In the spring of 1999, flush with "victory" in the war with Serbia, President Clinton announced the Clinton Doctrine: never again would a people suffer from ethnic cleansing if the U.S. could do something about it. From now on, no national leader could hide behind sovereignty while slaughtering innocent people...
In the 2000 presidential election campaign, candidate Bush argued that the U.S. should not be the world's policeman by intervening in places that did not directly affect the vital interests of the U.S...
Ironically, as the Bush administration's reasons for invading Iraq last year have melted away one by one, it has been reduced essentially to justifying its action by adopting the basic rationale of the discarded Clinton Doctrine. Since the administration has found no weapons of mass destruction and no credible link to Al Qaeda--the primary reasons for going to war--it has focused almost exclusively on a humanitarian justification. As the argument goes, we have freed the Iraqi people from a sadistic dictator who murdered thousands of his own people.
Apparently, the Clinton Doctrine of humanitarian intervention is now not only acceptable but a central focus of the post 9/11 foreign policy of the Bush administration. The administration has seemingly adopted full-blown neo-Wilsonian moralism. But, just as quickly as the administration has recast its foreign policy moorings, its humanitarian credentials, like its earlier conservative-realist ones, have crashed ignominiously--this time in the sands and heat of western Sudan rather than in the sands and heat of Iraq.
Good article, though it only implies what I think should be said outright: Clinton actually believed what he said about humanitarianism, whereas Bush is only using it as a last refuge.
It's yet another tragic consequence of Bush's crotch-grabbing approach to international diplomacy ("Hey, UN, resolve this!") that, even if he were so inclined to take action to stop the slaughter in Sudan, which I doubt he is, acting against the Arab Sudanese militias at this point would only lend more credence to those who would cast the U.S. as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.
It's worth pointing out that, in Kosovo, the U.S. acted in defense of a Muslim minority against their Christian rulers, and that this is another legacy which Bush has squandered, much as he squandered international goodwill after 9/11.
The Clinton Doctrine was roundly criticized by conservatives at the time as too high-minded, too moralistic, and just too damn liberal. On the other side, some progressives condemned it for being too militaristic and hegemonic:
Herein lies the essence of what might be termed the Clinton Doctrine--the proposition that the best way to maintain stability in the areas that truly matter to the United States (like Western Europe) is to combat instability in other areas, however insignificant it may seem, before it can intensify and spread.
My reading of the right- and left- interpretations of the Clinton Doctrine is that it strikes a reasonable balance between liberalism and realism. The U.S. should consider a broader rationale for intervention not only because human life is worth protecting, and often it is only the U.S. with the means to do so, but also because smaller conflicts have a way of growing and destabilizing larger regions, becoming open-air markets for small arms trade, and often becoming breeding and training grounds for terrorist groups which will threaten the U.S.
As Meyer points out, it is ironic that the Bush Doctrine has essentially evolved into a half-assed version of the Clinton Doctrine, perhaps even quarter-assed, because Bush, like many conservatives, simply doesn't apprehend the necessity of multilateralism in maintaining credibiblity for the U.S. among foreign voting publics, and thus among foreign democratic governments, and in upholding international norms which the U.S. presumes to enforce.
Can we get the adults back in charge, please?
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