had had far greater consequences for his Democratic

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

211

predecessor; witness the rivalry of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1977-80. Why did Clinton’s wider foreign policy escape a similar fate?

One possible answer is that Carter did not possess the skills that President Clinton brought to his foreign policy. Northern Ireland policy highlights very well Clinton’s talent for bureaucratic circumvention. A leader seemingly obsessed with his historical legacy, Clinton was motivated and sufficiently skilled to outmaneuver forces that might have compromised the ambitions of a less able president. His cleverness lay in drawing together nonexecutive and even nongovernmental sources of foreign policy power in Irish America, the Irish Republic, and Northern Ireland that left his bureaucratic opponents floundering for countervailing options. Skill, plus a fortuitous downgrading of the Anglo-American strategic relationship brought about by the end of the Cold War, meant Clinton had a maneuverability in matters touching on terrorism that was denied to his predecessors and, indeed, to his successor.

THE CASE AGAINST CLINTON’S ACTIVISM The more obvious charge against the American Northern Ireland initiative is one which Bill Clinton has faced often since 9/11: that it was too flexible when it came to dealing with terrorism. Clinton’s visa for Gerry Adams, by this interpretation, began the process of bending over backwards to appease Northern Ireland’s paramilitaries. Tony Blair, especially in the British media, and especially after the IRA’s criminality became more difficult to ignore after Christmas 2004, continued to face similar charges.21 The obvious response is, and has been, the utilitarian one: there are more people alive on the streets of Belfast (and London) today than would have been the case had no concessions been granted to the shadow armies of the North. Key Clinton personnel certainly believe this defense of the policy to be practically watertight. By the same token, of course, there are more “early release” terrorists walking those same streets because of the peace process.

So runs the “soft-on-terrorism” charge.

212

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

In W. B. Yeats’ poem, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”22 This famous line invites consideration of a more problematic consequence of the Clinton-backed peace process: the apparent weakening of the middle ground of Northern Ireland politics. As peace advanced, the two center parties retreated. The greatest electoral rewards after 1994 have been for those parties on the far ends of the Northern Ireland political spectrum. The UUP and SDLP, once the polity’s first and second parties, became increasingly moribund in third and fourth place. The Democratic Unionists (DUP) and Sinn Féin, the two parties defined in antithesis to one another, are now first and second – and look set to remain so. “Paisleyites” still insist on not being officially photographed with “Shinners.” And yet it is from this combination of forces that a renewed commitment to power-sharing must come. This is the dynamic the peace process has generated.

Seamus Mallon, SDLP deputy first minister in the power-sharing assembly established in 1998, later bemoaned this state of affairs. Too much of Washington, London, and Dublin’s efforts have gone into keeping the extremes happy at the price of the center ground. Often, he charged, negotiations deliberately excluded moderate nationalism and unionism. Sinn Féin “damn well near lived in Downing Street” and so too, by implication, in the Clinton White House.23 The obsession with a peace process – to the point of its deification – reduced violence, but at the price of the long-term political process which rests now on two mutually antagonistic parties, “full of passionate intensity.”

Our rebuff to this accusation takes its cue from Mallon’s former boss, John Hume. He consistently, if quietly, hinted that the slow death of the center ground might be an essential and necessary by-product of the peace process. The center ground was the problem, not the solution to the Troubles.

John Hume, the Irishman more listened to by Clinton than perhaps any other, led a party whose failure would actually lead to the success of the peace process.24 The SDLP’s demise would have to happen if Sinn Féin were to be fully locked into democratic politics. The price of this happening would be the shrivelling up of the SDLP. Clinton, of course, is hardly culpable for the internal and enduring dynamics of Northern Ireland party politics. His conditional embrace of Sinn

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

213

Féin may have been catalytic in the SDLP’s demise but was not premised on such a prophecy. Neither should Clinton be held accountable for the SDLP’s inability to shore up its base, nor for the internecine warfare within David Trimble’s UUP, which saw its prominent members defect to the more energized DUP. The political acumen of Gerry Adams and of Ian Paisley was not granted to them by Bill Clinton, though the process the American president advanced allowed such talents to shine. The parties of Hume and Trimble made themselves irrelevant, perhaps by a lack of conviction, but also by a marked refusal to campaign well – here Clinton had much to teach.

CONCLUSION The Clinton administration devoted a huge and unprecedented amount of energy and commitment to the affairs of a small part of the United Kingdom, a territory with no obvious strategic or economic importance to the United States. It did so, moreover, at least for the first four years of its existence (1993-97), against the wishes of one of its closest – arguably the closest – of its international allies. Why? Any satisfactory answer to this question should begin by taking account of Clinton’s own and genuine commitment to the course of Irish peace. The president had become interested in Northern Ireland issues while he was a student at Oxford University, seeing the early “troubles,” as was then common, through the lens of US civil rights politics. As Hillary Clinton later wrote, “Bill was proud of his Irish ancestry and saw his work in the province in very personal terms,” Hillary Clinton later wrote.25 “‘I look Irish,’ he said.

‘I am Irish. It means a lot to me.’”26 Beyond the personal commitment, however, we wish to emphasize that the Irish policy needs to be set against the wider canvas of the entire Clinton foreign policy. Adrian Guelke has argued that Clinton’s Irish activism fitted well into the role his administration “sought to play in the resolution of other conflicts, as it has attempted to establish the basis for an outward-looking foreign policy after the end of the Cold War.”27 Clinton’s presidency was the presidency, at least at one level, of outward-looking practical peace

214

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

promotion. The early “come home America” focus on the domestic economic agenda should not be overlooked. However, the administration in general and the president in particular were eager to grasp opportunities for internationalist peace promotion, especially under the sorts of conditions pertaining in Northern Ireland. Such conditions included limited liability, domestic resonance, and a realistic possibility of success.

The limited liability of engagement in Northern Ireland needs little emphasis. Involvement in the province’s affairs, however difficult, was not going to involve US troop commitments; it would never become “another Vietnam” or Iraq. As to the possibility of success, research into conditions in Northern Ireland did, as noted above, seem to conclude that “ripeness” conditions (especially war weariness and a widespread desire for peace) had been met. The domestic resonance needs a little more elaboration.

At one level, the domestic resonance issue is straightforward. Although some domestic voices might question the value of expending so much energy on the affairs of an obscure part of the UK, few in the US would be likely to oppose seriously a general commitment to advancing the powersharing cause. Negotiating with terrorists was controversial and, as we have seen, caused huge divisions within the administration. However, in the pre9/11 era, most US voters were either indifferent to the opening of a process which included IRA leaders, or actually supported such a process.

Loyalist/unionist lobbies in the US were simply too weak and too disorganized to mount much resistance.

These observations, of course, take us to what, for many British commentators, is the very heart of the matter: the role of the Irish Catholic lobby. To many British journalists, especially those writing for right-ofcenter newspapers, Clinton was simply dancing, if not exactly to NORAID’s collection-tin rattle, at least to the rhythm set by Catholic Irish America. By specifically courting “Reagan Democrats,” Clinton was after the Irish vote.

Michael Mates, formerly Conservative minister for Northern Ireland, wrote in 1996 of Clinton advisers “whose vote-winning agenda is not so much peace, as giving the Irish Republicans what they want at almost any price.”28 “Grubbing for votes,” was how a less senior Tory put it.29

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

215

As a Southern Protestant (albeit one with Catholic Irish antecedents), Clinton was concerned in 1992 to align himself, like Carter in 1976, with causes which had an appeal for traditional Northern, urban Democrats. To see Clinton’s Irish policy as a straightforward response to “green” voters, however, is an exaggeration. Such a view ignores the variations within the forty-four or so million Americans who register Irish ancestry on census returns. Not only are substantial elements of the forty-four million from Protestant stock, even Catholic Irish America is itself very divided, and was by no means entirely supportive of Clinton. The Irish National Caucus broke with Clinton in 1996, seeing the president as insufficiently committed to the MacBride principles. (Republican challenger Bob Dole strongly endorsed them.) The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the traditional American Irish defense organization, strongly opposed Clinton’s stance on abortion. Above all, the idea that there is anything resembling a cohesive “Irish vote,” taking its cue from US policy towards Northern Ireland, is a myth. Irish Americans, like other voters, are influenced by a range of issues.30 Particular members of Congress, of course, do seek to take visible positions on Irish issues and are not unaware of Irish ethnic opinion in their constituencies. Prominent Irish-American congressional figures helped the process along and worked with and alongside the administration. The Clinton Irish policy was, however, essentially a presidential initiative.31 Senior Irish Americans in Congress, moreover, also sometimes took unpredictable stands. (House Speaker Tom Foley, D-WA, for example, opposed the granting of a visa for Gerry Adams in 1993-94.) The very emergence of the business-oriented Americans for a New Irish Agenda, a development which was very important in kick-starting Clinton’s Irish initiatives, itself indicated the degree to which Catholic Irish America no longer conformed to the old, rough stereotypes.

Our final point concerns the significance for Clinton’s policy of the ending of the Cold War. Global events between 1988 and 1992 certainly seem to have had a strong effect on the consciousness of Irish republican leaders, causing them to revise simple “revolutionist” strategies for achieving a united Ireland.32 These events also freed Washington from the constraints imposed by traditional State Department thinking on Northern

216

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

Ireland: the view that London was a valuable Cold-War ally, a vital supplier of air bases to the US, and that there was no point in upsetting London unnecessarily by intervening in internal UK affairs. This view had never passed entirely unchallenged. It was questioned not only by traditional supporters of Irish republicanism in the US, but also by those who looked to incorporate into NATO a unified, post-neutral Ireland. Yet, until 1993, it remained generally the dominant view in Washington. The termination of the Cold War removed many inhibitions about offending London. George Stephanopoulos memorably observed of Clinton’s Irish activism: “It obviously ticks off the Brits but equally obviously that is acceptable to a lot of us.”33 Strangely ignored in most academic studies of Clinton’s foreign policy, the administration’s commitment to Irish peace was genuine and, even given the several qualifications indicated above, really extraordinarily successful.

Success in Northern Ireland, of course, had a price: the expenditure of political capital and of huge energy on the transatlantic Lilliput, the exposing of deep bureaucratic divisions, and the rows with the Major government in London. Clinton’s experience in Northern Ireland indicated that, even in the post-Cold War unipolar order, the American Gulliver has to work very hard indeed, and to take real risks, to achieve even modest progress in regional disputes. The fictional Gulliver, unable to end their squabbling, was impeached by the Lilliputians. Clinton’s Gulliver, we conclude, will be remembered as a more successful arbitrator of Northern Ireland’s peace.

ENDNOTES 1

James Joyce, Ulysses (London: Penguin, 1992), 427-8.

Clinton, My Life (London: Hutchinson, 2004), 784.

3 Damien McCrystal, “Beautiful, Peaceful Northern Ireland: Damien McCrystal Says the Troubles Are Over in Ulster,” Spectator, January 15, 2005, 32.

4 See generally John Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict 1969-94: From ‘Indifference to Intervention,’” Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 6 (1995), 107-125.

5 See the various essays in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen, eds., A Farewell to Arms? From “Long War” to “Long peace” in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); and Timothy J. Lynch, Turf War: The Clinton Administration and 2

President Clinton and Northern Ireland: Gulliver in Lilliput

217

Northern Ireland (Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), chap. 3.

Richard N. Haass, Conflicts Unending: The United States and Regional Disputes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), chap. 6.

7 See generally Andrew J. Wilson, Irish America and the Ulster Conflict, 1968-1995 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995).

8 See John Dumbrell, A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations in the Cold War and After (London: Palgrave, 2001), chap. 8.

9 See John Dumbrell, The Carter Presidency: A Re-evaluation, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 117-24; Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict 1969-94,” 118-121; and Lynch, Turf War, 21.

10 Her role is considered at length in Lynch, Turf War. See also Nancy Soderberg, The Superpower Myth (New York: John Wiley, 2005).

11 Andrew Marr, “A Bloody Cheek . . . But Not Such a Bad Idea,” The Independent, February 24, 1993, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/a-bloody-cheek-but-not-such-a-badidea-1475130.html.

12 Quoted in Conor O’Clery, The Greening of the White House (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1996), 90.

13 Quoted in Andrew J. Wilson, “From the Beltway to Belfast: the Clinton Administration, Sinn Féin, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process,” New Hibernia Review 1, no. 3 (1997): 23-29.

14 Simon Jenkins, “It’s Not That Americans Excuse Mr. Gerry Adams’s Violent Past, They Positively Worship It,” The Spectator, October 15, 1994, 29. The British “overreaction” is considered in Timothy J. Lynch, “The Gerry Adams visa in Anglo-American relations,” Irish Studies in International Affairs 14 (2003): 33-44.

15 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1993 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994), 1:314. See also Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 285, 299.

16 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1994 (Washington DC: US GPO, 1995), 2:2129.

17 John Carlin, “A Clear Call to All the President’s Ulstermen, The Independent on Sunday, March 22, 1998, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/a-clear-call-to-all-thepresidents-ulstermen-1151823.html.

18 George J. Mitchell, Making Peace (London: Heinemann, 1999), 178.

19 See Lynch, Turf War, 121.

20 Billy Webster interview with Bradley Patterson, The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond (Washington DC: Brookings, 2000), 56.

21 See, for example, Tim Ross and Robert Mendick, “Tony Blair Must Explain IRA ‘Comfort Letter’ Deals, Say MPs,” Daily Telegraph, July 12, 2014.

22 “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all convictions, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity . . .’ (Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1919).

23 “Blair’s Duplicity makes Ulster Politics Unstable, Says Mallon,” Daily Telegraph, March 16, 2005, 6.

6

218 24

John Dumbrell and Timothy J. Lynch

According to senior (anonymous) sources within the SDLP, Hume, as leader, maintained an ambivalent attitude to his party’s fortunes, predicting that SDLP demise would not necessarily wreck the peace process – in fact quite the reverse.

25 Hillary R. Clinton, Living History (London: Headline, 2003), 321.

26 Clinton interview with O’Clery, Greening of the White House, 24.

27 Adrian Guelke, “The United States, Irish Americans and the Northern Ireland Peace Process,” International Affairs 72, no. 3 (1996): 521-36, 536.

28 Michael Mates, “Clinton Should Stop Putting American Votes before British Lives,” Mail on Sunday, 25 August 1996, available at https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-110834621.html.

29 David Wilshire quoted in Martin Webster, Phillip Fletcher and Nicholas Watt, “US Links with Britain ‘Worst Since 1773,’” The Times [London], August 16, 1996.

30 See Kevin Cullen, “The Fraying of the Green,” Fortnight, June 1996, 6-11.

31 See Lynch, Turf War, 138-40.

32 See Michael E. Cox, “The War That Came in from the Cold: Clinton and the Irish Question,” World Policy Journal 16, no. 1(1999): 59-67.

33 Quoted in O’Clery, The Greening of the White House, 98.

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 14

BRINGING HOPE TO NORTHERN IRELAND’S CIVIL SOCIETY: 1992-2000 Catherine B. Shannon Department of History, Westfield State University, Westfield, MA, US

The presidency of Bill Clinton coincided with a major transformation in the long Northern Ireland conflict that culminated in the signing of the historic Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998 and the subsequent establishment of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly and crossborder administrative bodies. President Clinton played a significant role in this transformation as a result of the unprecedented official and personal time, effort and resources he devoted to Northern Ireland.

Between 1991 and 1994, the period of Clinton’s candidacy and his early months in the White House, a common view was that the Northern Irish conflict was insoluble.1 The nascent Irish peace process appeared to be going nowhere following the collapse of the Brooke/Mayhew Talks in November 1992. Indeed, a survey published in June 1993 revealed that only six percent of those questioned thought a resumption of party talks would bring agreement.2 There were no public indications that the Irish Republican Army

220

Catherine B. Shannon

(IRA) was ready to abandon its campaign of violence as its London bombs of February 1991 and April 1992 emphatically underscored.3 Despite these depressing developments, President Clinton did not renege on his 1992 campaign promise to do whatever he could to advance the cause of peace in Northern Ireland. As various accounts of this period demonstrate, Clinton made important decisions that helped to secure the August 31, 1994, IRA ceasefire and to revive and sustain the high politics of the peace process, such as the issuance of a visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to visit New York, and the providential recruitment of George Mitchell to be the president’s Northern Irish envoy.4 Senator Mitchell broke the dangerous impasse between the British government and Sinn Fein over decommissioning when he convinced all the Northern Irish political parties and eventually Sinn Fein to sign up to the “Mitchell principles” of nonviolence.5 This allowed for the start of multi-party talks in June 1996 which he ultimately chaired patiently, objectively, and successfully. With Mitchell acting as his personal “eyes and ears,” President Clinton was able to provide individual encouragement to the various party leaders to keep their eyes on the prize of peace at critical points down to the final hours of negotiations that produced the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998.6 As contemporary theorists and practiconers of conflict resolution have emphasized, sustainable peace settlements cannot be built solely on the negotiated decisions of politicians, diplomats and generals. Every level of civil society, including the business, religious, educational, media, trade union, voluntary, and local community sectors, must be part of a broader peace process if the settlements negotiated by the elites are to succeed. By involving these overlapping institutions of civil society and building a spirit of social cohesion, leaders can nurture trust and responsibility which can strengthen the more formal political peace process. Through such participation, the broad citizenry can develop a sense of ownership in the process. Above all, at the grassroots working-class levels, where often the causes and negative effects of protracted civil conflict are deeply entangled, it is essential to nurture a sense of ownership and hope in the future if these communities are to play their part in building a sustainable peace process.7

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

221

Yet in the early 1990s the requisite confidence, trust and hope in the future were in very short supply in Northern Ireland’s civil society, most especially in the working class areas of West and North Belfast where the majority of paramilitary violence occurred.8 As the Opshal Commission reported in 1993, Shankill Protestants felt besieged as a result of the economic and demographic decline of their area and what they perceived as a rising, confident Catholic community surrounding them. As one commentator explained “… the Shankill has lost hope.”9 The prognosis was similar regarding North Belfast.10 Meanwhile, the hopes of ordinary citizens for an end to paramilitary violence seemed especially futile in the wake of a series of horrific bombings and sectarian shootings between January 1992 and June 1994.11 Within much of West Belfast’s working class Catholic community, there was pervasive resentment over the refusal of British authorities and many others to engage with elected Sinn Fein political representatives.

Marginalization of Sinn Fein, it was claimed, only strengthened the hands of those who preferred violence and complicated the task of those who were working to lead the party fully into constitutional politics.12 As we now know, the visa issued to Gerry Adams in January 1994 was a major turning point in the Sinn Fein leader’s internal campaign to secure an IRA ceasefire and to bring republicanism into the mainstream of constitutional politics.

From 1994 on, President Clinton sought to transform the pessimism, alienation, and distrust described above with feelings of hope and confidence among ordinary citizens that peace was possible and that it would benefit all sections of the Northern Irish community. The president conveyed this message through his major speeches, especially those given during his 1995 and 1998 Belfast visits, and by a variety of economic initiatives.

ECONOMIC INCENTIVES: THE WASHINGTON INVESTMENT CONFERENCE A common assumption of President Clinton’s overall foreign policy was the importance of building healthy economies as an essential component of

222

Catherine B. Shannon

conflict resolution as societies were transitioning to peace.13 James Lyons, Clinton’s observer for the International Fund for Ireland, described this idea in regards to Northern Ireland as follows: “When we first became involved in 1993, the thing that struck us at the outset was the importance of economic development underpinning the peace process. If we weren’t able to make a difference in the lives of everyday men and women, the political solution would rest on a very flimsy basis. I believe the phrase we used was, ‘peace meets the street’.” 14 The first big initiative designed to build confidence on the civil level was the May 1995 Washington Investment Conference. The three day event attracted approximately 1280 delegates representing 300 US corporations and 185 Northern Irish and Republic of Ireland companies, as well as a large number of delegates from Northern Ireland’s voluntary and community sector.15 In his keynote speech to the delegates, President Clinton summarized the rationale underpinning the conference and a number of subsequent trade missions as follows: There must be a peace dividend in Northern Ireland and the border counties so that everyone is convinced that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy, so that the majority that supports peace is strengthened, so that there is no slipping back into the violence that frustration breeds. That is why this conference is so important. It underscores that all sides have an interest in investing in the future of Northern Ireland and that all sides will benefit from peace…. When both communities feel the benefits of peace and see that they are distributed fairly, despair will lose its hold and all will have the chance they deserve to fill their God given potential. …. The past will not be overcome in a day, but the perception of change provides the kindling for hope. And the opportunities for positive, powerful, profitable change clearly are now present in Northern Ireland.16

The president also used his keynote speech to urge action on three issues of great concern to civil society when he called for the republicans to get serious about decommissioning, to cease punishment beatings, and to end the misery of the families of the disappeared and those in exile. This was the first time that the plight of the families of the disappeared was given

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

223

prominent public attention. Five weeks after the Washington meeting, eight families whose loved ones had been “disappeared” launched a public campaign at Belfast’s Linen Hall Library in hopes of gathering information on what had happened to their relatives and where their remains were buried.

Thus was created a dynamic which eventually forced the IRA and Sinn Fein to cooperate with the police in seeking to locate the remains of those the IRA had murdered.17 The conference did not produce any significant investments immediately, and the investment climate was considerably dampened by the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996 and the Lisburn bomb the following October.18 However, the conference, subsequent US trade missions, and the presidential visit of November 1995 did boost the profile of Northern Ireland as a suitable location for investment in the American corporate sector.19 The pace of private American investment eventually picked up, and in 2001 the Industrial Development Board (IDB) reported that since 1996 US firms had invested over £600 million that ultimately would create eleven thousand new jobs.20 While there is legitimate debate over how much of this can be linked directly to White House initiatives, it is clear that President Clinton’s initiatives did raise the profile of Northern Ireland as a suitable location for investment in other capital markets beyond the United States.21 Meanwhile, the White House was successful in preserving from congressional budget cutters an annual $19.6 million US contribution to the International Fund for Ireland, which was supporting crucial job creation in disadvantaged areas as well as a variety of crosscommunity and cross-border projects.22 The Clinton administration believed that universities had an important role to play in promoting the principles and techniques of conflict resolution, and the initial administration grants in support of this work were announced during the investment conference.23 The Washington Conference provided a very useful opportunity for representatives from Northern Ireland’s community and voluntary sector to highlight their crucial work in tackling social and economic deprivation and in promoting cross-community contacts and cooperation. May Blood, a longtime Shankill activist and trade union veteran who was a leading force

224

Catherine B. Shannon

in establishing early education and parenting programs on the Shankill, described the impact of the conference for her area as follows: Many of the contacts we made…proved to be very fruitful for us in the next five years. We had many positive outcomes through these contacts which led to grants but the most positive (outcome) was the influence we were able to bring to bear on issues in Protestant and Catholic West Belfast.

Ms. Blood maintains that President Clinton’s subsequent visit to West Belfast was influenced greatly by the presentations and networking that these dedicated community workers did in Washington.24 Similarly, Avila Kilmurray, the Director of the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust, recalled that the Washington meeting was very significant in providing the first official recognition of the important role that social and community groups could play in economic regeneration and enabled her organization to establish fundraising contacts in the United States, which ultimately led to small but crucial grants to tackle deprivation and sectarianism at the grassroots level. Moreover, the conference enabled the delegates from these sectors to network effectively with individuals and parties integral to the political peace process.25 The private handshake between Gerry Adams and Sir Patrick Mayhew was not the only important one that took place at the Washington Conference. In keeping with the practice of track two diplomacy, numerous social events took place where all shades of political opinion from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland met in neutral settings, enabling delegates to break down barriers and begin to discover their common concerns and, indeed, humanity. I personally recall a convivial reception hosted by Hughie Smyth, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) Lord Mayor of Belfast, where politicians from the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Fein conversed with Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) members as well as with former loyalist para-militaries who had formed the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party. A number of unionist politicians spoke of the positive vibes the conference generated and especially its impact in showing that the Clinton administration and Irish

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

225

America were committed to promoting the welfare of both northern communities.26 By providing a neutral and supportive venue for British, Irish and American government officials, all of the Irish political parties and the various Northern Irish business and civic organization delegates to meet and engage with each other socially, the Washington conference was an example of track two diplomacy being used to reinforce and augment the more formal political and diplomatic processes of peace building.27 By late November 1995, public confidence in the peace process had eroded considerably, owing to the impasse over IRA decommissioning and the resultant delay in the start of all-party talks. While the January 1996 report of the International Body on Arms Decommissioning (the Mitchell Commission) eventually cleared the way for multi-party talks, in the autumn of 1995 Unionist suspicions of the Clinton policy were still very strong.

