Clinton's Foreign Policy: What Was

Clinton's Foreign Policy: What was the focus of President Clinton's foreign policy? How successful was this? Explain and support your ideas with facts. As President Clinton campaigned on a platform of 'it's the [domestic] economy stupid,' many foreign policy analysts were at first dubious, to say the least, about his foreign policy knowledge and diplomatic skills. The focus of Clinton's foreign policy was less to take on the international community with a conscious design. Rather his approach tended to be situational and collaborative.

Because of the force of historical events, Clinton's administration became a kind of bridge between the bipolar Cold War world and the multipolar post-Cold War world. Clinton was forced to deal with the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet empire, including the subsequent nationalist conflict in the former Yugoslavia. He was criticized for not intervening sooner, on humanitarian grounds and for not asserting America's traditional, dominate role in European foreign policy.

Whether this was genuinely a failure, or merely an acknowledgement of a more complex world community of regional actors and more diffuse moral responsibilities amongst the different European powers is still being debated by foreign policy analysts. Clinton was also criticized for "the Administration's resistance to appeals for intervention in the Rwanda crisis," and he has expressed regret that his administration was not more active in stopping the genocide in that African nation ("President Bill Clinton's Foreign Policy: A Critical Assessment" Roundtable Discussion, 1999).

However, although Clinton was also criticized for humanitarian inaction, his stress upon multi-lateral engagement in a world of increasingly powerful regional actors such as the European Community and successful renegotiation of NAFTA, and his ability to bring China more fully into the world community have since been praised as economic success stories. Clinton's presidency oversaw the emergence of China and India as world powers, the end of the Soviet Empire, and the launch of the European Community. The fact that his foreign policy seems to.