Clinton officials appreciated this, as they had been warned earlier by the Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Tanaiste Dick Spring that the White House would have to convince the Unionists that they were not simply following a republican and nationalist agenda.28 Awareness of Unionist hostility was reinforced immediately following the announcement of the president’s Belfast visit when Jim Nicholson, chair of the Ulster Unionist Party, declared, “Let me make it clear that when Mr. Clinton comes to our province, he should prove his impartiality or it would be better for him to stay home. The United States should realize that we are not overawed by its size and strength, and one day of TV hype will not persuade us to sell our birthright.”29 Senior Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leaders Peter Robinson, Nigel Dodds and Ian Paisley, Jr., lobbied hard over the next few months to insure that the presidential itinerary included areas where Protestants lived and worked. Robinson was especially anxious to highlight investment opportunities in his East Belfast constituency and had at least eleven meetings with US officials in Belfast, London and Washington to press this agenda. The White House was sympathetic to these entreaties, as the following recollection of presidential adviser Andrew Friendly demonstrates:

226

Catherine B. Shannon The president was concerned that we insure all sides were touched that we were not seen to be favoring one side or the other. That we were there to promote the peace process as a whole. That was the overriding aim of the trip.30

CLINTON’S VISIT TO BELFAST AND DERRY President Clinton’s carefully choreographed November 30 visit to Belfast and Derry rekindled a sense of hope and confidence in civil society that a sustainable peace, fair to both Catholics and Protestants, was achievable. The president’s first Belfast appearance on the Shankill Road, where he bought fruit in Violet Clarke’s shop near the site of the 1993 Shankill bombing and did a walk-a-about, buoyed the spirits of many Shankill residents. Ms. Clarke, later recalled: I know the road was on the map for bad reasons, but this put it on for good reasons. It was the biggest day of my life. I wanted it to last. It’s the sort of thing that happens once in a lifetime, but I wish I had it all over again. I think the people on the Shankill thought he was for the Nationalists, but once they heard his speeches and everything I think their views changed.31

A female Protestant community worker said of the visit, “We had so little to celebrate in the past twenty-five years. When someone like the American president comes and shows he cares about us it means so much to all of us.”32 A subsequent event at an East Belfast business park in the constituency of Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Deputy Leader Peter Robinson at which Clinton spoke with UUP and DUP politicians also underscored the president’s concern for the well-being of the Unionist community.33 The keynote speech of Clinton’s Belfast visit took place at Mackie’s foundry in West Belfast. This venue was symbolic in that Mackie’s was situated on the Springfield Road only a few yards from one of the most contentious interfaces separating the Shankill from nationalist West Belfast.

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

227

An engineering firm formerly employing an exclusively Protestant workforce, Mackie’s now stood as a role model for a new and progressive Northern Ireland with its mixed workforce of thirty percent Catholics and seventy percent Protestants and its recent success in attracting new international business.34 The welcome extend to the president by two young school children, Catholic Catherine Hamill and Protestant David Sterrett, holding hands as they did so, was a poignant reminder of the obligations of all parties to find common ground and was a fitting overture to the main themes of the president’s address.35 In a forceful yet generous speech, the president acknowledged the contributions that various Irish, British and Northern political leaders as well as local community workers, teachers and business leaders had made thus far to lay the foundations for a just and lasting peace. Clinton urged his audience to focus on their common values and goals. He held out the promise of a bright and prosperous future if the people as well as politicians exercised the courage to abandon their old familiar divisions. Significantly, he encouraged ordinary people to take some ownership of the peace process when he declared, You, the vast majority, Protestants and Catholics alike, must not allow the ship of peace to sink on the rocks of old habits and hard grudges. You must stand firm against terror. You must say to those who still would use violence for political objectives…You are the past, your day is over.

He urged the people to stand together with those politicians who took risks for peace and stressed that “peace must be waged with a warrior’s resolve, bravely, proudly and relentlessly,” because “in peace, everybody can win.”36 Belfast News Letter columnist David Kirk reported that Clinton’s call for forgiveness and reconciliation “brought applause that made the walls of the building vibrate.”37 After the Mackie’s event, the president visited the nationalist Falls Road, where his public handshake with Gerry Adams and subsequent walk-about symbolized to the republican grass roots the potential for greater political influence and standing for their party as a result of the IRA ceasefire.

Unfortunately, this made little impression on the hard-liners within the IRA

228

Catherine B. Shannon

who were already planning the London bomb that came the following February.

In the afternoon, the presidential party journeyed to Derry/Londonderry, where, before an audience of twenty-five thousand packed into the historic Guildhall Square, the president paid tribute to the life-long efforts of SDLP leader John Hume as a champion of civil rights and nonviolence.38 Drawing on the legacy of the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, whose family had Irish connections, Clinton urged the people to draw inspiration from William Penn’s conviction that tolerance and diversity were compatible with strength, unity, and prosperity. Quoting Derry’s Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, Clinton told his audience that by accepting their individual responsibility to be peacemakers, they would help make a reality of Heaney’s vision of “the further shore” where “hope and history rhyme.”

While in the Maiden City, Clinton also presided over the inauguration of the Thomas P. O’Neill Chair of Peace Studies at the Magee campus of the University of Ulster. In his remarks, he stressed that universities had an important role to play in researching and promoting the principles and techniques of conflict resolution, a position that was reflected in the substantial funding that his administration provided for such projects at Magee and at Boston College.39 The most dramatic event that illustrated Clinton’s effort to nurture a sense of hope for the future among ordinary citizens was his lighting of the huge Tennessee-grown Christmas tree at Belfast’s City Hall Plaza. This colorful occasion drew approximately eighty thousand people from all sections of the city, signifying that the president had transcended the sectarian divide in attracting audiences to hear his message. The live television coverage of the Mackie’s and Derry speeches was undoubtedly a factor in drawing this diverse audience. In keeping with the theme of balance, even the entertainment was cross-community. The famed Belfast singer Van Morrison, a Protestant from East Belfast, joined with Brian Kennedy, a West Belfast Catholic, to lead the crowd in his signature song, Days Like This, which, according to one knowledgeable observer, “captured the mood of what people wanted” and suggested that “they could have more days like this if the (peace) process could be moved on.” In his remarks,

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

229

Clinton acknowledged the resilience of ordinary people in carrying on their lives through the traumas of the conflict. He observed that their oftexpressed desire for peace had now turned into a demand that politicians must address by engaging in honest dialogue and serious negotiations.

With a few exceptions,40 reaction to President Clinton’s visit and optimistic message was positive as was reflected in newspaper editorials, commentary and the reactions of politicians, civic leaders and average citizens. The Derry Journal observed that President Clinton left “an Ireland with hope reborn and optimism refurbished” and was relieved that “no longer are we alone to perpetuate our perverse historical prejudices, but that the most powerful man in the most powerful country is truly willing to act as a help-mate in our political evolution.”41 The Belfast Telegraph, the more moderate of Unionist papers, was also positive, acknowledging that “President Clinton does not solve our historical differences, but for a day they didn’t seem to matter. He brought us hope, a commodity so often in short supply.” Its columnist Lawrence White wrote, “His (Clinton’s) performance throughout the day was superbly balanced. The itinerary touched all the right spots physically and metaphorically.” White thought the visit was Northern Ireland’s greatest publicity coup because “(t)he message that millions of people heard around the world was that, at last, there is hope in a province where it was almost extinguished.”42 The Belfast News Letter, which had excoriated Clinton over the Adams visa and doubted the usefulness of the trip on its eve, described the president’s visit as helpful and positive. However, it cautioned its readers to be wary of any American attempt to forward what its editors perceived to be a still intact SDLP/SF Irish unity agenda.43 While UUP politicians John Taylor and Martin Smyth believed the visit had more to do with American presidential electoral politics, Cecil Walker, their party colleague who represented the deprived area of North Belfast, said, “I think, generally, the (Mackie’s) speech was acceptable and addressed the issues that concern us all. I am very, very pleased that he has come here. It is an auspicious occasion for us and I hope he will instill confidence in this area and that we will get a spin-off in more jobs from his visit.”44

230

Catherine B. Shannon

Roy Bradford, a long time Unionist party member and political commentator, described the visit as “undoubtedly a force for good,” because it significantly “erased the impression that Washington’s agenda is exclusively nationalist,” and because it put considerable moral and political pressure on the IRA to make clear that it was prepared to adopt democracy as the foundation for a lasting peace.45 David Trimble, the recently elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, observed that the “Mackie’s speech transformed the Clinton visit because of the things he said, particular with regard to saying to the terrorists that their day is over.”46 The late Mo Mowlan, MP, who was in Belfast in her capacity as the Labour Party spokesperson on Northern Ireland and who would later become Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in recalling the Clinton visit said, “What he did, which the rest of us politicians of any color had failed to do, was give a bit of hope and vision for Northern Ireland. In a sense he reached out to the public over the heads of the politicians. The crowds were mostly young. They were the generation that wanted to believe there was hope for the future and he gave them that.”47 Among civic society leaders who shared these positive views were John McGuckian, chair of the Industrial Development Board, who recalled, “When he arrived people were cynical, but then there was an understanding he wasn’t here to take sides or instruct anybody. I don’t think there was a day in the history of Northern Ireland when everyone was at one to the extent they were then.”48 Robin Eames, the Primate of the Church of Ireland, commented, “I don’t think he put a foot wrong . . . The visit helped ordinary people of Northern Ireland feel there was an even-handed approach coming from the White House. It would have been very divisive and probably put us back a good number of years had it been otherwise.”49 These assessments were reflected in a January 1996 Coopers Lybrand poll that found that sixty-four percent of those asked thought the Clinton visit had helped to move the peace process forward. Although there was a denominational difference with eighty percent of Catholics saying the visit contributed toward peace, still fifty-three percent of Protestants agreed.50

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

231

IMPACT OF CLINTON’S VISIT Although the positive civic morale and expectations engendered by the Clinton visit were chastened considerably by the IRA’s Canary Wharf bomb on February 9, the president’s call for ordinary people to remain steadfast in their demand for an end to violence and the start of serious negotiations was reflected in peace rallies held in Belfast, Derry, Ballyclare, Lisburn, Newcastle, Coleraine and Enniskillen on Sunday February 25, which drew approximately forty-one thousand people. A Banbridge resident who attended the Belfast rally with his wife and young children captured the mood when he said, “We wanted to come to Belfast. We were here when Bill Clinton visited last year and we thought it was up to the people to come back again and tell the message over and over again. We don’t want war, just peace.”51 A Ballymena man who had protested the Anglo-Irish Agreement at City Hall in 1985-86 attended the Belfast peace rally to register his conviction that compromise was now the only possible way forward.52 The Derry rally, where a supportive letter from Clinton was read, was noteworthy for the sense of ownership that ordinary people were beginning to feel in the peace process. This was reflected in the speech which Tanya Gallagher of the Derry Peace and Reconciliation group gave urging people to sign a peace book, wear white ribbons and put pressure on the government and the politicians to move forward. “It is time to stop allocating blame and move forward to find new ways,” she said. “It is the responsibility of all of us to do this and should not be left entirely to politicians. We must act now to prevent our country going back to the situation it was in before the ceasefires. The last eighteen months was my first taste of peace and I enjoyed it. I don’t want to go back to war.”53 Another indication of the impact of the presidential visit was a Belfast Telegraph editorial a year later which acknowledged the damage to civic morale caused by the Canary Wharf bomb and the Drumcree crisis but insisted that . . . the confidence inspired by the Clinton visit cannot be allowed to evaporate completely. There were always bound to be setbacks along the

232

Catherine B. Shannon road to agreement, as people come to terms with a new situation. The prize of a lasting peace is still obtainable, provided there is a commitment and determination to reach an accommodation. President Clinton gave Northern Ireland a vision of what the future could be like, and continues to play his part from afar. But have we in Northern Ireland really been prepared to take those risks that are so vital for peace? 54

Moreover, the White House Investment Conference and the presidential visit encouraged the North’s most prominent business leaders to become more proactive and outspoken regarding the crucial link between ending violence and enabling the province to meet effectively the challenges and opportunities posed by globalization and European integration. In 1994 the Confederation of British Industries of Northern Ireland published a study paper entitled Peace: A Challenging New Era, which starkly laid out the economic costs of continued violence and held out the prospects of a huge “peace dividend” that would benefit all society as a result of a permanent cessation of violence. The potential of a “peace dividend” was stressed at the Washington Conference and was invoked frequently in Northern Ireland as an incentive for the commencement of all-party talks.55 In late summer 1996, led by Sir George Quigley, prominent Belfast businessmen, trade union officials and civic leaders, some of whom had attended the Washington conference, formed the Group of Seven (GoS), specifically to put pressure on the political parties to return to the negotiating table. Over the next eighteen months, at crucial junctures in the negotiating process, the GoS meet with the various political party leaders and issued seven public statements emphasizing that economic prosperity was impossible without political compromise and a settlement.56 In May 1997, when political negotiations appeared to be on the verge of collapse, the GoS circulated an appeal of all its members’ employees to recognize that “Northern Ireland society faces choices . . . (between) . . . peace, progress, prosperity . . . (and) . . . hostility, animosity and sectarianism.” Such statesments helped to build up corporate and grassroots support for the continuation of the peace talks, making it harder for the political parties to walk away. These efforts of the GoS were widely acknowledged and praised by President Clinton and many other observers.57

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

233

No discussion of the Clinton Northern Irish policy would be complete without some brief commentary on its recognition of the challenges that three decades of conflict placed on Northern Irish women. The burdens were especially heavy for working class women of Belfast and Derry whose lives, homes, and neighborhoods were constantly disrupted by a combination of paramilitary violence and invasive security force surveillance. Yet working class women showed great resilience, ingenuity, and courage in mitigating the worst effects of violence on their families. By the mid-1980s, they were the principal actors in local campaigns to improve housing, health, educational, welfare, and social service benefits for their neighborhoods. By the end of the decade their growing realization that poverty, unemployment, domestic violence and a general neglect of women’s issues knew no sectarian bounds was the catalyst for the formation of a number of crosscommunity groups and networks to lobby government officials to address these problems. In reaching across the communal divide in pursuit of common goals, women at the grass-roots level provided examples of cooperation, dialogue, and good practice that helped to nurture the evolving peace process. Yet public recognition and affirmation of women’s significant contributions were seldom heard.58 Hillary Clinton highlighted this vital work after meeting Joyce McCartan, founder of the cross-community Women’s Information Group, and other community activists during the 1995 presidential visit. Two years later, at the inaugural lecture honoring the late Joyce McCartan at the University of Ulster, and again at the Vital Voices Conference in 1998, the First Lady paid tribute to McCartan and all women who had lost loved ones in the Troubles yet continued to reach out across the sectarian divide to form alliances to address poverty and the causes of violence. In urging her largely female audience to become active in politics, Mrs. Clinton observed, “Democracy cannot flourish if women are not full partners in the social, economic, political and civic lives of their communities and nations.

Societies will only address the issues closest to the hearts of women when women themselves claim their rights as citizens”.59 This was a welcome and affirming message to the newly formed Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and the women members of the mainstream parties who were working hard

234

Catherine B. Shannon

to have women’s views and concerns taken seriously at the ongoing Stormont negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland. Mrs. Clinton provided individual encouragement to the leaders of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition who, despite harassment and ridicule, were making significant contributions in promoting dialogue and compromise among the parties at the Stormont negotiations.60 Mrs. Clinton was similarly encouraging to all the women who ran for Assembly seats in the June 1998 election. Later in her Vital Voices speech she hailed the election of fourteen women to the Assembly as a very positive development.61 She kept up her contact with and support for Northern women politicians thereafter.62 Mrs. Clinton’s support for Northern Irish women was not merely rhetorical, for she was a major proponent of the Vital Voices Conference that took place in Belfast in September 1998. Sponsored by the White House and the Northern Irish secretary of state, Mo Mowlan, the two-day event drew four hundred women delegates from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and the United States. Meeting in large plenaries and workshops, delegates explored the potential for cooperation, partnerships, and internships that would advance educational, economic, and business opportunities for Northern Irish women. Five major US companies pledged over $2 million to these partnerships.63 The US Department of Labor partnered with the Northern Ireland Employment and Training agency to improve women’s access to jobs, child care, and training while the Institute of Directors committed to establishing a mentoring and training program for women in middle management that would better prepare them for the global markets.

The Vital Voices Conference took place only three weeks after the dissident Real IRA exploded a car bomb in Omagh center, killing twentyeight innocent people going about their Saturday shopping. As the most lethal atrocity of the conflict, it threatened to undermine the confidence that the Belfast Agreement, its ratification, and the Assembly election had given to the citizenry. In her keynote speech to the delegates as well as Assembly leaders and members, Mrs. Clinton encouraged her audience to meet future challenges to peace with the same resolve and commitment to practical action and political compromise that they had shown previously. She urged

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

235

all segments of civil society to play their part in fulfilling the promise of peace and reassured her audience that the efforts of peace makers would ultimately prevail over the enemies of democracy.

The following day President Clinton addressed the recently elected Northern Ireland Assembly. He echoed his wife’s salute to women as a force for peace as well as her call for all citizens to play their part in building a better society. He appealed to the Assembly members to show the same courage and willingness to compromise that had produced the Belfast Agreement to form the power-sharing Assembly Executive quickly so that the difficult issues of decommissioning, police reform, and street justice could be addressed.64 Later that day, accompanied by Prime Minister and Mrs. Blair, the president and Mrs. Clinton went to Omagh where they observed the horrific bombsite and privately offered their condolences to the families of the victims. In speaking to the survivors at Omagh, President Clinton accurately described and predicted what the impact of the bombing was and would be on the peace process. “By killing Catholics and Protestants, young and old, men, women, and children, even those about to be born, people from Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, and abroad – by doing all that in an aftermath of what the people have voted for in Northern Ireland, it galvanized, strengthened, and humanized the impulse to peace.”65 President Clinton’s empathetic, positive, and inclusive message at Omagh and later at a large ecumenical peace rally in Armagh City was consoling and encouraging to the general public as well as to those politicians and government officials who were struggling to implement the Belfast Agreement in the wake of Omagh.66 Monica McWilliams recalled that “Clinton’s speeches were well thought out and were the voice of a wellinformed third party asking us to consider other possibilities for the future . . . He is one of those rare politicians who was able to come to Northern Ireland and do hard-hitting speeches that were meaningful and showed that he was well briefed on what was going on.”67 At critical points in 1995 and 1998, President Clinton helped promote hope and confidence among ordinary citizens that peace was achievable, a conviction that many expressed to their political representatives. In many respects the president’s

236

Catherine B. Shannon

message was similar to the “politics of hope” associated with Czech leader Vaclav Havel’s description of hope, not as giddy optimism, but a deep, almost transcendental belief and conviction that there were values and goals – in this case a peace settlement – worth working for even though outside forces were constantly threatening these values and goals.68 Significantly, in his Nobel Prize lecture, John Hume said that the support, faith, and encouragement that ordinary people gave to their political representatives during the eighteen months of the negotiations were crucial factors in their ultimate success in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement.69

CONCLUSION In no small measure, President and Mrs. Clinton helped Northern Irish civil society to play the important role that theorists of conflict resolution consider fundamental for a peace process to eventually lead to a sustainable settlement. As events in subsequent years showed, the road to a permanent settlement is a very rocky one.70 President Clinton was well aware there would be setbacks, but he continued to encourage the Northern Irish politicians and people not to give in to despair.

By autumn 2005, hope had been rekindled following the IRA’s July statement that its military campaign was over and by the October decommissioning of IRA arms. The scourges of sectarianism and paramilitary criminality had yet to be extinguished, and trust between the political parties as well as the two northern communities remained a very fragile commodity. The challenge ahead would be to reinvigorate the cando spirit, sense of fair play, and faith in the future that President Clinton had helped to inspire. Once that happened, the prospects that a restored powersharing Assembly and Executive could provide equality, justice and opportunity for all the citizens of Northern Ireland would be increased significantly. As a result of successful all-party negotiations at St Andrews in November 2006 and an Assembly election in March 2007, the Legislative Assembly at Stormont was restored with Rev. Ian Paisley of the Democratic

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

237

Unionist Party and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein as the First and Deputy Ministers of the Northern Irish power-sharing Executive.

ENDNOTES Paul Arthur, “Quiet Diplomacy and Personal Conversation,” in After the Good Friday Agreement: Analyzing Political Change in Northern Ireland, ed. J. Todd and J. Ruane (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999); The distinguished English political scientist Sir Bernard Crick was among those who held this view. See also Kevin Myers, “An Irishman’s Diary,” Irish Times, January 30, 1995. A reflection of residual tension between the two northern communities is the tendency of nationalists to call the April 10, 1998, agreement the Good Friday Agreement while unionists generally refer to it as the Belfast Agreement. For a useful account of US policy on the Northern Irish conflict prior to the Clinton presidency, see John Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict 1969-94: From Indifference to Intervention,” Irish Studies in International Affairs 6 (1995): 107-125.

2 Marianne Elliott, ed. The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), 8.

3 On February 7, 1991, the IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street at a time when the British cabinet was meeting. On April 10, 1992, the IRA exploded two bombs at Baltic Exchange in London’s financial district, killing three people and causing over £700 million damage. Eammon Mallie and David McKittrick, The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Peace Process (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1996), 147.

4 Mallie and McKittrick, The Fight for Peace, 315-32; Niall O’Dowd, “The Awakening: Irish America’s Key Role in the Irish Peace Process,” in Elliott, The Long Road to Peace; For a detailed analysis of the internal and external factors that led to the August ceasefire see, Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), especially chap. 15.

Senator Mitchell initially was appointed as an economic envoy to Northern Ireland, but eventually his role expanded to a political one of chairing the all-party talks and negotiations that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement.

5 Following the Provisional IRA’s August 1994 ceasefire, the British government of John Major demanded that the Provisional IRA decommission its weapons as a precondition to Sinn Fein entering all-party talks to negotiate a settlement. Sinn Fein considered this demand as tantamount to surrender, and it refused to comply, causing the stalemate and the delayed start in all-party talks. Agreed to by both the Irish and British governments and announced in January 1996, the principles committed all parties to use exclusively peaceful means to resolve political issues, to totally disarm all paramilitary organizations, to accept independent verification of disarmament, to renounce and oppose the use of force or the threat of force to influence negotiations, to abide by any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and use only peaceful means to amend it, and finally to end the practice of “punishment beatings,” or vigilante justice employed by paramilitary groups. Sinn Fein signed up to the principles in May 1996. Colin Knox and Padraic Quirk, Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, Israel and South Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 39.

6 Clinton took advantage of the annual White House St. Patrick’s Day celebrations to encourage the visiting Irish politicians to stick with the process. In the March 1999 St. Patrick’s Day festivities, Clinton provided a secluded White House room to David Trimble and Gerry Adams so that they might explore a way to work out their differences over prior decommissioning as a prerequisite to the formation of the Northern Ireland Executive. It was then that they agreed to “jump together” to resolve this issue. Dean Godson, Himself Alone: 1

238

Catherine B. Shannon

David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), 413.

The importance of third party advocacy and support such as Clinton provided to keep the momentum of the peace process going was stressed by Karen E. Schulze in her article, “The Northern Ireland Political Process: A Viable Approach to Conflict Resolution,” Irish Political Studies 12, no. 1 (1997): 104.

7 Paul Arthur, “Conflict, Memory and Reconciliation,” in Elliott, The Long Road to Peace; Judy Large, The War Next Door: A Study of Second Track Intervention during the War in exYugoslavia (Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press, 1997), 22-25. On the importance of involving Northern Ireland’s civil society, especially the business sector, in the peace process, see George Quigley, “Achieving Transformational Change” in Elliott, The Long Road to Peace, as well as the summary of his submission to the Opshal Commission on pages 289-92. The commission report was published as Andy Pollock, ed., A Citizens’ Inquiry: The Opshal Report on Northern Ireland (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993). Indeed, the Opshal Commission, convened in early 1993, was an example of civil society leaders claiming some ownership of the peace-making process and served to document and underscore the crucial work that civil society groups were already doing to break the cycle of violence and promote reconciliation.

For a broader analysis on the crucial importance of civil society involvement in conflict resolution efforts and peace-building, see John Paul Lederach, Building Sustainable Reconciliation in a Divided Society (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1997) and Catherine Barnes, Civil Society Roles in Preventing War and Building Peace, Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, Issue Paper No. 2, Sept. 2006 (The Hague, Netherlands: European Centre for Conflict Prevention, 2006).

8 The Opshal Commission received numerous oral and written submissions describing the sense of futility and alienation that gripped the Shankill section of West Belfast and North Belfast.

The devastation that West and North Belfast suffered from the conflict are evident in statistics that indicated that forty percent of the deaths, forty-five percent of unemployment, and sixtyfive percent of the violence occurred in these two areas. These figures, submitted to the Opshal Commission by West Belfast community worker Jackie Redpath, were subsequently confirmed by Marie Smyth and her colleagues. See Marie-Therese Fay, Mike Morrissey, and Marie Smyth, Northern Ireland’s Troubles: The Human Costs (London: Pluto Press, 1999); See Pollock, The Opshal Report, 45.

9 Pollock, The Opshal Report, 44. A large part of this hopelessness in the Shankill was rooted in its dramatic population decline from 76,000 to 27,000 between 1971 and 1993. Indeed, a contemporary survey of Shankill youth revealed that eighty percent felt depressed.

10 Ibid, 43-44. As a female north Belfast community activist put it, Protestants “feel under siege and see all Catholics as legitimate targets…. Young loyalist paramilitaries are not motivated by politics, but by sheer sectarianism” because “they believe their numbers are in the balance” and “their backs are up against the wall.” The commission linked the recent upsurge in loyalist violence to these widespread feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness in the face of growing and unfamiliar unemployment, absence of political and community leadership, abandonment by Britain and the conviction that they, the loyalists, were losing while the Catholics were “winning” one concession after another. Demographic decline among the Protestant population of North Belfast also was significant with the number of Protestants falling from 112,000 to 56,000 between 1982 and 1992. In the years between 1991 and 1994, loyalist violence more than doubled what it was in the late 1980s. Loyalists were responsible for 168 of 352 total deaths, while the IRA portion was 161. David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, and Chris Thornton, Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (London: Mainstream Publishing, 2001), 1496. Glenn Barr, a former paramilitary leader, described a similar sense of exclusion among Protestants on Derry’s Waterside and said, “We fear a holocaust in three or four years unless the politicians resolve the constitutional issue.” Pollock, The Opshal Report, 46.

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000 11

239

On January 17, 1992, eight Protestant men returning home from work were killed when the Provisional IRA bombed their van at Teebane. In retaliation for Teebane, five Catholic men were killed and seven wounded when loyalist gunmen of the Ulster Freedom fighters entered the Sean Graham Bookie Shop on Belfast’s Ormeau Road and fired forty-four bullets into the popular community gathering place. On October 23, 1993, in the midst of Saturday morning shopping, the Provisional IRA bombed Frizzel’s Fish Shop on the Shankill Road where they thought a group of loyalist paramilitary leaders were due to meet. That meeting never took place and the bomb killed nine Protestants, including two children, four women and three men. One of the republican bombers, Thomas Begley, also died. One week later Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Freedom Fighter gunmen invaded the crowded Rising Sun Pub in Greysteel, Co. Derry, and opened fire with AK-47s and automatic pistols, killing four Catholic men, two women and one Protestant man. Seventeen were wounded, one of whom died as a result six months later. Between October 25 and December 7, ten other Catholics were killed by loyalists determined to avenge the Shankill bomb. Feargal Cochrane notes that subsequent to these attacks many feared the outbreak of a full-scale Bosnian type civil war in the north. He contends that it was this appalling prospect that “galvanized the British and Irish governments into further activity, leading within a few months to the signing of the Downing Street Declaration on December 15, 1993.” See Feargal Cochrane, “Unsung Heroes? The Role of Peace and Conflict Resolution Organizations in the Northern Ireland Conflict” in Northern Ireland and the Divided World: The Northern Ireland Conflict and the Good Friday Agreement in Comparative Perspective, ed. John McGarry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 151-52. In June 1994, during the World Cup soccer match, loyalists attacked a Loughlinisland pub killing six Catholics who had come there to watch the televised matches.

For further details on these atrocities, see McKittrick, et al., Lost Lives, 1333-41.

12 Indeed, in June 1993 the Opshal Commission reported a consensus among both its Catholic and Protestant witnesses that no political talks or negotiations could succeed unless Sinn Fein representatives were included. At the same time there was broad agreement that Sinn Fein must first renounce violence and accept the principle of consent regarding the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. Pollock, The Opshal Report, 49.

13 David Sanger, “Economic Engine for Foreign Policy,” New York Times, December 28, 2000.

14 Economics in Peacemaking: Lessons from Northern Ireland, Portland Trust Report (London, Portland Trust, 2007), 28. Shortly after the republican and loyalist ceasefires, on November 1, 1994, the White House announced its Northern Irish economic policy, which featured increased funding for the International Fund for Ireland and various initiatives by the Department of Commerce to increase private US investment in Northern Ireland. The center piece of this policy was the White House Conference for Trade and Investment that was eventually held in Washington in May 1995. US State Department Dispatch 5, no. 45 (1994), Article 9. http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/briefing/dispatch/1994/html/Dispatchv5no45.html.

15 The conference was billed as the first step in a long and sustained effort to promote private American investment and trade in those areas that had been devastated by three decades of conflict. See George Mitchell’s statement in Special State Department Briefing on Ireland, May 24, 1995, Federal News Service; See also Mitchell’s interview with Conor O’Clery, and article by Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, “Building an Infrastructure for Lasting Peace and Prosperity,” Irish Times, May 24, 1995.

16 Text of the Clinton speech is in “Remarks of the President at Conference on Trade and Investment in Ireland,” Irish Times, May 26, 1995.

17 Ed Moloney, The Secret History of the IRA, 124; Gerry Moriarty, “IRA Victims Campaign Stepped Up,” Irish Times, June 27, 1995, and Jim Dunne, “Adams Called on to Pressure IRA over Graves of ‘Disappeared,’” Irish Times, August 16, 1995. Ms. Margaret McKinney, whose son Brian was among the “disappeared,” attended the Washington conference and, at a reception for the delegates, gave a note to President Clinton requesting his aid on this issue.

Hillary Clinton met with the Families of the Disappeared, some of whom later spoke of their profound gratitude for her encouragement of their campaign. See Joe Carroll, “Hillary Clinton

240

Catherine B. Shannon

Praised for Support of North Women,” Irish Times, September 24, 1999. Jean McConville was perhaps the most famous of the “disappeared,” and she was finally laid to rest in November, 2003. See Gerry Moriarty, “Mother’s Death ‘Touched Depths of Depravity,’” Irish Times, November 3, 2003, available at http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ mother-smurder-touched-depths-of-depravity-1.388719. For a detailed account of the efforts of the McConville family to find their mother’s remains, see Seamus McKendry, Disappeared: The Search for Jean McConville (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 2000). The families that launched the campaign were those of Jean McConville, Eamon Malloy, John McClory, Brian Mc Kinney, Gerry Evans, Charlie Armstrong and Seamus Ruddy. On December 10, 1998, the IRA admitted that they had disappeared people, and Sinn Fein subsequently passed information about eight of the victims to the newly established Independent Commission on the Location of Victims Remains in spring 1999. Within two months, the remains of three victims, Brian McKinney, John McClorry and Eamon Molloy, were recovered. Since 2000, the remains of Jean McConville, Danny McIllone, Charles Armstrong, and Gerry Evans have been recovered. “Details of the Disappeared,” Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/ disappeared.htm.

18 For the most extensive coverage of the conference and other economic initiatives see, Andrew Wilson, “Doing the Business: Aspects of the Clinton Administration’s Economic Support for the Northern Irish Peace Process, 1994-2000,” Journal of Conflict Studies 23, no. 1 (Spring 2003). In fact, it took six months before the first investment directly linked to the Washington Conference was finalized when Plastofilms Industries of Chicago announced a £2.1 million package that would create sixty-eight new jobs over five years in a new facility in Enniskillen.

See John Murray Brown, “Ceasefire Climate Favors the Business Suit,” Financial Times, December 1, 1995; also Martina Purdy, “Clinton Jobs Boost,” Belfast Telegraph, November 28, 1995. On the eve of the presidential visit, it was announced that Joe White, an American living in Ulster, would be the US Department of Commerce’s official representative at the Belfast consulate with the responsibility of increasing transatlantic business in the areas of technology, agribusiness and tourism. See Martina Purdy, “Profile of Joe White,” Business Telegraph, November 28, 1995.

19 The IDB chief John McGuckian said that large investments took time to finalize but he was convinced that the improved perception of Northern Ireland in the US corporate sector that came from the conference and various trade missions would result eventually in increased investment. McGuckian’s predictions were correct as just prior to the president’s visit significant investments totaling £800 were announced by the IDB and the US firm CableTel, signaling a significant improvement over the pre-ceasefire period. Brown, “Ceasefire Climate Favors the Business Suit;” Purdy, “Clinton Jobs Boost.” See also “A New Day Dawns for Ulster’s Economy,” Belfast News Letter, November 30, 1995. Between January and 1 December 1995, the IDB announced nineteen investments totaling approximately £330 million that carried the potential of 4,530 jobs. In fact, the business climate had so improved that in the two weeks prior to the November 30 presidential visit to Belfast, the IDB announced investments of over £200 million from both new and existing investors that would create over three thousand new jobs. The CableTel investment of £600 million was announced

by Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on the eve of the president’s visit and would eventually create 800 new jobs in a fiber optics communications network. This investment underscored a significant improvement in the investment climate in that it was independent of any IDB subsidies. See John Murray Brown, “Ceasefire Climate Favors the Business Suit.”

20 Andrew J. Wilson, “The Irish Peace Process and Cultural Training Program Act 1998 (Walsh Visa Program): A Case Study in US Economic Support for the Good Friday Agreement,” Irish Political Studies l6 (2001): 246. Also Wilson, “Doing the Business,” 13. The Portland Trust report, Economics in Peacemaking, calculated that between 1994 and 2000 just under $1.5 billion was invested in Northern Ireland by US companies, and that after 1998 this US direct investment accounted for ten percent of jobs in Northern Ireland. Economics in Peacemaking, 23.

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

241

Nigel Tilsson, “Clinton’s 600 m GBP Legacy to Ulster’s Economy,” Belfast Telegraph, December 13, 2000.

22 IFI projects created more than 32,000 jobs between 1986 and 2001. Ninety percent of its funding was spent on disadvantaged areas, and more than 11,000 people were involved in its crosscommunity and cross-border projects. See KPMG Consulting, The International Fund for Ireland: Assessment of the Fund’s Impacts to 30 September 2000 (October, 2001), 42; Chuck Meissner, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, insured that IFI projects and trade missions focused on disadvantaged areas. Virginia Manuel, who took over Meissner’s Northern Irish brief after his death, assisted a number of community organizations to become self-sufficient by launching business ventures modeled on successful community development corporations in the United States. James Lyons, who succeeded George Mitchell as Clinton’s economic adviser, established the Aspire Program in 1999 that provided over £500,000 in loans to more than 80 small business firms in Belfast. See Andrew Wilson, “Doing the Business,” 6.

23 The administration’s support for academic involvement in nurturing the peace process was initially signaled during the Washington Investment Conference by a USIA grant of $123,420 to support collaboration between Fordham University Law School and the University of Ulster’s Center for Conflict Studies at Magee to train local citizens’ groups in conflict resolution. See Michael Langan, “US Irish Meeting a Success Whatever Its Impact on Investment: Officials,” Agence France-Presse, May 26, 1995. Additionally, between 19972000, the USIA and later the State Department provided approximately $2.5 million to the Irish Institute at Boston College to hold a series of short seminars to prepare Northern Irish civil servants, local government officials, as well as women and leaders of civil society for the transition to self-government upon the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

Other examples of the Clinton administration’s belief that improved educational opportunities were vital to the peace process were reflected in the president’s vocal support for building the Springvale Campus in the disadvantaged area of the Shankill/North Belfast. While in Belfast on September 3, 1998, Clinton participated in the dedication ceremonies, turning the first sod on the construction site for the new institution. The Springdale project ultimately collapsed owing to lack of British government funding. Also during the 1998 visit, the Clinton administration announced that it would join with the Irish government in a plan to promote more cross-border and community education. The initiative was to be funded with $500,000 for three years with matching funds from the Irish government. See Andy Pollak, “US May Contribute $1.5 Million to New Education Project,” Irish Times, September 4, 1998.

24 May Blood to author; email, August 8, 2005.

25 A. Kilmurray to author, August 30, 2005. The NIVT later changed its name to the Community Foundation of Northern Ireland. The organization serves as an umbrella organization that coordinates a host of various charitable and community ventures and distributes more money from NGO sources and donations than any other such group in Northern Ireland. The establishment of the Friends of NIVT in the USA was largely a product of the contacts that Kilmurray and her colleagues made with interested US delegates at the conference. On the American side, Joe Leary, president of the Irish American Partnership, maintains that the investment conference served to accelerate and broaden the contacts and cooperation between his organization and the Northern Irish community and voluntary sector. Phone interview with Joe Leary, August 23, 2005.

26 These delegates were Gary McMichael of the Ulster Democratic Party, Robert Coulter, who was the Unionist Mayor of Ballymena, and John Laird, a businessman and former Ulster Unionist Party politician. See Conor O’Clery, The Greening of the White House (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), 213-14; Irish America, July, August 1995, 23.

27 Track two diplomacy was an approach to conflict resolution developed by Joseph V. Montville and William D. Davidson and introduced in their article “Foreign Policy According to Freud,” Foreign Policy, no. 45 (Winter, 1981-1982): 145-57. They described it as “unofficial, nonstructured interactions. It is always open-minded, often altruistic . . . strategically optimistic, based on best case studies. Its underlying assumption is that actual or potential conflict can 21

242

Catherine B. Shannon

be resolved or eased by appealing to common human capabilities to respond to good will and reasonableness.” It is not a substitute for official diplomacy, but supplements it and is most effective when it runs parallel to the negotiations of diplomats or politicians. It also seeks to create an informed public opinion that would make it easier for political leaders to take risks for peace.

28 Nancy Soderberg of the National Security Council was well aware of the sensitivities of the Unionists and that they would need considerable reassurance about the evenhandedness of American policy, especially after the granting of the Adams visa. Shortly after the IRA’s August ceasefire, Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds encouraged Vice President Al Gore to make contact with Unionist politicians, as he would be more trusted than Bill Clinton. On September 21, 1994, David Trimble, Ken Maginnis and Willie Ross of the Ulster Unionist Party met with Al Gore at the White House. O’Clery, The Greening of the White House, 13738, 160.

29 Nicholson was speaking at his party conference (“Party Chairman Warns Clinton To Be Impartial or ‘Stay at Home,’” Irish Times, October 23, 1995, 11). Meanwhile, three leading members of the Democratic Unionist Party, Peter Robinson, Nigel Dodds and Ian Paisley, Jr., warned Nancy Soderberg when she came to Belfast for pre-visit planning that the DUP was prepared to organize large street protests and disrupt President Clinton’s Belfast City Hall appearance if the president’s schedule suggested a pro-nationalist bias. At a late October meeting in Washington with Al Gore, Dr. Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson stressed that the presidential visit had to be balanced. For full details on the extensive efforts by White House staff, the State Department and the British officials to achieve this balance, see Trevor Birney and Julian O’Neill, When the President Calls (Derry: Guildhall Press, 1997), chap. 3.

30 Birney and O’Neill, 78-79. The balanced nature of Clinton’s Northern Irish initiative was also emphasized by former US diplomat G. T. Dempsey when he explained that the primary aim was to end the violence as an integral aspect of United States interests. G. T. Dempsey, “The American Role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process,” Irish Political Studies 14, no. 1 (1999): 104-17.

31 Birney and O’Neill, When the President Calls, 78-79. Ms. Clarke subsequently placed a sign in her shop window saying “President Clinton shops here” and framed and hung on her shop wall the sterling note he used for his purchases. Irish America, March/April 1996, 26.

32 Irish America, March/April 1996, 26.

33 Sammy Douglas, a community worker who ran the East Belfast Partnership and who attended the Washington conference, suggested this site. The Partnership’s board members included Peter Robinson of the DUP and John Taylor of the UUP as well as John Alderdice of the Alliance Party, thus reinforcing the goal of a balanced program.

34 The CEO of Mackie’s, Pat Dougan, had attended the Washington Conference, where he invited the president to visit Mackie’s if and when he came to Belfast and he pitched the idea to George Mitchell when the visit was announced. Birney and O’Neill, When the President Calls, 94. Mackie’s success in attracting new business proved short-lived and it closed in 1999.

35 Catherine Hamill’s father was a victim of a sectarian slaying by loyalists when she was only five, and she told the audience that she still thought about him, and how she “liked having peace and quiet for a change instead of shooting and killing. My Christmas wish is that peace and love will last in Ireland forever.” Ten year old David Sterrett told of living in a mixed neighborhood where “we play football and races together” and said that he could hardly tell the difference between his Catholic and Protestant playmates. Belfast News Letter, December 1, 1995, 11.

36 Remarks to Mackie International Employees in Belfast, Northern Ireland, November 30, 1995, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 31, no. 48 (December 4, 1995): 2080-84.

37 Belfast News Letter, December 1, 1995. The audience applauded ten times during the President’s twenty-four minute speech, and he received a one-minute standing ovation that was interrupted only by his leaving the stage to meet people in the audience.

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

243

This city is often known as “Stroke City” because nationalists call it Derry while the city’s unionists call it Londonderry, hence the appellation Derry/Londonderry. As well as being the birthplace of John Hume, Derry was the site of some of the most dramatic and tragic events of the northern conflict, including the second civil rights march on October 5, 1968 and the shooting of thirteen civilians by the British army on January 30, 1972, an event known as “Bloody Sunday.”

39 See note 23.

40 Most notable was the complaint of some local unionist politicians, especially DUP politician Gregory Campbell, that Clinton’s Derry visit had been a “nationalist jamboree” that ignored the history and culture of the city’s Protestants. This might have been partially averted had the president made a brief stop on the Waterside where the majority of the city’s Protestants reside. Derry Journal, December 5, 1995, 9. Initially a Waterside appearance was planned but had to be abandoned when the earlier Derry events ran over schedule and threatened to disrupt the timing for Clinton’s appearance before the huge crowds that had already gathered at Belfast City Hall.

41 Derry Journal, editorial, December 5, 1995.

42 Belfast Telegraph, December 1, 1995.

43 Belfast News Letter, January 31, 1994, November 30, 1995, December 1, 2, 3, 1995.

44 Belfast News Letter, December 1, 1995.

45 Belfast News Letter, December 4, 1995.

46 Birney and O’Neill, When the President Calls, 248. After a reception at Queen’s University Clinton invited David Trimble to accompany him in the presidential car to the Europa Hotel, and their exchange en route helped to diminish the UUP leader’s previous doubts about the impartiality of Clinton’s sympathies.

47 Birney and O’Neill, 221.

48 Birney and O’Neill, 227.

49 Birney and O’Neill, 242.

50 Coopers Lybrand Poll, Sunday Tribune, January 14, 1996. Subsequent to the breakdown of the ceasefire in February 1996, a September 1996 Sunday Times poll found that only twenty-six percent of non-Catholics thought United States involvement was beneficial to the peace process. However, a 1998 survey saw a resurgence in favorable Protestant opinion when fiftyfive percent thought the US government was “helpful or very helpful” in the search for a settlement. Quoted in Paul Dixon, “Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process on the World Stage,” Political Science Quarterly 121, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 84-85.

51 Belfast Telegraph, February 26, 1996. Large peace rallies in Dublin and Cork were also held that drew a total of approximately 65,000 people.

52 Belfast Telegraph, February 26, 1996.

53 Derry Journal, February 14, 1996.

54 Belfast News Letter, November 30, 1996.

55 See speeches of Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Senator Mitchell at the Washington Conference, Irish Times, May 24, 26, 1995.

56 Guy Ben-Porat, Global Liberalism, Local Populism: Peace and Conflict in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 238-39. This provides an excellent overview of the steadily increasing involvement of business leaders in the civil peace process from 1994-2000. The organizations involved in the GoS were the Confederation of British Industries of Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, the Institute of Directors, the Northern Ireland Growth Challenge, the Northern Ireland Economic Council, and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The CBI study estimated that the peace dividend from a cessation of violence over five years, 1994-99 would amount to over £1 billion and had the potential to create up to 30,000 jobs. See Peace-A Challenging New Era (Belfast: CBI Northern Ireland, 1994), 16.

57 Local Business, Local Peace: The Peacebuilding Potential of the Domestic Private Sector (London: International Alert, 2006).

38

244 58

Catherine B. Shannon

An exception to this came when Irish President Mary Robinson acknowledged the important work of Northern women at the launch of the Women’s Support Network in February 1992 and in a number of her subsequent visits to local women’s centers. The Opshal Commission described many instances of women’s cross-community work and emphasized the crucial lessons that this held for peace building. However, in general paramilitaries, politicians and churchmen on both sides demonstrated little concern for women’s interests or rights, making Northern Ireland a patriarchy that was ecumenical as well as armed. For further details on women’s grass-roots activism, see Catherine B. Shannon, “Women in Northern Ireland,” in Chattel, Servant or Citizen: Women in Church, State and Society, ed. Mary O’Dowd and Sabine Witchert (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1995), 238-53.

59 Remarks of the First Lady at Joyce McCartan Memorial Lecture, University of Ulster, October 31, 1997, Office of the White House Press Secretary, available at http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/ generalspeeches/1997/19971104794.html.

60 Monica McWilliams, one of NIWC founders and leaders, recalled that Mrs. Clinton’s acknowledgement of the constructive role the coalition was playing in the peace process at the March 1998 White House reception, attended by all the visiting Irish politicians, “….did a power of good for our standing back home,” and with the broadcast media, and with hitherto dismissive Unionist politicians such as David Trimble and John Taylor. M. McWilliams to author, July 17, 2005. See also Hillary Rodham Clinton column, “Talking it Over,” April 15, 1998, in which the first lady again alluded to the positive contribution that Northern women, and especially the NIWC women, had made to the peace process. Available at https://clinton2. nara.gov/WH/EOP/ First_Lady/html/columns/HRC0415.html.

61 First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Remarks at Vital Voices Conference, September 2, 1998, http://dosfan.lib.uic. edu/usia/vitalvoices/INHRC.HTM. 62 For instance, during the presidential visit to Belfast in December 2000, Mrs. Clinton met jointly with women members of Sinn Fein, the Ulster Unionist Party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Alliance Party and asked them what more she could do for them. This meeting took place prior to President Clinton’s speech at the Odyssey arena in Belfast.

Monica McWilliams to author, July 17, 2005.

63 These companies included Ford Motor Company, Xerox, AOL, Marriott and MCI. 64 Remarks to the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast, September 3, 1998, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William Jefferson Clinton, 1998 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1999), 2:1513-16.

65 Remarks to Victims of the Bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, September 3, 1998, Public Papers: William J. Clinton, 1998, 2:1517-18. For an account of the president’s visit to Omagh and the reactions of some of the injured and families of those killed, see Suzanne Breen, “Sombre President Tries To Ease the Grief of Omagh,” Irish Times, September 4, 1998. DUP politicians were critical of the president’s Omagh visit, suggesting he was using the tragedy as a way to deflect attention from his difficulties over the Monica Lewinsky matter. See John Burns and Vincent Kearney, “Unwelcome Guest?” The Sunday Times, 30 August 1998, 13.

On the other hand, a sign that ordinary people were more determined than ever not to have the peace process deflected by Omagh was the welcome that a grieving Donegal community gave to Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble when he attended the funeral of three young Donegal boys who had been killed. This funeral also occasioned a rather symbolic personal reconciliation when Irish President Mary McAleese and David Trimble (who had a history of professional differences while both were teaching law at Queen’s University) shook hands.

Deaglan de Breadun in his book The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland (Cork: The Collins Press, 2001), wrote that after the Omagh bomb, officials in the Irish government redoubled their efforts to implement the Belfast Agreement (169-71). One week after the atrocity, forty thousand people gathered in Omagh in memory of the victims and to express their support of the peace process. De Breadun also reported that at the four funerals

Bringing Hope to Northern Ireland’s Civil Society: 1992-2000

245

that UUP leader David Trimble attended, people indicated their support by telling him,”Keep it going; don’t stop,” de Breadun, The Far Side of Revenge, l71.

66 Remarks to a Gathering for Peace in Armagh, Northern Ireland, 3 September 1998, Public Papers: William J. Clinton, 1998, 2:1526-28.

67 Monica McWilliams email to author, July 20, 2005.

68 Seamus Heaney suggested the appropriateness of Havel’s definition of hope in the Northern Irish context in an essay he wrote following the Sept. 1994 IRA ceasefire, and again in the aftermath of the breakdown of that ceasefire in February 1996. See Seamus Heaney, “Cessation: 1994” in Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001 (London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 47; and Heaney’s remarks at a Derry City Reception honoring him after receiving the Nobel Prize, Derry Journal, February 20, 1996.

69 John Hume, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 1998, available at http:// www. nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/ peace/ laureates/1998/hume-lecture.html.

70 Events that have eroded confidence in the Belfast Agreement include alleged Sinn Fein spying and intelligence gathering, the Columbia Three case, the 2002 suspension of the Assembly, the Belfast bank robbery in late 2004, and the January 2005 of murder of Robert McCartney.

VI. THE UNITED NATIONS AND MULTILATERALISM

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 15

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: THE US PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UNITED NATIONS IN THE CLINTON YEARS Meena Bose Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

In the 1990s, the ending of the Cold War presented a significant opportunity for the international community to pursue multilateral cooperation through the United Nations (UN). Since its inception in 1945, the UN had been stymied in many areas, especially international peace and security, by the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the lifting of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, however, opened new avenues for interaction between the two superpowers. In September 1990, after the United States and Soviet Union stood together in condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait,

250

Meena Bose

President George H. W. Bush aptly declared that the international community was entering “a new world order.”1 The Clinton administration faced the first test of that new order in 1993 when it sought a resolution to the humanitarian intervention in Somalia, Operation Restore Hope, that the outgoing Bush administration had begun in December 1992. The shift of responsibility from the United States to the UN in May 1993 was not successful, however, and an October firefight in Mogadishu led to the US decision to pull out of Somalia. Subsequently, the United States resisted UN action to halt the genocide in Rwanda in the spring of 1994, and it instead operated through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in military engagements in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. By the end of the 1990s, the prospects for the “new world order” appeared much dimmer than they had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This chapter examines US policy making at the UN during the Clinton years. In particular, it asks the question, “how did US Ambassadors to the UN Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke promote US interests at the UN in the Clinton administration?” This topic merits attention for several reasons. As discussed above, the 1990s marked the hallmark of opportunity for concerted UN action in the twentieth century. Thus, both the successes and failures of the United States at the UN in that period can provide valuable lessons for future cooperation. Also, Albright and Holbrooke were highly influential advisers – Albright went on to become the first female secretary of state in Clinton’s second term, and Holbrooke was widely regarded as a likely candidate for secretary of state if Al Gore had been elected president in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004.2 Yet their role in foreign policy making at the UN has received little scholarly analysis.

To address this subject, the chapter presents short profiles of each ambassador’s UN tenure. The Albright years encompassed numerous debates about international peacekeeping, while the Holbrooke years continued debates about military intervention and addressed the payment of US dues to the UN. Each of these topics marked a significant and sometimes highly contentious policy making debate, both among US policy makers and at the UN. Two other ambassadors to the UN served with distinction in the

Private and Public Diplomacy

251

Clinton years, Bill Richardson (1997-98) and A. Peter Burleigh (who served as charge from September 1998 to August 1999, while Holbrooke awaited Senate confirmation), but due to space constraints, their experiences are not examined here. Also, neither Richardson nor Burleigh had the same public visibility and leadership role on the president’s foreign policy team as did Albright and Holbrooke.

CLINTON’S FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA The wide-ranging US agenda in the post-Cold War era encompassed everything from peacekeeping to trade to human rights. Clinton’s major successes included the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1995 Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia, and the 1998 Good Friday peace accords in Northern Ireland. Ongoing and ultimately unresolved issues in both terms included the Middle East peace process and negotiations with North Korea. And at the UN, the United States engaged in significant, and sometimes hotly debated, decision making about Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the US debt to the UN, among other issues.3 Clinton’s selection of his national security team reflected his limited interest, at least initially, in these thorny foreign affairs challenges. As veteran Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew writes, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake were chosen to “keep foreign policy from distracting the President from his domestic agenda.”4 For US ambassador to the UN, Clinton selected Georgetown professor and Democratic foreign policy adviser Madeleine Albright. During the Bush-Clinton transition (and before her appointment), Albright had proposed that the US Permanent Representative to the UN serve as a senior-level foreign policy adviser, and Clinton made the UN ambassador a cabinet-level post. In his memoirs, Clinton writes that he did so because he wanted Albright to give advice on national security as well as the UN, describing her as “an ideal spokesperson for us at the United Nations in the post-Cold War era.”5

252

Meena Bose

THE ALBRIGHT YEARS AT THE UN Albright arrived at the UN in 1993 with academic and professional diplomatic expertise, having taught at Georgetown University for several years, served in President Jimmy Carter’s State Department, and advised many Democratic political candidates. As a member of the cabinet, a status that few of her predecessors had received, Albright enjoyed the full confidence of the president in promoting US interests at the UN. Consequently, Albright soon became known for her tough, blunt rhetoric and willingness to provoke debate over controversial issues, both in the president’s decision-making circle and at the UN. Amidst the uncertainty of the immediate post-Cold War period, Albright provided clarity and conviction about the US agenda in multilateral affairs.

At the UN, Albright employed an operating style that emphasized communication, be it public statements or private diplomacy. The phrase with which Albright perhaps is most closely identified, and for which she is most attacked by critics, is “assertive multilateralism.”6 The term became linked with foreign policy problems in the Clinton administration, notably the disastrous October 1993 firefight in Somalia that left eighteen American soldiers dead.7 By focusing on means rather than ends, “assertive multilateralism” left the mistaken impression that the United States would operate only in concert with other nations in pursuit of its foreign policy aims.

At the same time, Albright had many significant successes in communicating and defending American interests in the world. One of Albright’s most famous remarks came unexpectedly, without advance preparation, in February 1996, after Cuban forces shot down two American planes flown by Cuban exiles, killing four people. In a press conference, Albright declared, “Frankly, this is not cojones. This is cowardice.”8 She notes in her memoirs that President Clinton later described her words as “probably the most effective one-liner in the whole administration’s foreign policy.”9 Although the statement had no policy implications, it resonated with the American public, particularly the Cuban community in Miami, and overrode the more timid image of “assertive multilateralism.”

Private and Public Diplomacy

253

Albright’s behind-the-scenes communications were often just as sharp and pointed as her public statements. As an official with cabinet rank, Albright participated in the high-level policy debates about U.S intervention in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, as well as the decision not to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. Perhaps the two situations in which the Clinton administration, including Albright, had the most uncertainty about what to do were Somalia and Rwanda.

Albright was a strong proponent of shifting responsibility from US forces in Somalia to a UN peacekeeping mission, though US views on what the UN’s goals should be were less well-developed. As she recalls in her memoirs, “[M]y instructions were to negotiate the rapid handover of principal responsibility from the United States to the UN. The Pentagon was eager to call its mission a success and bring our soldiers home.”10 But the Clinton administration did not treat Somalia as a high priority; the president did not meet formally with his foreign policy team to discuss Somalia until after the October 1993 firefight, nor did the Principals Committee (composed of the president’s top foreign policy advisers, including Albright) meet to evaluate the situation there.11 Regarding the horrific massacre that took place in Rwanda in April 1994, Albright writes, “My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner.”12 Although Albright did make a case to the NSC in mid-April, as events were unfolding, that the United States should not support complete UN withdrawal from Rwanda, she did not argue for reinforcing the existing mission, and she writes in her memoirs that “I deeply regret not advocating this course.”13 Albright expressed no such doubts with respect to military intervention in Haiti and Bosnia. In both cases, she firmly believed that the United States needed to intervene with force if necessary, to oust the military junta in Haiti and to end the civil war in Bosnia. Unlike Somalia and Rwanda, where humanitarian concerns had been the primary (and certainly sufficient) reason for action, other issues mattered in these cases. With Haiti, the United States faced the challenge of turning back thousands of refugees – a policy established by the first Bush administration after the 1991 military coup in Haiti, and continued by the Clinton administration -- as long as the junta

254

Meena Bose

remained in power.14 With Bosnia, the United States needed to ensure that the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia did not become a larger war. The Bosnia conflict was particularly important to Albright personally, as her family had fled Czechoslovakia twice during her childhood, once because of the Nazis and once because of the Communists. As she later explained, “My mind-set is Munich; most of my generation’s is Vietnam.”15 One of Albright’s major diplomatic triumphs in American foreign policy was the passage of a Security Council resolution in 1994 that called for the use of military force to remove the military junta in Haiti. Although the State Department had expressed reservations of going the UN route, Albright personally assured the president that she could get the votes for a resolution, and he told her to go ahead. After weeks of negotiations, Albright succeeded in shepherding the resolution through the Council with only two abstentions, from Brazil and China. In making the case for authorizing military force, Albright issued a famous warning to the Haitian military leader Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras: “You can depart voluntarily and soon; or you can depart involuntarily and soon.”16 Ultimately, the military leadership stepped down voluntarily, and US troops landed on the island as a peacekeeping, rather than an intervention, force.

Albright faced more difficulties in persuading Clinton’s foreign policy team to take on the civil war in Bosnia. In 1993, she was the only member of the Principals team who supported sending US ground troops to the region.17 David Halberstam notes that “From the time [Albright] joined the Clinton administration, she had been a hawk on the Balkans, though no one listened to her carefully.”18 Critics included Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, who wrote that he “thought [he] would have an aneurysm” when Albright declared at one meeting, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”19 For her part, Albright says her view was “that the lessons of Vietnam could be learned too well.”20 Albright and Powell were in agreement that the Clinton administration’s early meetings on Bosnia were unfocused: Albright described them as “rambling and inconclusive,”21 while Powell said they would “meander like graduate-student bull sessions.”22 Although Albright consistently advocated military intervention in Bosnia, the Clinton

Private and Public Diplomacy

255

administration did not engage in sustained diplomacy to attain a peace accord, coupled with air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), until 1995.23 Perhaps Albright’s biggest conflict at the UN came in 1996, when she cast the sole dissenting vote against, and veto of, a resolution to grant UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a second term in office. The tragic events in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia all had taken place during his tenure, and members of Congress were questioning whether the United States should keep paying its UN dues, of which it already owed more than $1 billion in back payments. As Albright recalls in her memoirs, “with Republicans in full control of Congress, every UN issue was a struggle and the secretary-general himself had become radioactive.”24 Albright was unable to persuade her colleagues on the Security Council to oppose a second term for Boutros-Ghali, but one month after the November vote, and after Clinton had announced that Albright would become secretary of state, the Council voted unanimously in favor of making Kofi Annan secretarygeneral. Given that Clinton’s foreign policy team, including Albright, had long supported this appointment, ultimately the United States prevailed.25 In evaluating Albright’s tenure at the UN, her determination to serve as the US representative in the organization, not the UN representative to the United States, is clear. Albright was a confident spokesperson for the Clinton administration, who was able to represent US interests effectively because of her high-ranking position on the president’s foreign policy team. Her policy-making role established a new authority for the US ambassador to the UN, one that would extend beyond her own time in that position.

THE HOLBROOKE YEARS AT THE UN Richard Holbrooke had the same visibility and policy-making authority as Albright did as US ambassador to the UN, but his top priority, payment of US dues, focused on Congress as much as the UN. By the mid-1990s, many members of Congress had begun to question the utility of the international organization, and divided government exacerbated already

256

Meena Bose

sharp divisions between the White House and Capitol Hill. Holbrooke successfully negotiated an agreement over payment of past US dues plus a reduction in future US obligations to the UN. While many other issues – from sending peacekeeping troops to East Timor to highlighting Africa when the United States chaired the Security Council – also mark Holbrooke’s tenure, perhaps his greatest achievement was ensuring that the United States would remain an integral part of the UN in the twenty-first century.

Holbrooke came to the UN steeped in the intricacies of political diplomacy. A graduate of Brown University, he joined the Foreign Service in 1962. He served in Vietnam as an economic development officer and an aide to Gen. Maxwell Taylor and US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (who previously had served as US ambassador to the UN in the Eisenhower administration), and also participated in the early Paris peace talks before leaving the Service in 1969. He was appointed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Carter administration, and then joined Lehman Brothers in the 1980s. In the first term of the Clinton administration, Holbrooke served as US ambassador to Germany and assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs. He became a public figure when he successfully brokered the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the civil war in Bosnia. Although Holbrooke returned to the private sector in Clinton’s second term, he continued to serve as an envoy for the president, brokering peace talks in Cyprus and Kosovo, until his appointment as US permanent representative to the UN in 1999.26 During his tenure at the UN, Holbrooke expertly balanced public visibility with private negotiations. As US ambassador to the UN, Holbrooke served as one of Clinton’s top foreign policy advisers. Officially, Holbrooke reported to Secretary of State Albright, but he also had cabinet rank, which gave him the same stature that Albright had held in the UN position. Because Holbrooke had been a top contender for secretary of state in 1996, he and Albright maintained a cordial but slightly competitive relationship. As one article noted in 1999, “There always has been tension between Secretary of State Albright and Holbrooke, who’s widely viewed as a top prospect for secretary of state if Vice President Al Gore succeeds President Clinton.”27

Private and Public Diplomacy

257

Nevertheless, Albright and Holbrooke both participated in weekly meetings with Clinton’s foreign policy team -- including the national security adviser, secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA director -- to discuss ongoing issues.28 The most significant challenge that Holbrooke faced as US ambassador to the UN was negotiating an agreement between Congress and the UN over payment of US back dues. Clinton writes that he selected Holbrooke for the position specifically because he “had the skills to solve our UN dues problem and the experience and intellect to make a major contribution to our foreign policy team.”29 The “UN dues problem” dated back to the mid1990s, when Congress began to question US obligations to the organization, especially in light of the recent tragedy in Somalia. As one senator said afterward, “Creeping multilateralism died on the streets of Mogadishu.”30 The return of divided government in 1995, with a Republican Congress and a Democratic president, further exacerbated the problem. Some members of Congress refused to release payment of more than $1 billion in back dues unless the UN undertook substantial reforms; funds also were withheld to protest aid to international family-planning groups that lobbied for abortion rights.31 Senator Jesse Helms, who became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1995, harshly criticized the UN as a “power-hungry and dysfunctional organization.”32 Holbrooke’s first priority thus would be ensuring that the United States remained part of the UN in the twenty-first century, which would require compromise from both sides. In the fall of 1999, the United States owed more than $1.5 billion to the UN for back dues and its share of peacekeeping operations. The United States wanted to lower its share of UN dues to 22 percent from 25 percent, and to cut its peacekeeping assessment to 25 percent from 31 percent, both immense tasks. Furthermore, the ranking Republican and Democratic senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms and Joseph R. Biden, Jr., had prepared a legislative package that would pay the UN almost $1 billion in US dues, but only if the organization undertook major reforms.33 One UN diplomat stated that “Everybody’s eyes are on Holbrooke and his famous skill as a salesman of hard choices.”34

258

Meena Bose

Holbrooke seized the initiative on the matter by bringing the two sides together, both in New York and in Washington, DC. He invited Helms to speak to the Security Council, which the senator did in January 2000. The first member of Congress ever to speak to the Council, Helms declared that US financing of the UN was “an investment – an investment from which the American people rightly expect a return.”35 He also warned, “A United Nations that seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people without their consent begs for confrontation and . . . eventual US withdrawal.”36 After Helms’s speech, a spokesman for UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan said Annan “feels we’ve turned the corner in the relationship between the US and the UN.”37 Two months later, Helms returned the hospitality, inviting the Security Council to visit the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Illustrating that a meeting of the minds was imminent, one Council member told the Committee that “we are not persuaded by your arguments, but by our own enlightened self-interest.”38 Almost a year after inviting Helms to the UN Security Council, Holbrooke succeeded in finalizing an agreement about the US budget for the UN. The UN agreed to cut US dues to 22 percent of the organization’s budget, and to drop its share of peacekeeping payments to 27 percent from 31. In a surprise move, media mogul Ted Turner told Holbrooke he would pay $35 million to the UN in 2001, so other nations would not have to assume the shortfall from the new US dues contribution in the first year.39 Diplomats credited Holbrooke for the agreement; as one person stated, “I don’t think there is anyone else who could have done it.”40 In announcing his support, Helms similarly recognized Holbrooke and the US Mission to the UN, saying, “They did a masterful job.”41 Holbrooke’s success in negotiating US dues to the UN stemmed principally from his ability to represent the interests of both sides effectively.

As Mark Malloch Brown, the director of the UN Development Program, said after Holbrooke’s appointment, “He wants to not just be Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations, but the United Nations’ ambassador to Washington.”42 President Clinton notes in his memoirs that the dues agreement “took Dick [Holbrooke] longer than making peace in Bosnia, but I’m not sure anyone else could have done it.”43 Veteran political writer

Private and Public Diplomacy

259

David Halberstam explains, “Remarkably the settlement satisfied both the UN leadership and the leadership of the Congress, most notably Jesse Helms. Helms had publicly congratulated Holbrooke – a sure sign, in this case, of a tour de force.”44 Holbrooke succeeded in showing the importance of the UN to Congress, as well as the fundamental importance of the United States to the UN. In evaluating Holbrooke’s record as US ambassador to the UN, then, his combination of visibility on high-profile issues with extensive behind-thescenes diplomacy is clear. Despite Holbrooke’s abbreviated tenure in the position, he nevertheless managed to accomplish a major achievement, namely, the renegotiation of US dues to the international organization. As a cabinet member in the Clinton administration, Holbrooke served as a principal adviser to the president, and he exercised that responsibility fully.

Just like his predecessor, Albright, Holbrooke turned the UN position into a policy-making role.

CONCLUSION The Clinton years at the UN in many ways represent the greatest sustained effort by the United States to engage with the international organization since its creation in 1945. The United States faced a unique opportunity to move beyond Cold War rivalries and promote multilateral cooperation, and US Ambassadors Albright and Holbrooke actively pursued a policy agenda at the UN. With strong support from the president, who accorded cabinet status to the position, the US ambassador to the UN provided both public visibility on US priorities and private diplomacy to accomplish those goals.

At the same time, the United States encountered difficulties in implementing its UN agenda. The ending of the Cold War raised many questions about US foreign policy interests, and the tragedies in Somalia and Rwanda illustrated the challenges of defining those priorities, especially with respect to humanitarian crises. Furthermore, the United States had to expend significant political capital in Clinton’s second term to persuade

260

Meena Bose

Congress to pay US dues to the UN, an issue that essentially dominated Holbrooke’s tenure at the UN. Thus, the heightened importance of the US ambassador to the UN’s advisory role in the Clinton administration nevertheless depended upon presidential direction and congressional support for policy making.

AUTHOR’S NOTE Parts of this article appeared in Meena Bose, “Classifying the Changing Role of the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Presidential Policy Making,” White House Studies 11, no. 3 (2011): 239260; and the White House Studies article was reprinted in Meena Bose, ed., US Presidential Leadership at the United Nations from 1945 to the Present (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2014). Special thanks to Nova Science Publishers for permitting that material to be reprinted here.

ENDNOTES 1

Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the Persian Gulf and the Federal Budget Deficit, September 11, 1990, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush, 1990 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1991).

2 On Holbrooke’s prospects for becoming secretary of state had Gore or Kerry been elected president, see “World: America’s Richard Holbrooke: The Balkans’ Bulldozer,” BBC News, August 5, 1999; and Jim VandeHei, “Kerry Exploring Cabinet Options,” Washington Post, October 22, 2004, A23.

3 An overview of Clinton’s first-term foreign policy record is presented in Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, 8th rev. ed.

(New York: Penguin Books, 1997). Clinton’s second-term foreign policy legacy is discussed in Emily O. Goldman and Larry Berman, “Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy,” in The Clinton Legacy, ed. Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman (New York: Chatham House Publishers, 2000), 226-53.

4 Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 28.

5 Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 455.

6 Albright writes in her memoirs that she used the phrase in testimony before the Senate in 1995 (Madam Secretary: A Memoir [New York: Miramax Books, 2003], 176), but several newspaper articles connect the phrase with her as early as 1993. See, for example, “Somalia’s Lessons for UN,” Christian Science Monitor, July 29, 1993; and Thomas Omestad, “Clinton Learns to Be Prudent on Peril,” Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1993. Despite repeated searching through

Private and Public Diplomacy

261

newspaper and magazine databases, as well as congressional hearings, I have been unable to locate the date on when the term was first used.

7 For a perceptive, moment-by-moment analysis of the events that took place in Somalia on October 3, 1993, see Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999).

8 Albright, Madam Secretary, 205.

9 Albright, 207.

10 Albright, 142.

11 Interview by author with W. Anthony Lake, national security adviser, 1993-97, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1997; Nancy Soderberg, The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 38.

12 Albright, Madam Secretary, 147-48. Also see Soderberg, The Superpower Myth, 276-89.

13 Albright, 155.

14 During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton had said he would reverse the Bush administration’s policy of refusing US entry to Haitian refugees. But he decided to continue with the policy even before his inauguration. See Drew, On the Edge, 139.

15 Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 34.

16 Albright, Madam Secretary, 159. Also see Thomas W. Lippmann, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 14; and Thomas Blood, Madam Secretary: A Biography of Madeleine Albright (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 96-99.

17 Soderberg, The Superpower Myth, 30.

18 David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), 386.

19 Colin Powell, with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 576.

20 Albright, Madam Secretary, 182.

21 Albright, 180.

22 Powell, My American Journey, 576.

23 For a thorough study of the Clinton administration’s decision making on Bosnia, see Ivo H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). Richard Holbrooke, who served as assistant secretary of state in Clinton’s first term and was the architect of the 1995 Dayton Accords that established peace among the warring parties in Bosnia, traces the negotiations in To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998).

24 Albright, Madam Secretary, 207.

25 Lippmann, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy, 22-28. For Boutros-Ghali’s perspective on his UN years, see his memoir, Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga (New York: Random House, 1999).

26 For biographical information on Holbrooke, see Nicholas Kralev, “So Busy at Diplomacy, He ‘Ignored’ the US Election,” Financial Times, January 6, 2001; James Traub, “Holbrooke’s Campaign,” New York Times Magazine, March 26, 2000, 45; and “Under That Tough Exterior, Holbrooke Hides a Soft Spot,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1998, 11. Holbrooke describes the process that led to the Dayton Accords in To End a War. 27 Tom Raum, “Holbrooke Works Behind the Scenes on Negotiations; Envoy is Nominee for Ambassador,” Times-Picayune, February 21, 1999, A18.

28 Albright, Madam Secretary, 349n.

29 Clinton, My Life, 792-93.

30 Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 264.

31 See Clinton, My Life, 739; Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey, 400; and Chris Smith, “Getting Our Money’s Worth from the UN, Washington Post, November 3, 1999, A35.

262

Meena Bose

Jesse Helms, “Saving the UN,” Foreign Affairs 75 (September/October 1996).

Colum Lynch, “Payment of US Debt to UN is Top Priority for Holbrooke,” Washington Post, October 17, 1999, A12.

34 Colum Lynch, “Holbrooke’s Tough Sell on UN Debt,” Washington Post, November 17, 1999, A2.

35 Maggie Farley, “Helms to UN: Shape Up or US Will Ship Out,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2000, 1.

36 Farley, 1.

37 “Holbrooke Backs Helms’ Demand for UN Overhaul,” Chicago Tribune, January 22, 2000, 8.

38 Barbara Crossette and Eric Schmitt, “UN Ambassadors in Helms Land: Smiles On, Gloves Off,” New York Times, March 31, 2000, A8.

39 Colum Lynch, “Turner Offers $35 Million to Help US Pay UN Dues,” Washington Post, December 22, 2000, A1. On the agreement about US dues, see Barbara Crossette, “After Long Fight, UN Agrees to Cut Dues Paid by US,” New York Times, December 23, 2000, A1.

40 Colum Lynch, “US Dues Cut Gets Support at the UN,” Washington Post, December 23, 2000, A1.

41 Eric Schmitt, “Senator Helms’s Journey: From Clenched-Fist UN Opponent to Fan,” New York Times, December 23, 2000, A6.

42 Colum Lynch, “Holbrooke Faces Challenge at UN,” Washington Post, August 24, 1999, A12.

43 Clinton, My Life, 876.

44 Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 485.

32 33

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 16

THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AND THE UNITED NATIONS: FROM “ASSERTIVE MULTILATERALISM” TO “BURDEN SHIFTING” AND REDISCOVERY Stephen F. Burgess† Department of International Security Studies, US Air War College, Montgomery, AL, US

Madeleine Albright, a top adviser to Bill Clinton during his 1992 election campaign, used the term “assertive multilateralism” during confirmation hearings to become US Ambassador to the United Nations and in subsequent statements. The term was subsequently used to describe the Clinton administration’s foreign policy in 1993.1 According to this principle, the United States would lead in maintaining international peace and security,2 particularly through the United Nations.3 UN Secretary-General 

This article appeared previously in White House Studies 12, no. 4 (October 2012): 307-21. Special thanks to Nova Science Publishers for permitting that material to be reprinted here. † The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Air War College or the Department of Defense.

264

Stephen F. Burgess

Boutros Boutros-Ghali welcomed the new administration’s policy stance, which reflected the position put forward in his An Agenda for Peace.4 Boutros-Ghali and Albright worked closely together during the first nine months of 1993, especially in the UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia.

However, the killing of eighteen American Special Forces in Mogadishu in October 1993 caused the Clinton administration to abandon assertive multilateralism, “scapegoat” the United Nations, and turn towards “burden shifting” or “burden-sharing” in which organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or states, such as Britain, Australia, and Nigeria, would play a leading role in conflict resolution. The United States would no longer place American “boots on the ground” in a UN peacekeeping operation and risk another “Black Hawk down.” The US reversal appears to be best explained by the power of domestic politics, which is grounded in the national interest, to overcome an administration’s idealism.5 In the wake of the Somalia debacle, the Clinton administration turned on Boutros Boutros-Ghali and actively worked to unseat him as secretarygeneral. An explanation for the dramatic change in US foreign policy can be drawn from the domestic politics model of decision making,6 in which public opinion and the reelection imperative are major drivers. In this case, the administration’s realization of the political costs of adhering to an idealist principle led it to “scapegoat” Boutros-Ghali and the United Nations. While the removal of Boutros-Ghali demonstrates the power of the United States to act unilaterally within the United Nations, it underscores the influence of US domestic politics within the world body, specifically the Clinton administration’s ability to use the specter of the anti-UN Republican Party to leverage member states to accept Kofi Annan as a substitute secretarygeneral.

The Clinton administration’s rediscovery of the United Nations came after the president’s reelection and with the resolution of several conflicts where lead states and organizations were not sufficiently capable or legitimate to keep and build the peace. Explanations for the about-face appear to come from the decline of domestic politics as a factor in US policy towards the UN,7 the rise of a new secretary-general, and the need for

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

265

international legitimacy that the UN could provide for several new complex peace and stability operations.

“ASSERTIVE MULTILATERALISM” The origins of “assertive multilateralism” can be found in the Clinton campaign’s acceptance of President George H. W. Bush’s idealist call for a “new world order” in which the United States would lead through the United Nations, as it did in liberating Kuwait. The campaign used the new world order against Bush in its critique of the administration’s failure to act against ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the summer of 1992. Bill Clinton called for the United States to lead a UN-endorsed multilateral coalition to end ethnic cleansing and restore peace.

After taking office, the Clinton administration, in league with the Democrat-controlled Congress, made strides in building US relations with the United Nations; moved towards resolution of the US back dues problem; and persuaded the UN Secretariat to take steps to reform its bureaucracy.

The administration promoted actions to end the conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia, which would involve putting assertive multilateralism into practice. In April 1993, Secretary of State Warren Christopher traveled to Europe to persuade leaders to lift the arms embargo against the embattled Bosnian government and join the United States in NATO airstrikes against aggressive Bosnian Serb forces – the “lift and strike” option. However, France and Britain rejected the proposal, as both countries already had peacekeepers on the ground that would be placed in jeopardy by escalation of the conflict. The rebuff represented the first defeat for assertive multilateralism.8 The principle of assertive multilateralism was on display in US leadership of the UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II) from March to October 1993. The Clinton administration inherited the US-led Operation Restore Hope, a massive humanitarian intervention, from the Bush administration and led the UN Security Council in converting it into UNOSOM II, a mission that would provide peace and stability forces and

266

Stephen F. Burgess

other forms of assistance to reconstitute the government that had collapsed in January 1991. Several thousand US troops remained in Somalia, some under UN command. The Special Representative of the UN SecretaryGeneral and Chief of Mission was retired US Admiral Jonathan Howe, and the Deputy Force Commander was US Major General Thomas Montgomery.

The Clinton administration provided leadership and considerable assistance to UNOSOM II in attempting to impose a peace settlement on Somalia and punish spoilers. In June 1993, after the killing of 24 Pakistani and three American peacekeepers by Somali warlord forces, Admiral Howe called for the arrest of the warlord suspect, General Mohamed Farah Aideed, and was supported by UN Ambassador Albright and Boutros-Ghali, culminating in Security Council Resolution 837.9 US Special Forces led in the campaign to arrest Aideed, which resulted in spurts of fighting over a three-month period.

Assertive multilateralism hit a wall on October 3, 1993, with the killing of eighteen US Special Forces, including Army Rangers, and the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter by warlord forces in Mogadishu. The deaths caused an outcry among Republicans in Congress against the Clinton administration and the United Nations and to calls for the immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Somalia. On October 6, President Clinton announced that US troops would be withdrawn in six months. Reinforced with armor, US forces stood down and focused on self-protection.

Boutros-Ghali pleaded with the Clinton administration to stay the course in Somalia to no avail. Republicans escalated their attacks on the secretarygeneral and the UN for drawing the United States into Somalia and for “mission creep,” resurrecting anti-UN rhetoric from the 1980s.10 The backlash over Somalia affected the Clinton administration’s decision not to disembark a US-led peacekeeping force in Haiti in late October 1993 in the face of opposition by lightly armed gang members. By March 31, 1994, US troops had withdrawn from Somalia, and the UNOSOM II ended the following March.11

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

267

ASSERTIVE MULTILATERLAISM GIVES WAY TO “BURDEN-SHARING” In the wake of the Somalia debacle, the Clinton administration backed away from assertive multilateralism and devised a more restrained foreign policy, including a less ambitious role in the United Nations. On May 6, 1994, Presidential Decision Directive 25 was issued.12 The directive set strict standards for US authorization of UN peacekeeping missions and largely ruled out placing US forces in peacekeeping operations involving UN command. This meant no more involvement of US forces in missions like UNOSOM II. PDD 25 called for the proportion of US dues paid for UN peacekeeping operations to be reduced from 31 percent to 25 percent and that other states share the burden. The administration began to support Japan and Germany’s bids to become permanent members of the Security Council, as they assumed larger shares of the UN regular and peacekeeping budgets.

Coincidentally, the Clinton administration’s retreat from assertive multilateralism and adoption of PDD 25 occurred at the same time as the Rwandan genocide. For weeks, as hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were slaughtered, the Clinton administration refused to admit that genocide was taking place and did all that it could from becoming involved and from allowing the UN to act.13 After the genocide, President Clinton apologized to Rwandans, and the administration proposed the “African Crisis Response Force” (ACRF) that would intervene to stop genocide in Burundi and other conflicts. ACRF was presented as a burden-sharing program in which the United States would lead forces from African states.

However, most African leaders rejected the ACRF proposal, denouncing it as paternalistic.14 As a result, the administration scrapped the ACRF and proposed the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), in which African troops would be trained to deploy in peacekeeping operations. However, ACRI contained no mechanisms for intervening to stop genocide and other massive man-made humanitarian disasters.

268

Stephen F. Burgess

In 1994, disputes between the Clinton administration and Boutros-Ghali over the ongoing Bosnian conflict further soured relations. The secretarygeneral insisted on having a decisive input in the ordering of NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb artillery positions that might put UN peacekeeping troops in harm’s way. The Clinton administration blamed Boutros-Ghali for blocking decisive action by NATO warplanes against Bosnian Serb gunners who were inflicting casualties on civilians as well as French, British, and other peacekeepers. Congress escalated charges of helplessness on the part of Boutros-Ghali and the UN and clamored for “lift and strike.”

The November 1994 “Republican Revolution” brought a dramatic shift in the congressional stance towards the United Nations. In January 1995, Senator Jesse Helms became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and led a congressional charge against the UN, demanding dramatic downsizing before consenting to resolve the back dues problem, attacked the UN’s failure to reform and to be more selective in authorizing peacekeeping missions, and threatened to pull the United States out of the United Nations. In an effort to deflect the Republican offensive, Ambassador Albright began cultivating Senator Helms by acknowledging his criticisms of the United Nations and Boutros-Ghali’s failure to dramatically reform the UN Secretariat. As a result of her efforts, Helms came to “think very highly of her.”15 In January 1995, the Clinton administration rejected Boutros-Ghali’s renewed proposal for UN rapid reaction and enforcement capabilities, which the Bush administration had accepted by endorsing An Agenda for Peace in 1992. Seeking to placate the Clinton administration and the US Congress, the secretary-general proposed on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter that US dues be reduced from 25 percent to 15 percent.16 However, the hostility in Washington against Boutros-Ghali and the UN did not abate.17 In the course of 1995, the Clinton administration’s disenchantment with Boutros-Ghali and the UN grew over the situation in Bosnia and the inability of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to stop the bloodshed. In January, a cease-fire negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter collapsed, leading

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

269

to further fighting and shelling of civilians in Sarajevo. In May, NATO airstrikes against Bosnian Serb positions prompted the seizure of UNPROFOR peacekeepers as hostages, demonstrating the helplessness of the UN. In July, Bosnian Serbs brushed aside UN peacekeepers that were maintaining a “safe haven,” seized more than seven thousand Bosnian Muslims, and massacred them. The massacre and UN ineffectiveness caused President Clinton to escalate US and NATO involvement, pursing the “lift and strike” option by supplying arms to the Bosnian government and ordering Operation Deliberate Force, in which US and NATO aircraft heavily bombed Bosnian Serb positions. At the same time, the Croatian army, supplied with US weapons and training, launched an offensive against Krajinan (Croatian Serb) and Bosnian Serb forces, driving them into retreat.

Bosnian government forces followed with an offensive, and the Bosnian Serbs sued for peace. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke headed negotiations among the warring parties, which led to the Dayton Accords of November 1995 and the deployment of the 60,000-strong NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia in 1996.

The Clinton administration noted the success of NATO in forcing the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table. It also observed the relative effectiveness of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in Liberia (1990-7). The Clinton administration concluded that regional organizations could be effective alternatives to the United Nations in regard to burden sharing, enforcing peace and stopping massive human rights abuses.18 In the wake of the Dayton Accords, the Clinton administration requested that the UN oversee the transfer of authority in Eastern Slavonia and provide a peacekeeping force, as the province was to be transferred from Serbian occupation back to Croatian sovereignty. Boutros-Ghali was angered by the request, because the United States and NATO had wrested responsibility away from the United Nations. He proclaimed his reluctance to commit UN peacekeepers to Eastern Slavonia. The US mission to the United Nations protested against Boutros-Ghali’s uncooperative attitude, and Ambassador Albright and her aide, James Rubin, strongly criticized the secretary-general.

Boutros-Ghali reacted strongly to the criticism and denounced the

270

Stephen F. Burgess

“vulgarity” of the language that Albright had used.19 In quarrelling with US officials over the relatively minor issue of Eastern Slavonia, Boutros-Ghali further antagonized Ambassador Albright and jeopardized his plans to win a second term.

THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S UNILATERAL REMOVAL OF BOUTROS-GHALI The administration’s campaign to block Boutros-Ghali from standing for a second term indicated how far US-United Nations relations had deteriorated in the two years following the demise of assertive multilateralism. The poor state of relations was indicated by the position of Ambassador Albright, who was now prepared to bring down the secretarygeneral.20 In the second half of 1995, reports emerged that Warren Christopher would step down as secretary of state and that Albright was one of the leading candidates to replace him.21 During this period, Albright distanced herself and the Clinton administration from Boutros-Ghali and the United Nations thereby assisting President Clinton in his reelection campaign. She also concluded that Boutros-Ghali was obstructing Clinton administration efforts at achieving UN reform and stabilizing the former Yugoslavia and had to be removed as secretary-general.22 The administration decided that making a deal with Congressional Republicans in order to save the United Nations from the debt crisis was more important than keeping Boutros-Ghali as secretary-general. In the first salvo of the anti-Boutros-Ghali struggle, stories appeared in the press in the latter half of 1995 concerning Albright’s confrontations with the secretary-general.23 At the start of 1996, Boutros-Ghali spoke at Oxford University, and the remarks were published in Foreign Affairs.24 He presented his vision for the UN and stressed the importance for the secretary-general to maintain his independence. The remarks indicated that Boutros-Ghali was intending to stand for reelection. The media reported that he had “reneged” on his 1992 commitment not to stand for a second term.25 The Clinton administration

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

271

was surprised, having hoped that the secretary-general would step down after one term. In March 1996, President Clinton and Ambassador Albright consulted and came to agreement that Boutros-Ghali had to be blocked from a second term. Subsequently, Jamie Rubin commented that many UN Secretariat staff had come to equate Boutros-Ghali’s interests with those of the UN.26 In the second half of 1995, Kofi Annan, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, had successfully worked with US officials in the process of managing the transition from UNPROFOR to IFOR in Bosnia.

There was speculation in UN circles that Boutros-Ghali had sent Annan to Bosnia to remove a potential competitor for the secretary-general’s post.

However, Annan’s performance in Bosnia impressed the Clinton administration, which came to see him as a viable alternative to BoutrosGhali. In particular, the election of Annan would satisfy the demands of African states that an African had to serve a second term as secretarygeneral.27 On April 14, 1996, Secretary of State Christopher sent a note to BoutrosGhali, informing him that the United States would veto his candidacy for a second term. The following week, Christopher phoned Boutros-Ghali and verbally confirmed the veto plan. The secretary-general reacted with surprise, having thought that his relations with the Clinton administration were relatively good. Boutros-Ghali had been in the process of lining up support with a large number of countries and was increasingly confident about his reelection chances. He continued to believe that President Clinton would change his mind after the November 1996 US presidential elections.

In keeping with this belief, Boutros-Ghali decided to postpone the formal announcement of his candidacy until November.28 In May 1996, tensions between Boutros-Ghali and the Clinton administration rose sharply over Israeli retaliatory bombing in Lebanon, which had killed a considerable number of civilians. Boutros-Ghali and a majority of Security Council members insisted that a resolution condemning Israel had to be passed. In opposition, the Clinton administration rejected council action, with an eye to the May 1996 Israeli elections in which it favored Shimon Peres and the Labor Party. Also of concern to the Clinton

272

Stephen F. Burgess

administration was Boutros-Ghali’s visit to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), headquartered in Minsk, Belarus. The administration was leery of the CIS as an instrument of Russian domination over the former Soviet republics, as well as the increasingly authoritarian Lukashenko regime in Belarus.29 On May 3, 1996, the Wall Street Journal published a leaked report concerning the Clinton administration’s decision to veto Boutros-Ghali’s bid for a second term. The report provided the Clinton reelection campaign with a defense against Republican Senator Bob Dole’s efforts to make BoutrosGhali an election issue. The report also came as a surprise to a large number of member states that were leaning toward reelecting the secretary-general.

After the leak, a number of US newspapers and television commentators stepped up their attacks on Boutros-Ghali over his failure to sufficiently reform the Unite Nations; his proposal for UN tax collection and his mishandling of conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. Some opinion leaders even held Boutros-Ghali responsible for the United States being in arrears in its UN dues payments. Only a few newspapers, such as the Washington Post, carried defenses of the secretary-general.30 In contrast, The New York Times editorial board recommended that Boutros-Ghali give way to a more dynamic secretary-general.31 On May 13, 1996, Secretary Christopher met with Boutros-Ghali, personally confirmed the US intention to veto a second term, and urged him to reconsider his decision to seek a second term. Three weeks later, he paid another visit and urged the secretary-general to drop out as a candidate before the Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Cameroon and an Arab League meeting, both to be held in July 1996. After Boutros-Ghali refused, administration officials offered him an extra year in office, if he would agree to step down in December 1997. Boutros-Ghali again refused and retorted that most UN member states wanted him to serve a second term.

In particular, African states were insisting on a second term for an African as secretary-general, which implied support for Boutros-Ghali. Once the administration’s offer was rejected, it proceeded to confirm the previously leaked report and announced that it would veto a second term for BoutrosGhali. In response, the secretary-general announced that he was standing for

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

273

a second term, thereby reversing his plans to wait until after the US elections to make his announcement.

The Clinton administration launched an international campaign to reject a second term for Boutros-Ghali, stressing that if he were removed, subsequent UN reform would prompt Congress to authorize payment of debt arrears. The Group of Seven (G-7) meeting in Lyon featured a struggle between the United States and France over Boutros-Ghali – a francophone and Francophile. In protesting against the US move, France and the other G7 members argued that Boutros-Ghali was not to blame for the UN’s failures in Somalia and Bosnia and for the slow pace of UN reforms. In fact, they believed that the secretary-general had performed relatively well in bringing about reforms in the face of opposition by the Group of 77 developing nations in the General Assembly.

US diplomats attempted to persuade OAU member states to support the replacement of Boutros-Ghali with another African statesman. While some African leaders entertained US overtures, in the end the OAU unanimously endorsed the incumbent for reelection as secretary-general. Similarly, the Arab League met and issued a statement fully supporting Boutros-Ghali’s reelection. Russia and China also announced their support.

While the Clinton administration failed on the diplomatic front, the Clinton reelection campaign benefited by the stand against Boutros-Ghali.

While Bob Dole continued his attacks on Boutros-Ghali, they no longer resonated with voters who had noticed President Clinton’s rejection of the secretary-general. Ambassador Albright had once been in accord with Boutros-Ghali about the wisdom of assertive multilateralism, but now stepped up her attacks on the secretary-general and worked vigorously to block his quest for a second term. Her outspoken criticism of BoutrosGhali’s reform efforts and questionable management of UN operations in Bosnia and Somalia impressed President Clinton and Senator Helms and aided her quest to become the first female secretary of state.32 In their campaign against Boutros-Ghali, Albright and the US Mission to the United Nations alienated many member states, including several on the Security Council. Some diplomats saw Albright’s posturing as a blatant effort at self-promotion in her campaign to become secretary of state. Most

274

Stephen F. Burgess

were not persuaded by US arguments and did not blame Boutros-Ghali for the UN’s shortcomings; they were generally satisfied at the pace of reform and did not hold the secretary-general personally responsible for UN failures in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda. Many diplomats were indignant about being pressured by the United States, which was the biggest delinquent payer of UN dues. Even British diplomats at the UN came to criticize American behavior.

On November 6, 1996, President Clinton was reelected. Afterwards, Boutros-Ghali began actively campaigning for his second term and made overtures to the Clinton administration with the hope that it would change its position on a veto threat that was viewed unfavorably by most member states. However, President Clinton had made a decision and did not want to give the appearance of weakness by reversing it. In addition, Ambassador Albright’s credibility and campaign to become secretary of state were at stake, and she did not waver in her support of the president. On November 19-20, the Security Council met to consider Boutros-Ghali’s bid for a second term. Fourteen states voted in favor of a second term for the secretarygeneral. Albright proceeded to cast the lone opposing vote and veto, which effectively ended Boutros-Ghali’s tenure as secretary-general.33 On December 5, President Clinton nominated Albright to be secretary of state.

Until the end of November, support for Boutros-Ghali continued, but there were signs of erosion. In the meantime, Ambassador Albright urged the selection of an alternative African candidate. On December 1, Ghana began to support its native son, Kofi Annan. Cameroonian President Paul Biya, the presiding Chairman of the OAU, issued a letter, which put forward Annan and other African statesmen as possible alternatives to BoutrosGhali. The Security Council nominated five Africans, including Annan, for consideration. On December 10, the council cast votes on the candidates, with Annan tallying ten votes in favor. However, France, Egypt and two other African member states voted against Annan in retaliation for the US veto of Boutros-Ghali’s reelection bid. As the end of the General Assembly approached, pressure intensified for a decision. Finally, France decided to drop its veto of Annan, and the three African states switched to supporting him. On December 17, 1996, Annan’s nomination went before the General

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

275

Assembly, which elected him as the seventh secretary-general and first from sub-Saharan Africa. The United States had succeeded in unilaterally imposing its will on the United Nations.

CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S “REDISCOVERY” OF THE UNITED NATIONS Kofi Annan, with a background in UN administration, finance, and peacekeeping, seemed to be ideally suited to manage the UN and resolve its crises. On assuming office, he commented on how he would rebuild UN relations with the United States, make the UN more effective, and differentiate himself from Boutros-Ghali. He said, “I have never believed that you have to be contentious to demonstrate your independence.”34 Annan called for: a healing of wounded morale and ideals within the Secretariat whose dedicated staff deserves our thanks and encouragement… Applaud us when we prevail; correct use when we fail; but, above all, do not let this indispensable, irreplaceable institution wither, languish, or perish as a result of Member State indifference, inattention, or financial starvation. 35

Annan indicated that he would strive to maintain good relations with the Clinton administration and begin to cultivate relations with the Republicandominated Congress, even as he remained critical of aspects of US policy.

In his initial years in office, Annan proved to be more active than his predecessor in reforming the UN and restoring the UN’s credibility, especially in the eyes of the Clinton administration and Congress. He helped persuade the Congress to pay arrears in US dues to the UN. The first two major international crises under Secretary-General Kofi Annan were in Iraq and Kosovo. In Iraq, Annan negotiated in February 1998 with the regime of Saddam Hussein to allow more intrusive weapons of mass destruction inspections by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM). The refusal by the regime to comply led to “Operation Desert Fox” and US air

276

Stephen F. Burgess

strikes in December 1998. Beforehand, Clinton administration officials advised UNSCOM inspectors to leave Iraq, and Saddam Hussein refused to allow them to return. The absence of inspectors contributed to the “intelligence failure” in the run-up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In Kosovo, the majority Albanian population was seeking to restore its rights after a decade of Serbian repression. After the Bosnian war ended in December 1995 with a defeat for Serbia, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was emboldened and escalated attacks on Serbian government forces, which retaliated by attacking Kosovar civilians. In 1998, the Clinton administration led action in the Security Council, particularly with resolutions 1160 and 1199 to stop Serbian human rights abuses against the Kosovars.36 In October 1998, US-led pressure on Serbia led to acceptance of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) human rights monitoring mission to Kosovo. On January 15, 1999, Serbian forces massacred Kosovar civilians in the village of Racak, which was reported by the OSCE mission. The massacre galvanized the United States and its NATO allies to pressure Serbia to enter into negotiations at Rambouillet, France, which would pave the way for NATO forces to enter Kosovo as peacekeepers. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke were especially determined not to allow another Bosnia to occur which would drag on for months and years. In spite of the pressure and threats of NATO air strikes, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic refused to admit NATO forces. Russia and China threatened to veto any UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force.

On March 24, 1999, the United States led NATO in launching air strikes against Serbia in Operation Allied Force. In response, Russia and China presented a Security Council resolution condemning NATO attacks on Serbia, which was voted down 12 to 3. After eleven weeks of air strikes and diplomacy, NATO prevailed. In return for acceding to NATO demands, Serbia and Russia insisted that the United Nations play the leading role in the peace and stability operation that was to follow. The Security Council passed Resolution 1244 creating the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which was given authority over Kosovo and managed police and justice affairs. In addition, UNMIK was charged with serving as

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

277

an umbrella organization above a NATO implementation and sustainment force (KFOR) as well as an OSCE democracy and institution-building team and a European Union reconstruction and economic development unit.37 After a three-year hiatus, the United Nations was back in the peacekeeping business.

In August 1999, Richard Holbrooke was sworn in as the US Ambassador to the United Nations, which opened the door for a new wave of activism and cooperation with Secretary-General Annan. Holbrooke finally managed to resolve the back dues issue and helped lead the UN Security Council towards the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In January 2000, Holbrooke assumed the presidency of the Council and proclaimed it to be “the month of Africa” and focused for the first time on the HIV/AIDS pandemic as a security issue and trying to make headway in resolving the DRC conflict. 38 The month of Africa helped lead to UN Security Council resolution 1291 of February 24, 2000 and the establishment of the UN Mission in the Congo (MONUC) and an initial authorization of 5,537 military personnel.

In May 1999, the Clinton administration and the UN helped to resolve the two-decade old conflict in East Timor. With the fall of the dictator Suharto, Indonesia gave way to international pressure and agreed to permit the people of East Timor to exercise the right to self-determination. On June 11, 1999, the Security Council passed resolution 1246 establishing the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) and scheduling a “popular consultation” or referendum for August 30, 1999.39 After overwhelmingly voting for independence, the people of East Timor were attacked by militias, backed by the Indonesian military, which laid waste to the territory. In response, the Clinton administration demanded that the Indonesian government and military compel the militias to cease fire and stop their rampage and accept international humanitarian intervention. The administration contemplated sending US troops, but Australia stepped forward and offered to do so. After Indonesia agreed to US demands, the council passed resolution 1264,40 authorizing Australia to lead INTERFET, a multinational intervention force.

The Australian-led intervention stopped the militias from further destruction and paved the way for a UN peace and stability operation, UNTAET, which

278

Stephen F. Burgess

administered East Timor in preparation for independence. For the Clinton administration, Australian leadership in a peace enforcement mission with UN Security Council authorization provided a model of burden sharing.41 In July 1999, the Sierra Leone government and warlords of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) reached agreement on a cease-fire and the establishment of a government of national unity. In October 1999, Secretary Albright traveled to the war-torn country to help pave the way for a UN peacekeeping mission (UNAMSIL) and to warn RUF warlords, who still controlled diamond-producing areas and much of the countryside, to abide by the peace agreement. On October 22, 1999, the Security Council passed resolution 1270, authorizing UNAMSIL with a maximum of 6,000 peacekeepers.42 In December 1999, Nigeria’s new civilian president, Olesegun Obasanjo, announced that thousands of troops – who had been serving with the West African peacekeeping force (ECOMOG) and had been enforcing the peace – were being withdrawn. In response, the Security Council authorized the expansion of UNAMISL to more than eleven thousand peacekeepers to compensate for the Nigerian/ECOMOG withdrawal.

However, the Council did not authorize a Chapter VII peace enforcement mandate, which opened the door to the RUF to resume hostilities in an attempt to take complete control of the country. The removal of Nigerian/ECOMOG troops that were accustomed to using force emboldened the RUF warlords, who launched an offensive in May 2000. RUF forces took five hundred lightly armed UNAMSIL peacekeepers hostage and launched an assault on the capital, Freetown.

In response, the United Kingdom sent the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Services, which prevented the RUF from taking Freetown and helped save UNAMSIL from collapse; subsequently, the peacekeeper hostages were released. The British deployment, authorized by the Security Council, provided the Clinton administration with confirmation of the viability of burden sharing. UNAMSIL’s near-collapse led the administration to change its perspective on UN peace and stability operations and to the “Brahimi Report” of August 2000, which called for more robust and realistic mandates, larger and better-prepared peacekeeping

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

279

forces, and standby forces. The United States and the Security Council endorsed the report and its recommendations in resolution 1327.43 The Council virtually doubled the size of the UNAMSIL force and provided it with a stronger mandate.

CONCLUSION In comparison with other administrations, the Clinton administration made an effort to cooperate with the United Nations rather than solely using it as a means of achieving US interests or as a scapegoat. Former Deputy Ambassador to the UN Nancy Soderberg sums up her perception of the Clinton legacy:

By firmly embedding United States policy in international law and institutions, he succeeded in pressing other nations to follow suit. He helped bring closer to reality the Wilsonian ideal of a global set of rules to which nations adhered, thus encouraging them to play by the rules and share the burden of international responsibilities. While working within the international system where possible, Clinton also recognized that at time, America would have to use force, including unilaterally, to protect and defend its interests, particularly against Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden…44

Ambassador Soderberg’s conclusion largely captures the administration’s policy towards the UN in 2000 but misses the circuitous route that the relationship took during the entire eight-year period. At the beginning, the administration’s “assertive multilateralism” was a product of post- Cold War euphoria and President Bush’s “new world order” as well as the idealism and inexperience of the incoming Clinton national security team, especially Madeleine Albright. The idealism fit well with Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s vision of a more assertive UN as envisaged in An Agenda for Peace, but it clashed with the hard-nosed realism of Congressional Republicans. The Somalia debacle provided the Clinton administration with

280

Stephen F. Burgess

a “wake-up call” from the Congress, which caused a dramatic shift away from assertive multilateralism, and Boutros-Ghali.

The Rwandan genocide compelled President Clinton to apologize and the administration to look for states and organizations upon which the burden of maintaining international peace and security could be shifted, especially in Africa. The UN’s failings in Bosnia pushed the administration towards the use of NATO as the peace enforcer in Bosnia and Kosovo as well as the robust peacekeeper.

Only towards the end of the administration did Ambassador Holbrooke turn back to the UN and actively used the UN productively. By that time, there was a formula for burden sharing in the interventions by Nigeria in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Australia in East Timor and the United Kingdom in Sierra Leone in enforcing peace agreements that had been broken. The administration also launched programs for training peacekeepers so that American soldiers would not have to be deployed where US interests were not important.

The Clinton administration experience with the United Nations confirms the importance of the domestic politics model of decision making, especially in the administration decision to scapegoat then remove Boutros-Ghali and then turn back towards the United Nations after Bill Clinton’s reelection and with the installation of the administration’s candidate, Kofi Annan, as secretary-general. Surprisingly, UN member states were sensitive to US domestic politics in shifting their positions on Boutros-Ghali and accepting Kofi Annan. Member states deferred to the United States, even though they were critical of US delinquency in the payment of UN dues. The Clinton administration confirmed that the United States could still act as a “superpower” in significant areas of global governance.

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations

281

ENDNOTES Madeleine Albright, “Statement before the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs of the House Appropriations Committee,” Washington, DC, March 12, 1993, in US State Department Dispatch 4, no. 26 (June 28, 1993). Albright also used the term “assertive multilateralism” in her address to the Council on Foreign Relations conference on Cooperative Security and the United Nations, June 11, 1993.

2 Another notable aspect of the United Nations during the Clinton administration was the convening of international mega-conferences, dealing with human rights (Vienna), population (Cairo), social development (Copenhagen), and women (Beijing).

3 Former Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations Nancy Soderberg commented in correspondence with the author that the Clinton administration “never in fact endorsed assertive multilateralism. That was an idea Albright had that no one else ever used – it died a rather quick death. We did of course misjudge some of the capabilities of the UN early on.”

See also Nancy Soderberg, The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2005), 80.

4 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga (New York: Random House, 1999) 4.

5 James D. Fearon, “Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, and Theories of International Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science 1 (1998): 289-313. The Senate’s rejection of President Woodrow Wilson’s Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations was the most significant example of the power of domestic politics and Congress against idealism in the executive branch.

6 Fearon.

7 Fearon.

8 On a positive note, the United Nations scored a number of successes in complex peacekeeping operations, including El Salvador, Cambodia, and Mozambique. The United States led an intervention in Haiti in 1994, which was followed by a UN peacekeeping mission.

9 William J. Durch, “Introduction to Anarchy: Intervention in Somalia,” in United Nations Peacekeeping, American Politics, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s, ed. William J. Durch (New York: Random House, 1999), 342-43.

10 Durch, “Introduction to Anarchy,” 341-342. Boutros-Ghali could be blamed for the fiasco in Somalia, given his sacking of his effective special representative Mohamed Sahnoun in 1992, bias against the warlord Aideed, and exclusion of warlords from the March 1993 peace agreement.

11 Ambassador Soderberg, correspondence January 4, 2005, commented that “Clinton did not blame the UN and Boutros-Ghali for the Somalia mess. Also, contrary to what everyone says, immediately after the Oct. ’93 events, we announced we were staying despite the calls from Congress for an immediate withdrawal. People forgot that the plan was always to hand the mission off to the UN. I’ve always thought that too much was made of the US withdrawal.”

12 “Clinton Administration Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations” (PDD 25), http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd25.htm.

13 Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 329-90.

1

282 14

Stephen F. Burgess

Ambassador Soderberg, in correspondence with the author, January 4, 2005 commented that “I’m perhaps a bit too sensitive on this as the official who pushed it at the time, but I don’t agree that the ACRF was too paternalistic – but I agree we probably pushed it too hard and too fast. But we were worried about Burundi genocide. If you look now, the thing is still going on (under a new name) and the French have copied it. So it was never rejected.”

15 Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1999), 366.

16 William Brannigan, “UN: 50 Year Fending Off WWIII,” The Washington Post, September 6, 1995, A19.

17 On October 24, 1995, at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, President Clinton praised Boutros-Ghali for the last time.

18 Jennifer Morrison Taw and Andrew Grant-Thomas, “US Support for Regional Complex Contingency Operations: Lessons from ECOMOG,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22, no. 1 (February 1999), 53-77.

19 John Goshko, “UN’s Normal Decorous Diplomatic Discourse Takes Beating in Dispute,” The Washington Post, December 16, 1995, A30.

20 In January 4, 2005 correspondence with the author, former Ambassador Soderberg commented, “We had to get rid of B-Ghali to save the UN.” 21 Al Kamen, “Resurrection,” The Washington Post, September 6, 1995, A19.

22 Dobbs, Madeleine Albright, 364.

23 Dobbs, Madeleine Albright, 365.

24 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Global Leadership after the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs, 75, no. 2 (March/April 1996), 86-98.

25 Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished, 4.

26 Dobbs, Madeleine Albright, 366.

27 The expectation had arisen that the secretary-general’s position would rotate among the continents and that each secretary-general would serve two terms (or ten years).

28 Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished, 5 and Dobbs, Madeleine Albright, 366.

29 Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished, 264, 267.

30 Thomas W. Lippman, “UN Decision cuts 2 Ways for Clinton: Boutros-Ghali Retains Much Support Abroad,” The Washington Post, June 21, 1996, A25.

31 “Finding a New UN Chief,” The New York Times, June 23, 1996, A30.

32 Albright solidified her position as the leading candidate for secretary of state in February 1996, when she appeared before a packed stadium in Miami and denounced Fidel Castro for a lack of “cajones” over the shooting down of two Cuban-American planes that had deliberately flown into Cuban airspace. “Cuban Pilots Cheered as Planes Exploded: U.S. charges ‘coldblooded murder’ in air-to-air attack near Havana,” CNN.com, February 27, 1996, http://www.cnn.com/US/9602/cuba_shootdown/27/10pm/.

33 “The Scapegoat,” The Economist, November 23, 1996, A47.

34 James Traub, “Kofi Annan’s Next Test,” The New York Times Magazine, March 29, 1998, 48.

35 Kofi Annan, “From the Secretary-General: Let Us Embark on a Time of Healing,” UN Chronicle 33, no. 3 (1996), 2.

36 UN Security Council Resolution 1160, March 31, 1998 and Resolution 1199, September 23, 1998.

The Clinton Administration and the United Nations 37

283

UN Security Council Resolution 1244, June 10, 1999.

Judy Aita, “January 2000 ‘Month of Africa’ for UN Security Council: US Vice President Gore Will Kick off Deliberations at AIDS Session,” The Washington File, US State Department Office of International Information Programs, January 6, 2000, http://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/january-2000-month-africa-unsecurity-council.

39 UN Security Council Resolution 1246, June 11, 1999.

40 UN Security Council Resolution 1264, September 12, 1999.

41 David Dickens, “Can East Timor Be a Model for Burden-Sharing?” The Washington Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Summer 2002), 29-40.

42 UN Security Council Resolution 1270, October 22, 1999.

43 UN Security Council Resolution 1327, November 13, 2000.

44 Soderberg, The Superpower Myth, 83.

38

In: Foreign Policy in the Clinton …

ISBN: 978-1-53614-797-1 Editor: Rosanna Perotti © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 17

GETTING FROM MOGADISHU TO SARAJEVO: THE “MATURING” OF THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S UN POLICY Jerry Pubantz Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, US

William Jefferson Clinton inherited from his predecessor three international problems that would consume much of his first term in the White House: a growing genocide and fratricidal war in the Balkans that the European governments found impossible to halt, a military junta in power in Haiti that was aggravating the refugee exodus from the poor island nation to US shores, and a new commitment of US forces – at the authorization of the UN Security Council – to the “failed” state of Somalia. These challenges, particularly in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, coupled with the new conservative Republican control of both houses of Congress, tested, and then changed the administration’s UN peacekeeping policy and ultimately its attitude toward the United Nations itself. In the process of dealing with these

286

Jerry Pubantz

crises, the administration became not only more cautious in its use of the UN, but more demanding of fundamental reform of the institution. It also developed a template for responding to “failed” states in the post-Cold War world that it then imposed on the United Nations as the model for future peacekeeping and nation-building missions. In so doing, the administration walked away from the exuberant idealism that dominated American foreign policy in the early 1990s and embraced a model of humanitarian intervention that served President Clinton, his successor, and the United Nations well in such disparate conflicts as Kosovo, East Timor, and Afghanistan.

SOMALIA The first President Bush inserted American peacekeepers into Somalia in December 1992. His decision was a high-water mark in a new “idealist” era of American commitment to the constructive possibilities of the United Nations. Beginning with the 1991 Gulf War, President Bush and his advisers could, and would, talk about the UN as finally living up to its promise as “the last best hope of mankind” for peace. US support for the United Nations seemed to augur a migration of authority to the UN Security Council and a new sense that the world body could bestow “legitimacy” on international intervention in resurgent ethnic and separatist conflicts around the world.

To address the humanitarian disaster brought on by warlord violence and civil conflict, twenty-five thousand US troops eventually came ashore in Somalia. Despite warnings from his advisers that the United States could be caught up in a civil war with little meaning for national interests, the president responded to a plea from UN secretary-general Boutros-Ghali to assist the existing peacekeeping mission in the country (UNOSOM I) by moving huge stores of food from Mogadishu to the starving millions in the countryside.1 By fall 1992, a half million Somalis had died from war, disease and starvation, including nearly one quarter of Somali children in the southern region of the country.2 The American-led operation, known by the acronym UNITAF, was expected to be short-term and quickly turned over to UN administration (UNOSOM II). President Bush expressed his hope that

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

287

US forces would already be withdrawing from Somalia as president-elect Clinton was inaugurated.

That was not to happen. Pressured by the UN secretary-general to expand the mission from the relatively limited mandate of providing a secure environment for humanitarian relief to a full-fledged effort at political reconciliation and the restoration of a stable government in Somalia, and willing to expand the role of the United States and the United Nations in peacekeeping missions generally, the new Clinton administration made no immediate effort to extricate US forces. The transfer of US command to UNOSOM II came on May 4, 1993. President Clinton, however, had no intention of deserting the UN mission, which sought nothing less than the salvation of a “failed” state. In part, the effort in Somalia served in the policy process as a welcome alternative to no progress on what secretary of state Warren Christopher called “the problem from hell” in the former Yugoslavia.3 The Clinton commitment also reflected the new “assertive multilateralism”4 espoused by UN ambassador Madeleine Albright. The foreign policy team, including Albright, Christopher, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, initially viewed Somalia and the other vexing Bush “legacies” through a Wilsonian internationalist lens. While recognizing that the United States could not “respond to every alarm,”5 and that “there was no magic formula,”6 Clinton and his advisers looked to international cooperation through UN mechanisms, particularly to the UN Security Council’s permanent members, as the initial step in resolving post-Cold War conflict. Given later criticisms of US overextension because of its commitments to UN mandates, it is ironic that in the early days of the administration its senior members urged UN activism on the grounds that this would limit, not expand, US obligations as the world’s policeman.

Ambassador Albright arrived at her new post with explicit instructions to work out a transfer of the Somali mission to UN authority. By March she had done that. The new UN multilateral force of 28,000 troops would have a contingent of 4,000 US personnel under UN command, including a 1,300man American Quick Reaction Force. Resolution 814 instructed BoutrosGhali “to assume responsibility for the consolidation, expansion and

288

Jerry Pubantz

maintenance of a secure environment throughout Somalia.” Not since Dag Hammarskjöld’s direction of the 1960 UN operation in the Congo had a secretary-general wielded such military power.7 The Security Council directed UNOSOM II to disarm the warlords and begin the nation-building process.8 US personnel soon found themselves, in addition to providing security, building roads and schools, repairing infrastructure, and digging wells. Albright lauded the UN action, hailing it as “an unprecedented enterprise and nothing less than the restoration of an entire country.”9 Her boss, Secretary Christopher, noted that “for the first time there will be a sturdy American role to help the United Nations rebuild a viable nationstate.”10 US policy amounted to an endorsement of the “preventive diplomacy” and nation-building of states-at-risk outlined a year earlier by SecretaryGeneral Boutros-Ghali in his report, An Agenda for Peace. The Agenda called for early international action to restore order and sovereignty to failed states. Boutros-Ghali called for forces at the disposal of the United Nations for rapid insertion into budding internal conflicts. The secretary-general’s report11 reflected the new optimism that the UN could deal effectively with the sectarian conflicts so prevalent in the new era. At the time President Clinton came to office, more than 78,000 UN peacekeepers were serving in over a dozen missions; with none of those missions having proven to be a true failure, and with several obvious successes, such as in Namibia and Cambodia.

Flush from a UN victory in the Gulf War, the American president, as yet having no detailed set of operating principles of his own in this area and being a self-described “pragmatic Wilsonian,” saw only benefits in lending Washington’s support to UN efforts. Despite growing signs in domestic public opinion and politics that American support for UN peacekeeping was waning, Clinton made strong commitments to the world body in his first address to the General Assembly. He urged the creation of a peacekeeping headquarters and promised American assistance with logistics, communications, and intelligence operations.12 He endorsed many of Boutros-Ghali’s proposals. For UN officials there was nothing in the president’s statements and actions during his first nine months in office that

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

289

would indicate anything but strong encouragement for UN operations. At the time the United States was paying nearly 31 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget, and the administration, despite strong congressional opposition, was giving no indication that it intended to cut its commitment.

In the president’s worldview, an activist UN was part of the multidimensional interdependence emerging in the wake of the Cold War. It seemed that with US leadership, the enemies of the international community’s will could be easily dispatched by UN authorized intervention.13 The “enemy” for the United Nations in Somalia quickly became General Mohamed Farah Aideed, one of the primary competitors for power, and “warlord” of the most powerful faction in Mogadishu. Aideed had not opposed initial UN and US intervention, but as the purposes of UNISOM II increasingly shifted toward political goals and the disarmament of Somali factions, his forces challenged the peacekeepers.

Aideed’s forces ambushed and killed two dozen Pakistani peacekeepers on June 5, 1993. Washington immediately sought a UN resolution ordering the arrest of the warlord. Clinton ordered an increase in combat units in Somali with the expressed intention to capture Aideed. The American who led the UN peacekeeping mission, retired Admiral Jonathan Howe, placed a $25,000 bounty on Aideed, and both the UN and the United States shifted their missions, in a classic case of “mission creep,” to root out the enemies of UN nation-building in Somalia.14 Events came to a head on October 3, when eighteen US soldiers were trapped in a firefight and killed. Americans were presented on the evening news with pictures of their dead soldiers, one of whom was pulled through the streets of Mogadishu, apparently by gleeful supporters of Aideed. The revulsion with American involvement in Somalia (later captured in the popular film Black Hawk Down) was complete. Clinton’s anger at his inner circle overflowed. He had inherited Somalia, and he was now going to cut his losses. Clinton told reporters, “We have obligations elsewhere,” we would not “rebuild Somalia society,” it was not our job.15 While he would enlarge the US contingent for the time being, he dropped the search for Aideed and withdrew all US forces within six months. Clinton’s

290

Jerry Pubantz

inexperience and Boutros-Ghali’s expansive vision had combined to produce a foreign policy catastrophe. It raised shades of John Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs miscalculation. The president told Tony Lake and the other members of his policy team, “we are going to get the UN to show up and take over.”16 There would be no more Somalias.17 Real events have often dampened the idealism of presidents. What had begun in Somalia as a virtuous attempt to save a starving population became an open-ended commitment to a UN experiment in national reconstruction, with very serious negative consequences for the United States. National interest now called for withdrawal and for a new assessment of UN peacekeeping. American involvement had lasted fifteen months. During that period 100,000 US troops served in Somalia, 30 died, and 175 were wounded.18 The macabre scene in Mogadishu ended the White House’s belief in the merits of idealist humanitarian intervention.

After Somalia, the administration did not use the term “assertive multilateralism” again. Madeleine Albright joined in the forced retreat from international commitments under UN auspices. A little more than two weeks after the deaths of the US soldiers she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United Nations was threatened by the burden of excessive peacekeeping operations. She cautioned that the United States could not serve as the global policeman, and would now focus its attention on the advocacy “of free markets, democratic values, and adherence to international law.”19 She also made clear that it was “unlikely” that the United States would accept UN command in large-scale and high risk peacekeeping operations. All of this sounded very different from her address to the National War College only twelve days before the bloody confrontation in Mogadishu. Then, she told her audience that “particularly when circumstances arise where there is a threat to international peace that affects us but does not immediately threaten our citizens or territory, (italics added) it will be in our interests to proceed in partnership with the UN.”20 The first victim of the post-Somalia caution in Washington was the small central African state of Rwanda. The Clinton administration supported Security Council Resolution 872 (October 1993) creating the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). The purpose of the mission, which

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

291

included more than 2,500 personnel, was to monitor a ceasefire between the Hutu dominated government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel force representing the minority Rwandan Tutsis. UNAMIR’s force commander, Canadian Brigadier-general Romeo Dallaire, reported increasing violence in the spring of 1994. Most chilling, Dallaire recounted an informant’s story of a planned Hutu attack on all Tutsis and moderate Hutus.21 The UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (headed at the time by Kofi Annan) took the report lightly and on April 5, 1994 UNAMIR’s mandate was routinely extended by the Security Council. One day later the Hutu massacre began. It was initiated by the downing of a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Subsequently, the prime minister, other government officials and ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed. By the time the killing ended in early summer, at least 800,000 had been slaughtered and nearly two million were in refugee camps outside Rwanda.

When the massacres broke out in April 1994, the United States proposed that the Security Council cut back, not enlarge, the number of peacekeepers in the region out of fear for the peacekeepers’ safety. Under pressure from Washington, the Security Council cut the force to 270 observers.22 In May, as the problem of refugees in surrounding states grew, the US relented and the United Nations finally authorized the dispatch of 5,500 African troops.23 The Clinton administration was worried about even the provision of logistical support that might drag Americans into unintended involvement.

In the end Washington provided $500 million in relief through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),24 and backed a Security Council endorsement of unilateral French action in Rwanda.

Resolution 929 authorized France to establish “a temporary operation under national command and control aimed at contributing, in an impartial way, to the security and protection of displaced persons, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda.” The French intervention, however, was circumscribed by exacting specifications about its mission and activities.

The operation was to last until UNAMIR was strong enough to carry out its mandate. In essence, the United Nations “subcontracted” peace enforcement. The procedure of subcontracting—authorizing a state or group of states to act on behalf of the world community in the restoration of peace

292

Jerry Pubantz

and stability—became a regular feature of Security Council action following Rwanda. The French intervention proved to be an important precedent for future Russian actions in Georgia, the great powers of the “Contact Group” in Bosnia, the United States in Haiti, the US and NATO in Kosovo, and Australia in East Timor.

The crisis of Rwanda proved to be the nadir of Clinton’s UN peacekeeping policy; what then assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck later called “a catastrophic disengagement.”25 It reflected the near paranoia about US involvement in conflict situations such as had occurred in Somalia.

It probably cemented Washington’s antipathy toward Boutros-Ghali and his ambitious program of nation-building. But it also contributed to the deliberations that started to fashion a more consistent administration approach toward the United Nations, its utility as an instrument for addressing the civil conflicts of the new millennium, and the merits of tying US interests to UN peacekeeping.

PRESIDENTIAL DECISION DIRECTIVES 25 AND 56 Periods of idealism in American foreign policy naturally wane as strategic necessities, public concerns about over-commitment, and new challenges that do not seem to have idealist solutions present themselves.

The moralist course set by George Bush and continued by Clinton went into retreat in spring 1994. Particularly as regards UN peacekeeping and statebuilding, and as they tied US foreign policy to the institution of the United Nations, President Clinton departed from his earlier enthusiastic endorsements.

May 5, 1994, marked the moment of policy change. Just days after the opening horrific events in Rwanda, the administration issued Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25), significantly curtailing the American commitment to UN peacekeeping operations. The president’s statement confirmed that it was no longer US policy “to expand the number of UN peace operations, or US involvement in [them].”26 The altruism of 1993 was gone. Using the language of realism, PDD-25 counseled that such UN efforts

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

293

must be placed “in proper perspective among the instruments of US foreign policy.”27 The president’s policy established sixteen criteria that had to be met before the United States would vote for a new peacekeeping operation or directly participate in one. The operation would have to advance US interests and there would have to be “an international community of interest for dealing with the problem on a multilateral basis.” Additionally, the operation had to have clear objectives. For traditional peacekeeping efforts under the UN Charter’s Chapter VI, the United States would require a ceasefire in place and the consent of all of the parties. Chapter VII operations were to be undertaken only where there was a “significant” threat to international peace and security and the consequences of inaction were “considered unacceptable.” The United States would contribute personnel to any operation only if the risks were considered acceptable, US involvement was necessary for success, the support of Congress and the public existed or could be developed, and the command and control functions were acceptable. Only “well-defined” operations used “as a tool to provide finite windows of opportunity to allow combatants to resolve their differences and failed societies to begin to reconstitute themselves”28 would be supported by the American government.

PDD-25 looked suspiciously like the Weinberger Doctrine of the 1980s.29 Following the loss of 268 marines in Lebanon in 1984, Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger had enunciated several restrictive criteria for the decision to use US troops in combat. The doctrine held that the military should only be used when 1) there was a national interest at stake, 2) there was an intention to win, 3) there were clearly defined political and military objectives, 4) there was no other reasonable way to achieve the nation’s goals, and 5) there was broad public and congressional support. It was the Weinberger doctrine plus the additional requirements of using overwhelming force and having an “exit strategy” that later became the “Powell Doctrine.”

The first victim of PDD-25 was Rwanda, as secretary of state Warren Christopher directed Ambassador Albright to seek a full UN withdrawal from the country.30 Testifying before Congress on the merits of PDD-25, Albright said that the administration was in the process of “recalibrating [its]

294

Jerry Pubantz

expectations” for the United Nations. In some situations the institution had been effective. However, she acknowledged serious reservations about the implementation, scope, mission, duration, and cost of many UN operations recently undertaken. 31 She noted that Rwanda was the first case where the president’s new policy had been applied, requiring a detailed plan from the secretary-general before deployment.

PDD-25 also demanded significant reform of the United Nations itself.

It proposed the creation of an independent Inspector-General’s office and a cut in the US assessment for peacekeeping to 25 percent of the UN budget.

The administration called for a single annual peacekeeping assessment to be overseen by a standing group of professional budget experts. It opposed the earmarking of national military units for UN peacekeeping operations or the creation of a “UN Army.” The administration called for a reform of the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, including the creation of a “rapidly deployable headquarters team,” the maintenance of a database of available forces, and a “modest” airlift capability.32 President Clinton was offering only limited American assistance to UN peacekeeping, and at the price of significant structural reform of the UN’s peacekeeping apparatus. By the summer of 1994 domestic political dissatisfaction with the UN forced the administration to demand reform or face overwhelming opposition to further US contributions to UN operations.

PDD-25 had not started out this way. In its own drafting history can be seen the evolution of a “learning presidency” on matters of peacekeeping and the role of the UN-US relationship. Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, when announcing PDD-25, indicated the policy simply recognized that peacekeeping was “not the centerpiece”33 of American security policy, and Albright later contended that the policy changed very little in the inter-agency process.34 But the reality was that early deliberations were premised on an active commitment to Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace. Nearly a year before PDD-25’s promulgation, Clinton had signed off on Presidential Review Directive 13 (PRD-13), a review that leaned toward support for UN command of peacekeeping operations and an expanded US role in them. In line with the philosophy of the emerging document, the

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

295

administration placed US troops under UN command for the first time in Macedonia and Somalia.35 Shepherding PRD-13 through the bureaucratic process was Richard A. Clarke,36 a senior member of the National Security Council staff. He later acknowledged that at best PDD-25 was an effort to save peacekeeping at a minimal involvement of the United States. “There was no support for [peacekeeping] in the US government,”37 and thus PDD-25 simply recognized reality. It was Clarke who, recognizing the political damage done

by Somalia and the impending nature of PDD-25, advised Christopher to pull the plug on Rwanda.38 Even Albright acknowledged that the administration “had expected more of the UN than it could deliver.”39 Also driving the shift in administration policy was the growing conservative Republican hostility on Capitol Hill toward the United Nations and toward the White House’s support of UN missions. With the 1994 congressional elections looming, Republicans saw in the Somalia fiasco an opportunity to attack administration policy. The minority leader in the House Representatives, Dick Armey of Texas, argued that the nation “had gone too far in the direction of globalism.”40 On the first day of the 1994 House session, Republicans introduced the National Security Revitalization Act, which required the administration to seek congressional approval for the commitment of forces to UN peacekeeping. It also required US forces in UN operations be under US command. The bill passed the House 241-181.41 In the Senate minority leader Robert Dole introduced the Peace Powers Act that restated the language of the 1945 UN Participation Act requiring congressional approval for providing US military units to the Security Council. Both Houses, moreover, appropriated far less than the president requested for peacekeeping operations.42 The House and Senate were ready for a fight with the administration over any continuing US support for UN actions.

Once having put PDD-25 in place, an instrumental plan was needed to carry out its directives in future operations. A three-year process, authorized

by Presidential Review Directive 50, produced Presidential Decision Directive 56 (PDD-56) in May 1997. Titled The Clinton Administration’s Policy on Managing Complex Contingency Operations, PDD-56 set up an

296

Jerry Pubantz

interagency group headed by a senior official to oversee each operation and to coordinate all participating federal agencies – military, relief, humanitarian assistance, reconstruction – in the management of the intervention.43 PDD-56 required representatives at the deputy secretary level from the National Security Council, State, Defense, Office of Management and Budget, Treasury, Department of Justice, UN Mission, and other relevant agencies to convene and provide both oversight and implementation authority. The directive also required a separate political-military plan for each intervention and annual training through simulated crises.44 Taken together, PDD-25 and PDD-56 gave the administration a concrete policy process for peacekeeping, limited UN involvement in US operations and vice versa, and inaugurated a shift toward “coalitions of the willing” or even unilateralism as the priority strategy for dealing with conflicts in distant regions of the globe. The last of these would continue well into the succeeding administration of President George W. Bush.

Reporting to the UN General Assembly in March 1994, SecretaryGeneral Boutros-Ghali wrote, “I am conscious that the optimism which prevailed one year ago has been diminished as a result of the difficulties encountered in the field, especially in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.”45 The loss of optimism was just as palpable along the Potomac.

Administration officials not only were changing policy but also were increasingly critical of the secretary-general. Faced with strong criticism from conservatives in Congress, the president decided to limit his earlier stated commitments to the United Nations, to proceed in Bosnia with the grudging support of European powers outside the structures of the UN, and in Haiti for all practical purposes unilaterally, to cut the number of servicemen under UN command drastically,46 and to consider a change in leadership at the United Nations when the secretary-general’s term ended in 1997.

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

297

HAITI AND BOSNIA Shortly after the Mogadishu disaster, US prestige suffered another blow far closer to home. In fulfillment of the Governor’s Island Agreement between the military junta in Haiti and its adversaries –the United Nations, the United States, and the exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide – the Clinton administration sent the first group of engineers and landmine clearers to Haiti aboard the ship Harlan County. When it arrived off Portau-Prince, the group found organized angry protesters on the docks, shouting “Somalia! Somalia!” Rather than force a confrontation, the administration ordered the ship back to the American base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The event was a public relations fiasco for Washington, as the Clinton White House already seemed to be succumbing to a “Somalia Syndrome.”

The president concluded that the only way to salvage the situation was to force the military leaders from power. He sought Security Council authorization, but this was to be an American operation. In July 1994 the Council authorized “Member States to form a multinational force under unified command and control (a euphemism for US command) and, in this framework, to use all necessary means to facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military leadership.”47 Secretary of State Christopher thought the resolution the key step in solving the Haitian problem, because it authorized “a coalition of the willing,” a term heard often in the subsequent Republican administration, to act with the blessing of the Security Council.48 The resolution also declared that once a “secure and stable” environment was established, the operation would be turned over to the United Nations for the tasks of domestic reconstruction. In practical terms, Clinton had fashioned an exit strategy from Haiti. This would be the new approach, and its relative success would guide the writing of PDD-56.

Armed with Security Council endorsement, Clinton threatened an invasion and sent a high-level delegation consisting of former President Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and General Colin Powell to force the departure of Colonel Cedras and his fellow junta members. Aristide returned to Haiti in October 1994, protected by a force of twenty thousand American troops and limited forces from several other states, in an apparently

298

Jerry Pubantz

successful operation. President Clinton was on hand in Port-au-Prince the following March for the handover of command from the US military to the United Nations. Significant US forces would remain in Haiti to assist successive UN Missions, and internal Haitian conflict would reappear regularly, but, as Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck later noted, the Haitian mission “opened the way for the development of a new doctrine of [US] ‘humanitarian intervention,’”49 which would be used again in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In Bosnia the administration found what Secretary of State Christopher called “the problem from hell.” Following the declaration of Bosnian independence in spring 1992, the Bush administration had given its support to UN efforts in conjunction with the European Union. The outcome of diplomacy, the Vance-Owen Plan, however, proved disappointing. All sides found the proposal to dissect Bosnia into relatively autonomous provinces reflecting ethnic population concentrations largely unworkable.

President Clinton urged stronger action against the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic and against the Bosnian Serbs led by Radovan Karadzic. His first inclination was to turn to the UN, as his predecessor had done. As a candidate, he had told CNN’s Inside Politics that “The United Nations was set up to stop things like that, and we ought to stop it.” 50 However, as president he found little encouragement in the United Nations from the major players on the Security Council, although he continued to press for a UN multilateral response.51 The escalating bombardment of Muslim communities from surrounding mountain areas gave the United States an opportunity to urge greater UN action.52 The first achievement was the creation of six Muslim “safe havens” in May 1993, the most important being Mostar, Gorazde, Srebrenica, and Sarajevo. The world community promised peacekeepers to protect these enclaves for Muslim civilians forced out of their villages by Serbian and Croatian attacks. In June the administration introduced a resolution in the Security Council to lift the arms embargo on the Muslim government. The proposal was part of Washington’s “lift and strike” strategy, which also called for air strikes against Serb targets. It quickly found France, Britain, and Russia opposed.

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

299

The focal point of the fighting was Sarajevo. As the Bosnian Serbs tightened their encirclement of the city, President Clinton argued for the use of NATO air strikes against Serbian artillery emplacements. In the wake of Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti, he was shifting his attention from UN-based solutions to the military option available in a refocused NATO. In August 1994 Clinton threatened to lift unilaterally the arms embargo with the Muslim government if the latest UN peace plan was not accepted by Bosnian Serbs. The president launched a diplomatic offensive to convince the parties of US determination to use force, sanctions, and increased international actions to end the fighting.

NATO agreed to use its air power in Bosnia to protect the safe havens.

The order to do so, however, required the assent of all NATO members and of the UN secretary-general, or his representative in Bosnia, under what was called the “dual-key” system. In December Boutros-Ghali appointed Yasushi Akashi as chief of the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Akashi refused several requests from NATO to initiate air attacks, fearing reprisals against UN peacekeepers. Exasperation with Akashi and his boss BoutrosGhali over their reticence to use force in Bosnia was in all likelihood the last factor in the administration’s decision to oppose a second term for the secretary-general.

The breaking point came in July 1995, when Serb forces took Dutch peacekeepers hostage in Srebrenica, then gathered up the town’s men and boys, marched them into the surrounding fields, and summarily executed the civilians. More than seven thousand people were murdered. This, coupled with a brutal mortar attack on the marketplace in Sarajevo, ended Washington’s patience and forged NATO solidarity on military action. At an allied meeting in Great Britain, “London Rules” replaced the dual-key system. While Boutros-Ghali continued to press for a UN role in decisions about retaliatory bombing, the new plan called for “substantial and decisive” use of airpower if there were any more Serb assaults on the safe haven towns.53 NATO attacks – 3,500 sorties including 2,318 US bomber raids – occurred simultaneously with a successful Croatian offensive that reclaimed large territories held by the Serbs. Milosevic was forced to the bargaining table.

300

Jerry Pubantz

Invited by Clinton to Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia hammered out the Dayton Accords,54 an American-imposed settlement that assured security in Bosnia through the insertion of the Implementation Force (IFOR) made up of NATO troops, to be replaced by the Stabilization Force (SFOR) after the transfer of authority to the United Nations once hostilities were concluded. In these Accords, all parties agreed to establish a permanent ceasefire in Bosnia, repatriate refugees, and create a multiethnic state with a tripartite presidency and autonomous ethnic enclaves. Most important, the Accords inserted NATO ground forces.

Clinton committed twenty thousand American troops to the multinational force, noting that, unlike the previous UN forces, the new contingent would be heavily armed and ready “to respond immediately…with overwhelming force…to any violations”55 of the peace agreement. Sensitive to criticism that the Accords would ensnare the United States in a Balkan quagmire reminiscent of Vietnam, the president appealed to the American people for continued leadership: “In Bosnia this terrible war has challenged our interests and troubled our souls. Thankfully we can do something about it.…The people of Bosnia, our NATO allies, and people around the world are now looking to [us] for leadership. So let us lead. This is our responsibility as Americans.”56 He promised that the American involvement would meet the criteria of the Weinberger/Powell formulation. The operation would be “precisely defined, with clear realistic goals that can be achieved in a definite period of time.”57 There was no mention of undertaking this mission on behalf of the United Nations.

The attempt to reestablish peace and stability in the Balkans became an American responsibility. While the administration had hopes that multilateral diplomacy would bring about “burden sharing” in the new era, Bosnia demonstrated the unique position and role of the United States in contemporary international affairs. It also made clear the limitations of UNsponsored solutions. Over the next two years President Clinton found it necessary to use strong diplomatic pressure on Serbian and Croatian elements in Bosnia to live up to the Dayton conditions. He also came under increasing pressure to capture indicted war criminals and deliver them to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

301

Sixty thousand NATO troops supervised the implementation of the agreement. Fighting abated, and Alia Izetbegovic was elected president of Bosnia. The United Nations was given a minor role in post-conflict Bosnia.

The Security Council established a UN peacekeeping mission, but its limited responsibilities were to reform the local police and assess the Bosnian judicial system. Real power was placed in the hands of the High Representative. This new post, although filled by appointment of the secretary-general, was, in fact, created directly by the Dayton Accords. The Clinton administration eventually reduced US troop levels to about 15 percent of the total security force in Bosnia.58

CONCLUSION President Clinton’s foreign policy toward the United Nations and its peacekeeping function in the post-Cold War world had an evolutionary quality to it, moving from the long-felt desire to see an active and effective United Nations right the problems of world affairs toward arduously negotiated separate multilateral operations, or even unilateral American responses. Events in Somalia more than anywhere else set the process in motion, moving US foreign policy from the idealist course inaugurated in the Gulf War and toward a new concern for the dangers the overextension of UN activity could present for American national interests. The two year period from the deaths of the marines in the streets of Mogadishu in October 1993 to the resolution in October 1995 of the conflict that had rained mortars on Sarajevo witnessed the development of a new strategy for addressing the humanitarian crises of the time, and of a new critical approach to the UN. First in Haiti, then in Bosnia, President Clinton opted for direct American leadership, hoping that the rest of the world would follow. In large part it did. It would follow again in Kosovo. And in important ways, the world would use the same model of intervention in Timor-Leste and the Central African Republic in subsequent crises. In each case the United Nations provided the management architecture for nation-building once a

302

Jerry Pubantz

subcontracted intervention (by Australia and France respectively), authorized by the Security Council, had occurred.

Concomitant with the change in American policy came an American demand for UN reform and a change in the world body’s leadership. The Clinton administration achieved the removal of Boutros-Ghali and his replacement with Kofi Annan in December, 1996. Under Annan the United Nations undertook the most drastic reform of the institution since its founding, meeting most of the demands of the White House and of the US Congress, demonstrating once again to the consternation of other powers the decisive role of the United States in the world body. For the president and his administration, the evolution of the US-UN relationship in his first term was a sobering learning process that imposed a modicum of realism on American policy. It also demonstrated the critical importance of the United States to the effectiveness and utility of the United Nations. No other state, or group of states, could as profoundly use or undermine the role of the UN in world affairs. This would again be demonstrated in the events leading up to the second Gulf War, when Clinton’s subtle shift toward unilateralism took on dramatic proportions at the directive of President George W. Bush.

ENDNOTES For a full discussion of President Bush’s “moralist” motivations for sending troops to Somalia, see Stephen F. Burgess, “Operation Restore Hope: Somalia and Frontiers of the New World Order,” Paper Presented at the Hofstra 10th Presidential Conference: “George Bush, Leading in a New World,” Hofstra University, April 19, 1997.

2 For a complete history and analysis of the UN effort in Somalia and the American intervention, see John L. Hirsch and Robert B. Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995).

3 See David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), 251-52.

4 Albright first used the term in testimony before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights in June, 1993.

While continuing to endorse its underlying sentiment, Albright later referred to the term as “without appeal,” and as “the sound bite that bit me.” Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary (New York: Miramax Books, 2003), 176.

1

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo

303

“Statement Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 13, 1993,” as reprinted in Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998), 27.

6 Christopher, In the Stream of History, 27.

7 For a discussion of the transfer of authority to Boutros-Ghali, see James O.C. Jonah, “Differing State Perspectives on the United Nations in the Post-Cold War World,” Academic Council on the United Nations System, Reports and Papers, 1993, No. 4, 18.

8 United Nations Security Council (SC) Resolution 814, March 26, 1993.

9 See William G. Hyland, Clinton’s World: Remaking American Foreign Policy (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 56.

10 Michael R. Gordon, “Christopher in Unusual Cable Defends State Department,” New York Times, June 16, 1993, A7.

11 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations, 1992).

12 “Confronting the Challenges of a Broader World,” Address to the UN General Assembly, September 27, 1993. US Department of State Dispatch 4, no. 39 (September 27, 1993): 650.

13 On June 12, 1993, the president told the audience to his weekly radio address, “The US must continue to play its unique role of leadership in the world. But now we can express that leadership through multilateral means such as the United Nations, which spread the costs and [embody] the unified will of the international community.” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton, 1993, Volume I (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994), 1:840.

14 Operating essentially independent of UN control, US forces for practical purposes declared war on Aideed with a surprise helicopter gunship attack on a suspected meeting of Aideed’s lieutenants on July 12. Then, following the deaths of four US peacekeepers in August, Clinton augmented the force and redoubled efforts to capture the warlord. See Douglas E. Delaney, “Cutting, Running, or Otherwise? The US Decision to Withdraw from Somalia,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 15, no. 3 (Winter 2004): 36.

15 Hyland, Clinton’s World, 58.

16 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies (New York: Free Press, 2004), 87.

17 For a description of the shift in sentiment within the White House and State Department, see John Shattuck, Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars and America’s Response (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 22-40.

18 Thomas H. Henriksen, Clinton’s Foreign Policy in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and North Korea (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution, 1996), 12. The total US cost of the Somalia operation was estimated at $1.2 billion. See Delaney, “Cutting,” 40.

19 Madeleine K. Albright, “Building a Consensus on International Peacekeeping,” Statement Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, October 20, 1993, US Department of State Dispatch 4, no. 46 (November 15, 1993), 790.

20 Madeleine K. Albright, “Use of Force in a Post-Cold War World,” Address to the National War College, September 23, 1993, US Department of State Dispatch 4, no. 39 (September 27, 1993), 667.

21 For a complete description and analysis of the Rwandan crisis and subsequent genocide, see Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic 5

304

Jerry Pubantz

Books, 2002), 329-89. Also see John Allphin Moore, Jr. and Jerry Pubantz, Encyclopedia of the United Nations (New York: Facts on File, 2002), 265-66.

22 United Nations Security Council (SC) Resolution 912, April 21, 1994.

23 United Nations Security Council (SC) Resolution 918, May 17, 1994.

24 The United States airlift of humanitarian supplies even avoided entering Rwanda or the neighboring territories where the refugee camps were located. Instead American aid was flown to Entebbe, Uganda, two hundred miles from Rwanda, off-loaded, and transferred to smaller non-American aircraft for the last leg of the trip. Alan J. Kuperman, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), 56-58.

25 Shattuck, Freedom on Fire, 16.

26 “Key Elements of the Clinton Administration’s Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations,” (US Administration, Presidential Decision Directive, May 1994) in Documents on the Reform of the United Nations, ed. Paul Graham Taylor, Sam Daws and Ute AdamczickGerteis (Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth, 1997), 125. Also see White House, “Clinton Administration Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations (PDD 25) May 5, 1994,” http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd25.htm.

27 “Key Elements,” 125.

28 “Key Elements,” 126.

29 For a full discussion of the similarities, see Richard Lock-Pullan, “Learning the Limits of Virtue: Clinton, the Army and the Criteria for the Use of Military Force,” Contemporary Strategic Policy 24, no. 2 (August 2003): 145-148.

30 Albright, Madam Secretary, 150-51.

31 “Tensions in United States–United Nations Relations,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations, and Human Rights, Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, 2nd Session, May 17, 1994.

32 “Key Elements,” 129–31.

33 “Press Briefing by National Security Adviser Tony Lake and Director for Strategic Plans and Policy Wesley Clark,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, May 5, 1994.

34 Albright, Madame Secretary, 147.

35 For a critical review of PRD-13, see Peter W. Rodman, “Declarations of Dependence: With an Administration That is Suspicious of American ‘National Interests,’ Every International Undertaking Must be Closely Scrutinized. Are We Giving Away Our Sovereignty?” National Review 46, no. 11 (June 13, 1994): 32. Mirroring the sentiment in the inter-agency discussions, Albright told the New York Council on Foreign Relations in June 1993 “the time has come to commit the political, intellectual and financial capital that UN peacekeeping and our security deserve.” In line with the philosophy of the merging document, the administration placed US troops under UN command for the first time in Macedonia and Somalia. R. Jeffrey Smith and Julia Preston, “United States Plans Wider Role in UN Peacekeeping,” (The Washington Post, June 18, 1993).

36 Clarke later became the counterterrorism chief for both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and was privy to most of the most sensitive discussions on the US role in conflict settings.

37 Power, Problem from Hell, 342.

Getting from Mogadishu to Sarajevo 38

305

Power, 367.

“Tensions,” 11.

40 Ryan C. Hendrickson, “War Powers, Bosnia, and the 104th Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 113, no. 2 (1998): 243.

41 Hendrickson, 244.

42 Marjorie Ann Browne, “United Nations Peacekeeping: Issues for Congress,” CRS Issue Brief for Congress, September 24, 2003.

43 Thomas W. Lippman, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000), 100.

44 Mark A. Walsh and Michael J. Harwood, “Complex Emergencies: Under New Management,” Parameters 28, no. 4 (Winter 1998/99): 43-45.

45 “Improving the Capacity of the United Nations for Peacekeeping: Report of the SecretaryGeneral,” A/48/403, S/26450, March 1994. The relevant part of the secretary-general’s full report for 1994 is in The Yearbook of the United Nations, 1994, 50–55.

46 This trend would continue under the subsequent administration of George W. Bush. By October 2004 there were only twenty-eight US military personnel serving under UN command in a total of five UN operations. Nina M. Serafino, “Peacekeeping and Related Stability Operations: Issues of US Military Involvement,” CRS Issue Brief for Congress, October 4, 2004.

47 United Nations Security Council (SC) Resolution 940, July 31, 1994.

48 Christopher, Stream of History, 182.

49 Shattuck, Freedom, 287. This is also the assessment to be found in Wendell Gordon, The United Nations at the Crossroads of Reform (Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1994), 134.

50 As quoted in Power, Problem from Hell, 274.

51 Russia, which historically has had close ties to the Christian Serbs, supported no further military action. Britain and France also sought a diplomatic solution, fearful a military strike would lead to attacks on and hostage-taking of their nationals then serving in the UN peacekeeping mission.

52 Sabrina Petra Ramet, “The Bosnian War and the Diplomacy of Accommodation,” Current History 93, no. 586 (November 1994): 383–85.

53 Christopher, Stream of History, 348.

54 For the complete history of the Dayton Accords, see Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998).

55 Address to the Nation on Implementation of the Peace Agreement in Bosnia-Herzogovina, November 27, 1995, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1996), 2:1784-87.

56 Address to the Nation on Implementation of the Peace Agreement in Bosnia-Herzogovina, November 27, 1995, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1996), 2:1784-87.

57 Lock-Pullan, “Limits of Virtue,” 146.

58 President Clinton’s Interview with Charlie Rose, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 27, 2005, http://www.c-span.org/video/?185319-4/global-economic-issues. The UN Mission completed its job in 2002, turning over police oversight to a European Union Police mission, but the High Representative continued the hard work of trying to create a multiethnic 39

306

Jerry Pubantz and peaceful state among highly distrustful Serb, Muslim, and Croat communities. Serious problems continued to confront Bosnia and Herzegovina at the turn of the century, including resettling refugees, rebuilding the economy, establishing a working government, locating indicted war criminals who were still at large, and dealing with the fact of a rump Serbian entity within the country. Still, after Dayton there was, as of 2005, no further outbreak of ruinous civil war in the country.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Madeleine K. Albright is chair of Albright Stonebridge Group and chair of Albright Capital Management, an affiliated investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. She was the sixty-fourth secretary of state of the United States, serving from 1997 to 2001. Dr. Albright was named the first female secretary of state and became, at that time, the highest ranking woman in the history of the US government. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Albright served as the US permanent representative to the United Nations and was a member of the president’s cabinet. She is a professor in the practice of diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Jeffrey A. Bader is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Bader served as a foreign service officer from 1975 to 2002, during which period he was National Security Council Director for China and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in charge of China in the Clinton administration. From January 2009 until April 2011, Bader was Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. In that capacity, he was the principal adviser to President Obama on Asia. Bader is the author of

308

About the Contributors

Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Brookings Institution Press, 2012).

Meena Bose is executive dean of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy, and International Affairs, and director of Hofstra’s Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency. She is the author of Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy (Texas A&M Press, 1998), and editor of the reference volume The New York Times on the Presidency (CQ Press, 2009). She also has edited several volumes in presidency studies and a reader in American politics, and she is third author for the American Government: Institutions and Policies textbook (15th edition Cengage, 2016). Dr. Bose serves on the editorial board of Political Science Quarterly and has been a guest editor for White House Studies.

Stephen F. Burgess is a professor in the Department of International Security Studies, US Air War College. He is co-author of South Africa's Weapons of Mass Destruction (Indiana University Press, 2005) and author of The United Nations under Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 1992-97 (Scarecrow Press, 2001) and Smallholders and Political Voice in Zimbabwe (University Press of American 1997). He has published numerous articles, book chapters and monographs on African and South Asian security issues. He is currently conducting research on the US Rebalance to Asia with a focus on the South China Sea and US Access and Basing Issues. Dr. Burgess has taught courses on international security, peace and stability operations, and African regional and cultural studies. He is also an Associate of the US Air Force Counterproliferation Center.

Michael D’Innocenzo is professor emeritus of history at Hofstra University, where he served during 57 years as speaker of the faculty, professor of history and the Harry H. Wachtel Distinguished Teaching Professor for the Study of Nonviolent Social Change. His published work touches on topics from civil rights to education policy to diversity to colonial and Civil War history. In 2007, he helped found the Hofstra Center for Civic

About the Contributors

309

Engagement (CCE), and he served as the first chairperson of its advisory board. In 2009, Dr. D’Innocenzo received the American Historical Association Eugene Asher National Distinguished Teaching Award.

Working closely with the Kettering Foundation, the National Issues Forums Institute, and the Public Agenda Foundation, he has organized discussion programs involving thousands of people over the years – mostly high school students and teachers, but also community members – in intergenerational programs and town meetings at local public libraries.

John Dumbrell is emeritus professor of government in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, UK. His published work on transatlantic relations includes the twin studies, A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations during the Cold War and After (Palgrave 2001), which won the University of Cambridge Donner book prize for 2002, and A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations from the Cold War to Iraq (Palgrave, 2006). His most recent books are Clinton's Foreign Policy: Between the Bushes (Routledge, 2010) and Rethinking the Vietnam War (Palgrave, 2012).

Anthony J. Eksterowicz is a professor emeritus of political science at James Madison University. Dr. Eksterowicz has presented forty papers at various academic conferences around the nation and authored and coauthored more than thirty-three articles since 1988 on various topics ranging from strategic arms control to participatory democracy to presidential power and congressional relations. His articles have appeared in a number of journals including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Political Science and Politics, Public Affairs Quarterly, The National Civic Review, and The Harvard International Journal on Press. He is a former associate editor of White House Studies.

Richard N. Gardner is professor emeritus at Columbia Law School.

He served as ambassador to Italy under President Carter and as ambassador to Spain under President Clinton. He is the author of four books, including

310

About the Contributors

Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 1956) and In Pursuit of World Order (Praeger, 1966).

Melvin Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.

His forty-two-year career with the US government included the CIA, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the US Army. His most recent books are The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism (City Lights Publishers, 2013). His newest book is The Path to Dissent: The Story of a CIA Whistleblower (City Lights Publishers, 2016).

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. He also is the secretary general of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) headquartered in Brussels. He is the author of fifteen books on the Kurdish people and their political history. He also has published numerous scholarly articles on the Kurds and many other issues in various leading scholarly periodicals. He was a former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in International Relations in Turkey and has been interviewed about the Kurdish question on numerous occasions by the international and national press. His most recent books are Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (Hurst Publications, 2014) and The Kurds: A Modern History (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2015).

Glenn P. Hastedt is a professor of political science and justice studies at James Madison University. His publications include American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future, 10th edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) and and numerous articles on intelligence in such journals as Intelligence and National Security and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence as well as chapters in such books as Intelligence Theory (Rutledge, 2009); the Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford, 2010); and US Foreign Policy Today: American Renewal? (CQ Press, 2012). He has also co edited volumes on American foreign policy and

About the Contributors

311

intelligence policy. He is a former co-editor of the journal White House Studies.

Takashi Kanatsu is professor of political science at Hofstra University and co-director of the university’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and has served as director of the Hofstra in Japan study abroad program. He specializes in the political economy of developing countries, particularly in the areas of government roles in high-tech industrial development and the inter-regional comparative political economy of Asia and Latin America. He is the author of the textbook Asian Politics: Tradition, Transformation & Future (Linus Publications, 2013), and his work on Asian politics has appeared in a number of edited volumes and periodicals, including The Routledge Handbook to the History of Global Economic Thought (Brill, 2015), Nature, the Environment and Climate Change in East Asia (2013), and NIMBY is Beautiful (Berghahn Books, 2015). His most recent research focus is high-technology industrial development and environment.

Mikyoung Kim is an independent scholar. She has published many refereed journal articles and numerous book chapters on memory, reconciliation, and human rights in East Asia. Her books include Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, with Barry Schwartz), Securitization of Human Rights: North Korean Refugees in East Asia (Praeger, 2012), Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia (Routledge, 2015) and Challenges of Modernization and Governance in South Korea: The Sinking of the Sewol and Its Causes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, with JJ Suh). She was elected president of Association of Korean Political Studies (2016-2018) and chair of the International Political Science Association Human Rights Research Committee (2016-2018).

Timothy J. Lynch is the former director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences and associate professor in American Politics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His books include Turf War: the

312

About the Contributors

Clinton Administration and Northern Ireland (Ashgate, 2004), the award winning After Bush: the Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2008) and US Foreign Policy and Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2013). He is editor-in-chief of the two-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History (Oxford, 2013).

Donald H. McNeill is a consulting physicist. He has worked with plasmas (ranging from microscopic sparks and glows to large fusion experiments), combustion, spectroscopy, optics, and lasers. He is the author or coauthor of more than 200 technical papers, abstracts, reports and book translations. His interest in nuclear weapons goes back to the 1950s, when his mother worried about the effect of radioactivity from nuclear testing.

Stefanie Nanes is associate professor of political science at Hofstra University, teaching courses in comparative politics and on the politics of the Middle East, including courses on women and politics in the Middle East and on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dr. Nanes' work on Jordanian national identity, gender quotas in politics, women’s political participation, and honor killings, has been featured in the Arab Studies Journal, Middle East Journal, Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, and Journal of Women, Politics and Policy.

Rosanna Perotti (Book Editor/Chapter Author) is associate professor and former chair of political science at Hofstra University, teaching courses in American politics, political parties, public opinion and immigration policy. Her work on immigration policy has appeared in the International Migration Review and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and she is the editor of The Clinton Presidency and the Constitutional System (Texas A&M Press, 2012), co-editor of A True Third Way? Domestic Policy and the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton (Nova Publishers, 2014), and co-editor of four volumes on the presidency of George H. W. Bush.

About the Contributors

313

Jerry Pubantz is professor of political science and former dean of Lloyd International Honors College at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His writings include works on the United Nations, US-Russian relations, the Middle East, and American foreign policy. He the author of Is There a Global Right to Democracy? A Philosophical Analysis of Peacekeeping and Nation Building (Edward Mellen, 2012), co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the United Nations, co-author of The New United Nations: International Organization in the 21st Century (2nd edition, Taylor & Francis, 2017) and coauthor of To Create a New World? American Presidents and the United Nations (Peter Lang, 1999), honored with CHOICE Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Title Award for 2000 by the American Library Association.

Arthur G. Rubinoff is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of India’s Use of Force in Goa (Popular Prakashan, 1971), and The Construction of a Political Community: Integration and Identity in Goa (Sage, 1998). He is co-editor of International Conflict and Conflict Management (Prentice-Hall. 1989), The United States and India in a Changing World (Sage, 2002), and editor of Canada and the States of South Asia (University of Toronto, 1990), Canada and South Asia: Issues and Opportunities (University of Toronto 1988), and Canada and South Asia: Political and Strategic Relations (University of Toronto, 1992). His articles on India’s foreign policy—including its relations with Canada, Israel, and the United States—and India’s political system—including its parliament, elections, state politics—and the role of legislators in foreign policy formulation have appeared in such journals as Asian Affairs, Asian Survey, Contemporary South Asia, Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Asian and African Studies, India Review, Journal of Developing Societies, The Journal of Legislative Studies, McGill International Review; Pacific Affairs, the Round Table, South Asian Survey and Studies in Indian Politics. He is contributing editor of the India Review.

314

About the Contributors

Catherine B. Shannon is professor emerita of history at Westfield State University, where she taught Irish, British and European history. She also taught Irish history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland: 1874-1922 (Catholic University Press, 1988), she recently wrote about the role of Lord Randolph Churchill in Irish affairs from 1877 to 1893 in The Churchills and Ireland: Connections and Controversies, edited by Robert McNamara (Irish Academic Press, 2012).

She has published a number of articles and book chapters on the role of women in the Northern Irish conflict and peace process. She served on the executive board of the American Conference for Irish Studies for a decade and also was president of the Eire Society of Boston and the Charitable Irish Society of Boston.

SUBJECT INDEX # 1955 system, 86, 103 1986 Semiconductor Agreement, 90 9/11 Commission, 26, 29, 173, 174, 179, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198

A Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 56, 58, 64, 66 Afghan Service Bureau, 182 Afghanistan, xii, xiii, xxiv, 13, 26, 45, 46, 132, 134, 136, 137, 140, 180, 181, 182, 185, 186, 188, 190, 286 African Crisis Response Force (ACRF), 267, 281 African Crisis ResponseInitiative (ACRI), 267 African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), 269, 278, 282 Agenda for Peace, An, 264, 268, 279, 288, 303 Alliance Party, 242, 244

al-Qaeda, xxiv, xxv, 13, 14, 50, 132, 174, 182, 183, 186, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196 Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1985, 205, 231 Ankara peace process, 153 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 43, 47 Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC), 79 assertive multilateralism, xxvi, 252, 263, 265, 267, 270, 273, 279, 281, 287, 290 Australia, xxvii, 67, 201, 264, 277, 280, 292, 302, 311

B Balkans, xix, 12, 39, 139, 254, 260, 285, 300 ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, xxii, 60, 61, 69 Bank of Japan (BOJ), 98 Baruch Plan, 58, 62, 67 Beijing University, 78, 80 biological weapons convention, 189 Bosnia, xi, xiv, xvi, xix, xxvi, 29, 11, 23, 24, 35, 40, 41, 44, 46, 191, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 261, 265, 268,

Subject Index

316

271, 272, 273, 274, 276, 280, 292, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303, 305, 306 Brahimi Report, 278 Brown Amendment, 135 burden shifting, vii, 263, 264 burden-sharing, xxvii, 264, 267, 283

C Canary Wharf bomb, 1996, 208, 231 Caucus on India and Indian Americans, 141 Chemical Weapons Convention, xxi, xxii, 40, 189 chief architect, xx, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27 China, vi, xv, xviii, xix, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, 29, 12, 18, 25, 43, 60, 63, 66, 69, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 88, 90, 96, 99, 100, 101, 104, 106, 132, 133, 136, 140, 161, 254, 273, 276, 307, 308 coalitions of the willing, 296 Cold War, v, xi, xxviii, 29, 12, 17, 19, 20, 28, 35, 38, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 72, 90, 94, 98, 99, 109, 111, 119, 134, 136, 137, 148, 160, 161, 170, 191, 201, 203, 204, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 249, 251, 252, 259, 279, 282, 286, 287, 289, 301, 303, 309 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), xv, xxi, xxii, 34, 47, 48, 49, 54, 62, 63, 70, 135, 189 Confederation of British Industries (CIB), 232, 243 Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), 182, 186

D Dayton Accords, xvii, 24, 256, 261, 269, 300, 301, 305 Defense Counterproliferation Initiative of 1993, 61

Democratic Party of Japan, 96, 103 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 277 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), 212, 213, 225, 226, 237, 242, 243, 244 democratization, 25, 28 Department of State, U.S., 29, 33, 64, 67, 128, 133, 142, 303 Directive 25 (PDD 25), 267, 281, 304 Downing Street Declaration, 206, 239 Drogheda, 151, 152 dual containment, 42, 162, 163 dues payments, UN, xxvii, 250, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 267, 268, 272, 274, 275, 280

E East Timor, xxvii, 256, 277, 280, 283, 286, 292 Economic Community of West, 269

F Families of the Disappeared, 239 former Yugoslavia, ix, xvi, xx, 24, 44, 254, 270, 285, 287, 296 France, 5, 62, 63, 71, 72, 86, 89, 241, 265, 273, 274, 276, 291, 298, 302, 305 Futenma Air Station, 100

G general contractors, 18 Glenn Amendment, 137, 138 globalization, x, xiii, xiv, xix, xxviii, 13, 29, 232 Goldwater-Nichols Bill, 43 Good Friday Agreement (also known as Belfast Agreement), xxvi, 203, 209, 219,

Subject Index 220, 234, 235, 237, 239, 240, 241, 244, 245 Good Friday peace accords, 251 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, 96 Group of Seven (G-7), 123, 273 Group of Seven (GoS), 232, 243 Guidelines for US‐Japan Defense Cooperation, 100 Guildhall Square (Derry), 228

H Habatsu, 103 Haiti, ix, xiv, xxvii, 17, 23, 29, 34, 40, 44, 129, 161, 207, 253, 254, 266, 281, 285, 292, 296, 297, 299, 301, 303 Hart/Rudman Commission, 177 House of Representatives, U.S., 133, 141, 156, 170, 302, 304 humanitarian intervention, ix, 161, 250, 265, 277, 286, 290, 298 Hungarian crisis, 132

I idealism, 264, 279, 281, 286, 290, 292 India, xv, xviii, xxi, xxiv, 11, 60, 61, 69, 71, 72, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 313 Indo-American community, 141 Indo-Pakistani rivalry, 133 Industrial Development Board (IDB), 223, 230, 240 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), xxiii, 59, 112, 113, 115, 128, 137, 164 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 82 International Criminal Court, xv, xxi, 34, 44, 53

317

International Fund for Ireland, 207, 222, 223, 239, 241 International Monetary Fund, 134 International Summit on Terrorism, 183 Iran, xxiv, 11, 42, 44, 54, 61, 71, 78, 81, 140, 148, 150, 152, 153, 155, 162, 163, 164, 180, 184, 185, 191 Iraq, vi, xiii, xv, xxiv, xxv, 36, 41, 42, 44, 62, 67, 70, 104, 136, 141, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 178, 180, 181, 182, 185, 191, 192, 194, 198, 214, 249, 275, 309 Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, 170, 171 Iraqi National Congress (INC), 153, 168, 169 Irbil, 152, 153 Israel, xvii, 8, 71, 117, 118, 120, 142, 148, 180, 183, 237, 243, 271, 313

J Japan, vi, xviii, xxiii, 5, 56, 66, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 114, 115, 125, 132, 133, 267, 311 Japan as number one, 89 Japan Inc., 86 Japan That Can Say No, The, 89, 105

K Kargil crisis, 139 Kashmir, Human Rights, 135 Kashmir, Line of Control, xxiv, 132 Kenya, xxv, 188 KFOR, 277 Khobar bombing, 184, 185 Kobe, 87 Korean War, 132, 150

Subject Index

318

Kosovo, xii, xv, xxvi, 7, 12, 80, 250, 251, 256, 275, 276, 280, 286, 292, 298, 301 Kurdistan, 157 Kurdistan Democratic Party, 149, 166 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), 148, 151, 152, 153, 155 Kuwait, 149, 163, 165, 166, 249, 265

L Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 86, 94, 95, 96, 103, 105 Liberia, xxvii, 269, 280 Lockheed Scandal, 94 lost decade, 86

M Maekawa Report, 90, 98 MAUD report, 56 Middle East, ix, xiv, xix, xxiv, 29, 12, 25, 29, 40, 114, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 135, 140, 148, 150, 156, 159, 170, 184, 251, 312, 313 Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), 92 Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 276 Mitsubishi Estate Company, 90 Mogadishu, vii, 250, 257, 264, 266, 285, 286, 289, 290, 297, 301 most-favored nation (MFN) status, 76

N NAFTA, xiv, 17, 24, 28, 93 National Missile Defense Act of 1999, 61 NATO, xiii, xiv, xv, xvii, xxi, xxvii, 3, 6, 7, 12, 50, 51, 65, 147, 216, 265, 268, 269, 276, 280, 292, 299, 300, 301 New Japan Party, 95

Nikkei, 87, 97 Nissan, 85 no-fly zone, xxv, 150, 152, 155, 160, 162, 167, 168 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), xv, 59 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 50, 250, 255, 264 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 250, 255, 264 North Korea, vi, xviii, xix, xxii, xxiii, 12, 40, 46, 52, 61, 70, 99, 100, 104, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 150, 163, 251, 303, 311 Northern Ireland, vi, vii, xiv, xxvi, 4, 8, 25, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 251, 312 Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, 233 NSC-68, 57, 66 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, xxii, xxiii, 52, 63, 112 Nuclear Suppliers Group, 59, 78 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, 61 Nye Report, 89, 91, 99

O Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 58 oil-for-food program, 160, 165 Operation Desert Fox, 62, 70, 167, 275 Operation Provide Comfort (OPC), 150, 151 Operation Restore Hope, 250, 265, 302 Opshal Commission, 221, 238, 239, 244

Subject Index Organization of African Unity (OAU), 272, 273, 274

P Pakistan, xxi, xxiv, 11, 61, 69, 71, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 181 Partial Test Ban Treaty, 43 peacekeeping, xxvii, 21, 141, 250, 251, 254, 256, 257, 258, 264, 266, 267, 268, 269, 275, 277, 278, 281, 286, 287, 288, 290, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 301, 304, 305 Plaza Accord, 86, 89, 98 Presidential Decision, xii, xxvii, 183, 187, 267, 292, 295, 304 Presidential Decision Directive 25, xxvii, 267, 292 Presidential Decision Directive 39, 183 Presidential Decision Directive 56, 295 Pressler Amendment, 135, 136, 137, 143 Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), 224 Punjab, human rights, 135

R realism, 79, 279, 292, 302 reform of the United Nations, 294 reluctant home remodelers, 19 Revolutionary United Front, 278 Rockefeller Center, 90 rogue states, 27, 61, 162, 163 RUF, 278 Russia, xiii, xix, xxii, 29, 3, 6, 7, 18, 25, 50, 57, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 72, 104, 111, 189, 273, 276, 298, 305 Rwanda, xiii, xix, 11, 35, 44, 49, 250, 253, 255, 259, 272, 274, 290, 291, 292, 293, 295, 299, 304

319 S

sanctions, xxiv, 21, 60, 82, 101, 113, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 150, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 168, 170, 171, 188, 299 Sarajevo, vii, 269, 285, 298, 299, 301 Sarin, 87 Saudi Arabia, 181, 184, 185, 196 Science Based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS) program, 60 Security Council Resolution 872, 290 Senate, U.S., xxi, xxii, 34, 37, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 54, 63, 68, 71, 76, 114, 127, 133, 150, 156, 176, 251, 257, 258, 260, 268, 281, 290, 295, 303 September 11 (9/11), vi, xxv, 13, 26, 29, 41, 69, 104, 140, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 211, 214, 260 Sierra Leone, xxvii, 277, 278, 280 Sinn Fein, 8, 217, 220, 221, 223, 224, 237, 239, 240, 244, 245 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), 206, 224 Somalia, ix, xiii, xvi, xix, xx, xxvi, 11, 17, 23, 34, 37, 40, 44, 47, 183, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255, 257, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 266, 267, 272, 273, 274, 279, 281, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301, 302, 303, 304 SONY, 89 South Korea (Republic of Korea), xxiii, 46, 96, 100, 104, 112, 114, 118, 119, 120, 126, 150, 311 Srebrenica, 298, 299 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, 43, 47 strategic trade policy, 88 Sudan, xii, xiii, 13, 26, 44, 49, 186, 188 Summit of the Americas, xv, 13

Subject Index

320 Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SARI), 152, 157 Symington Amendment, 138, 139

T Taepodong, 100, 114, 115 Taepodong-1 missile, 100, 114 Taiwan, 76, 77, 82, 93, 99, 101 Taiwan Strait/Taiwan Straight, 82, 99 Taliban, xiv, 136, 140, 180, 188, 190 Tanzania, xxv, 188 The 9/11 Commission Report, 29, 181, 186, 187, 192, 196, 197 The Agreed Framework between the US and North Korea, 99 Theater Missile Defenses, 100 Tiananmen, xxii, 75, 77, 78, 81, 88, 101 Tiananmen Square massacre, 88 Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin, 86, 94, 95 Treaty of Sevres, 151 Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), 114

U Ulster Defense Association (UDA), 239 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), 207, 209, 212, 213, 224, 225, 226, 229, 230, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245 UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), 290, 291 UN Interim Administration, 276 UN peacekeeping, 21, 253, 264, 267, 268, 278, 281, 285, 288, 289, 290, 292, 294, 295, 299, 301, 304, 305 UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), 268, 271 UN Security Council, 162, 258, 265, 276, 277, 278, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287 UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), 275

UNAMSIL, 278 unilateralism, xi, xvi, xix, xx, xxvii, xxviii, 4, 21, 53, 58, 159, 162, 296, 302 United Nations (UN), vii, xvi, xxii, xxiv, xxvi, 3, 5, 7, 21, 22, 35, 46, 47, 58, 59, 62, 63, 67, 70, 129, 134, 138, 150, 154, 157, 160, 162, 163, 165, 167, 169, 170, 171, 183, 197, 247, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308, 313 UNOSOM II, 265, 266, 267, 286, 287, 288 USS Cole, xxv, 26, 176, 190, 195

V Vietnam, xv, xxi, 20, 34, 43, 45, 132, 133, 134, 214, 254, 256, 300, 309 Vietnam War, 20, 34, 133, 309 Vital Voices Conference, 233, 234, 244 Vladivostok framework, 28

W Wang Dan, 78 Warsaw, 13 Weinberger Doctrine, 293 White House Conference for Trade and Investment (Washington Investment Conference), 222, 239, 241 World Trade Organization (WTO), xv, xxii, 5, 80, 82, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 101

Y Yugoslavia, 7, 161, 238

NAME INDEX A

B

Adams, Gerry, 8, 206, 207, 211, 213, 215, 217, 220, 221, 224, 227, 229, 237, 239, 242 Aideed, General Mohamed Farah, 266, 281, 289, 303 Akio Morita, 105 Albright, Madeleine K., v, xix, xxvi, 29, 5, 11, 21, 29, 42, 70, 72, 114, 120, 127, 129, 136, 154, 167, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 259, 260, 261, 263, 266, 268, 269, 270, 271, 273, 274, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 287, 290, 293, 294, 295, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307 Alderdice, Sir John, 242 al-Hakim, Muhammad Baqir, 152 Ames, Aldrich, 38 Annan, Kofi, 255, 258, 264, 271, 274, 275, 277, 280, 282, 291, 302 Arafat, Yasser, xvii, 8, 12, 120, 121, 122, 124, 126 Aspin, Les, 23, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 69 Atta, Mohamed, 176

Barak, Ehud, 120 Barr, Glen, 238 Berger, Samuel Richard (Sandy), 5, 12, 26, 42, 50, 186, 187, 190 Bhutto, Benazir, 135 bin Laden, Osama, xv, xix, 13, 26, 27, 28, 50, 176, 180, 181, 182, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 279 Blackwill, Robert, 140 Blair, Prime Minister Tony, 72, 104, 139, 208, 211, 217, 235 Blood, May, 223, 224, 241 Bodine, Barbara, 50 Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary-General Boutros, 255, 261, 264, 266, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 279, 280, 281, 282, 286, 287, 288, 290, 292, 294, 296, 299, 302, 303, 308 Bradford, Roy, 230 Brown, Harold, 29, 38, 65, 66, 92, 93, 135, 156, 239, 240, 256, 258 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 36, 170, 211 Burleigh, A. Peter, 251

Name Index

322

Bush, President George H. W., xi, xiii, xvi, xx, 7, 23, 24, 25, 28, 75, 85, 101, 111, 131, 137, 149, 160, 166, 180, 205, 250, 260, 265, 312 Bush, President George W., xiii, xxi, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, 29, 6, 27, 33, 34, 43, 54, 60, 61, 64, 72, 81, 89, 104, 105, 114, 128, 129, 137, 140, 159, 162, 163, 169, 174, 176, 180, 181, 185, 191, 203, 296, 302, 304, 305 Butler, Richard, 59, 67, 70, 167

C Campbell, Gregory, xxviii, 125, 243, 260 Card, Andrew, 192 Carney, Timothy, 186 Carns, Michael, 39 Carter, President Jimmy, xxiii, 4, 36, 40, 41, 71, 105, 113, 126, 127, 137, 139, 162, 205, 252, 268, 297, 309 Cedras, Raoul, xxvii, 23, 207, 254, 297 Chalabi, Ahmad, 168, 169, 178 Cheney, Vice President Dick, 5, 34, 178, 192 Christopher, Warren, xii, 29, 3, 5, 20, 21, 22, 29, 36, 39, 40, 42, 68, 70, 142, 210, 243, 251, 265, 270, 271, 272, 287, 288, 293, 295, 297, 298, 303, 305 Clark, Violet, 186, 226, 304 Clarke, Richard, 25, 26, 27, 29, 173, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 226, 242, 295, 303, 304 Clinton, Hillary, 126, 136, 213, 233, 239 Cohen, William, 12, 34, 37, 45 Coulter, Robert, 241 Cox, Christopher (Chris), 80, 216, 218

D D’Andrea Tyson, Laura, 88 Dalai Lama, 78, 82 DeConcini, Dennis, 38 Defense Counterproliferation Initiative of 1993, 61 Deibel, Terry, 48, 54 Dempsey, G. T., 242 Deutch, John, 39 Deutsch, Robert, 151 Dodds, Nigel, 225, 242 Dole, Bob, 215, 272, 273, 295 Dorgan, Byron, 49 Dougan, Pat, 242

E Eames, Archbishop Robin, 230 Eisenhower, President Dwight, xx, 19, 62, 256, 308

F Fine, Glenn, 64, 122, 125, 128, 129, 184 Freeh, Louis, 184, 196 Friendly, Andrew, 225

G Galbraith, Peter, 40, 143, 150, 157 Gallagher, Tanya, 231 Gandhi, Indira, 134, 137 Gingrich, Newt, 64, 178, 189 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 51, 126 Gore, Vice President Al, 29, 6, 8, 169, 191, 206, 207, 242, 250, 256, 260, 282 Goss, Porter, 175

Name Index H Halberstam, David, 22, 23, 29, 131, 142, 254, 259, 261, 262, 302 Hamill, Catherine, 227, 242 Harding, Warren, 116, 128 Hart, Gary, 177, 178, 189, 193 Hashimoto, Ryutaro, 87, 92, 96, 97, 100, 103 Havel, Vaclav, 236, 245 Heaney, Seamus, 228, 245 Helgerson, John L., 175 Helms, Jesse, 40, 257, 258, 259, 262, 268, 273 Hill, Eleanor, 40, 48, 65, 66, 127, 138, 141, 175, 256, 295 Hoover, Herbert Clark, 66 Hosokawa, Morihiro, 95, 96 Hume, John, 206, 212, 213, 218, 228, 236, 243, 245 Hussein, Saddam, xiv, xxiv, 12, 148, 149, 151, 155, 160, 163, 164, 166, 169, 171, 180, 275, 279

I Inman, Bobby, 37, 38 Isaacs, Harold, 132, 142 Ishihara, Shintaro, 89

J Jiang Zemin, 77, 78, 79, 101 Jo, Myong Rok, 114 Jonathan Howe, Admiral, 266, 289

K Kahane, Meir, 182 Kamil, Hussein, 164

323

Kantor, Mickey, 5, 88, 90, 91, 93 Kegley, Jr., Charles W., 20, 29 Kennedy, Brian, 228 Kerry, John, 34, 64, 250, 260 Khatami, Mohammed, 163 Kilmurray, Avila, 224, 241 Kim, Dae Jung, 119, 126 Kim, Il Sung, 112, 113, 119, 126, 129 Kim, Jong Il, 113, 114, 120, 126, 127, 129 Kim, Young Sam, 118, 120, 126 Kissinger, Henry, xi, xx, xxviii, 36, 42, 57, 64, 67, 72, 142, 148, 155, 156, 178 Koizumi, Junichiro, 89, 103, 104 Kyl, Jon, 49

L Laird, John, 241 Lake, Anthony (Tony), xii, 5, 21, 24, 29, 36, 40, 41, 42, 77, 181, 184, 207, 210, 251, 261, 287, 290, 294, 304 Leahy, Patrick, 46 Leary, Joe, 241 Lederberg, Joshua, 189 Lee, Teng-hui, 76, 100 LeMay, Curtis, 43 Lewinsky, Monica, 6, 27, 136, 170, 188, 244 Liu, Huaqiu, 77 Lott, Trent, 49 Lugar, Richard, xxi, 48, 52 Lyons, James, 222, 241

M Maginnis, Ken, 242 Mayhew, Sir Patrick, 219, 224 McAleese, President Mary, 244 McCartan, Joyce, 233, 244 McConnell, Mitch, 40 McGuckian, John, 230, 240

Name Index

324

McMichael, Gary, 241 McWilliams, Monica, 235, 244, 245 Milosevic, Slobodan, 7, 12, 276, 298, 299 Mitchell, George, 8, 25, 76, 208, 209, 217, 220, 225, 237, 239, 241, 242, 243 Miyazawa, Kiichi, 85, 86, 91, 94, 95, 96 Mondale, Walter, 105 Montgomery, Thomas, 263, 266 Morita, Akio, 89 Morris, Dick, 185 Morrison, Van, 206, 207, 228, 282 Mowlan, Marjorie, 230, 234 Murayama, Tomiichi, 92, 95, 96

N Nakasone, Yasuhiro, 97, 104 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 62, 133 Nicholson, Jim, 225, 242 Nixon, Richard, President, xx, 18, 36, 43, 47, 104, 116, 128, 142, 148, 155 Nixon/Kissinger, 18 Nosair, El Sayyid, 182, 196 Nunn, Sam, xxi, 34, 52, 61, 297

O Obuchi, Keizo, 96, 103

P Paisley, Ian, Jr., 225, 242 Paisley, Rev. Ian, 236 Pak Yong Su, 112 Panetta, Leon, 38 Pelosi, Nancy, 76 Penn, William, 228 Perle, Richard, 47 Perry, William, xxiii, 37, 51, 126 Pickering, Thomas, 135

Posner, Gerald, 178, 181, 184, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 196, 197 Powell, Colin, 5, 35, 140, 254, 261, 293, 297, 300

Q Quigley, Sir George, 232, 238

R Rabin, Yitzhak, xvii, 8, 118, 119, 120, 122, 126 Rao, Narasimha, 134, 138, 143 Reagan, Ronald, 13, 47, 48, 66, 90, 93, 102, 104, 136, 137, 143, 161, 162, 179, 180, 182, 205, 214 Redpath, Jackie, 238 Reynolds, Taoiseach Albert, 206, 225, 242 Rice, Condoleeza, 175, 191, 192, 193, 195 Richardson, Bill, 138, 251 Ritter, Scott, 70, 164, 168, 170, 171 Roberts, Pat, 41 Robinson, Peter, 225, 226, 242, 244 Ross, Willie, xiii, 29, 24, 217, 242 Rubin, Robert, 5, 42, 184, 269, 271 Rudman, Warren, 177, 178, 189, 193 Rumsfeld, Donald, 35, 61, 69, 180, 194

S Sharif, Nawaz, 139 Shattuck, John, 292, 298, 303, 304, 305 Shelby, Richard, 41 Singh, Jaswant, 134, 139, 140 Smyth, Martin, 229 Soderberg, Nancy, xxviii, 182, 206, 207, 217, 242, 261, 279, 281, 282, 283 Song, Young Dae, 112 Spring, Tanaiste Dick, 225

Name Index Starr, Kenneth, 123 Sterrett, David, 227, 242 Summers, Larry, 42

325

Vogel, Ezra, 89, 105 von Hippel, Frank, 58, 67

W T Takeshita, Noboru, 94, 97 Talabani, Jalal, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157 Talbott, Strobe, 29, 5, 6, 7, 135, 139, 143 Tanaka, Kakuei, 94 Taylor, John, 229, 242, 244, 256, 304, 313 Tenet, George, 39, 41, 48, 175, 176, 192, 195 Trimble, David, 209, 213, 230, 237, 242, 243, 244 Truman, Harry President, xx, 4, 18, 48, 56, 57, 177

Walker, Cecil, 229 Watson, Dale, 66, 190 Waxman, Henry, 175, 195 Wei, Jingsheng, 78 Welch, David, 154 Wen, Ho Lee, 81 Wilson, Woodrow President, 66, 142, 143, 281 Woolsey, R. James, 23, 36, 37, 38, 39, 185, 197

Z Zinni, Anthony, 50

V Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 139, 140