Barely Passing: The C+ President By Walter Russell Mead and E. Benjamin Skinner

Barely Passing: The C+ President

With the help of a booming economy, Clinton was able to maintain U.S. power and prestige, despite a few mistakes along the way.

By Walter Russell Mead and E. Benjamin Skinner

In our imperfect world, it is difficult for an American president to post a winning record in foreign affairs. Harry Truman, whose administration was responsible for the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift and the formation of NATO, failed to win re-election in 1952 largely because of the unpopularity of the Korean War. Franklin Roosevelt, who won the Second World War and established U.S. dominance globally, was widely blamed for giving Stalin control of Eastern Europe after World War II by signing the Yalta accords.

Without the polarizing influence of international conflict on the scale of the Second World War or the Cold War, it is even harder to be a good foreign policy president. Clear-cut victories are rare in peacetime. Perhaps worse from a president's point of view, the outbreak of peace encourages the Congress to assert itself more vigorously in foreign affairs -- imposing sanctions, subjecting appropriations requests to close scrutiny, holding up important appointments for reasons unrelated to foreign affairs, and generally acting like a co-equal branch of the government.

Decisive failure is as hard to achieve as unmitigated triumph in the contemporary world. The United States is so dominant in international affairs that even a poorly designed and incompetently executed foreign policy is likely to achieve some plausible shadow of success.

In practice, this means that when assessing the foreign policy of peacetime presidents, historians are extremely stingy with A's and F's, and generally grudging with B's and D's. C is the natural grade for a peacetime presidency like the Clinton administration.

Bill Clinton, a high achiever at Oxford and Yale, has struggled against this historical predicament but in vain. An A or even a B has eluded this Rhodes Scholar and in assessing the record of his administration one must ask whether he achieved a C+ , that is, a flawed success, or a C-, a partially redeemed failure. Although there have been many eloquent and accurate attacks on various aspects of the Clinton foreign policy, the final verdict is that Clinton's foreign policy record has been a mixture of successful and failed policies that maintained American peace and prosperity.

On Clinton's watch, the United States avoided major international conflict while retaining its position as the most powerful nation on earth. The power and prestige which the United States enjoyed at the time of his inauguration will be passed, essentially intact, to his successor, and the chances of major international conflict are, if anything, somewhat less in 2000 than they were in 1992. That may not be as dramatic a legacy as some, including President Clinton, might wish, but in the last analysis it is enough.

Although partisans in both parties have an interest in concealing this fact, the most notable feature of President Clinton's foreign policy has been its fidelity to that of his predecessor. At the end of the Cold War, the elder Bush redefined American foreign policy in largely conservative terms -- U.S. policy would change as little as possible following the Soviet collapse. Though American policy no longer needed to contain the threat of international communism, the United States would continue to minimize chaos and instability while advancing the principles of free markets, free government and world order which it had advocated during the Cold War. The difference between the Bush and Clinton agendas is largely one of rhetoric and political positioning. The policies have been roughly similar, but where Bush administration rhetoric tended to highlight commercial values and downplay human rights, the Clinton administration did its best to wrap its Hamiltonian policies in Wilsonian rhetoric.

The reality is that American interests, not conservative or liberal ideology, drove the key strategic decisions of the Clinton era. Candidate Clinton denounced President Bush's policies of seeking commercial accommodation with China at the expense of human rights issues. Once in the Oval Office, President Clinton changed course and embraced the older Bush's policy of pursuing change in China through trade. On major issues like the Balkans, it probably made little difference who won the 1992 or 1996 elections. A re-elected President Bush and a President Dole would have found themselves similarly entangled in the Balkans: American interests simply did not permit the U.S. to avoid involvement in an issue of such vital consequence to key allies like Germany.

The Economic Basis for Foreign Policy

Clinton's greatest success in foreign policy, ironically, was an achievement on the home front: The spectacular performance of the American economy in the last eight years more than any specific diplomatic maneuvering was the prime impetus behind the rise of American power and prestige. Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Charlene Barshefsky in some ways had more to do with the international success of the United States in the last decade than did Anthony Lake, Warren Christopher, Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright. Had the U.S. -- or the world -- succumbed to financial crisis, inflation or other serious problems, the foreign policy record of the last eight years would read very differently. The pull of the American economic model and the vital importance of the U.S. market to Asians, Europeans and Latin Americans enhanced the position of American diplomats in dealing with other countries during the Clinton years.

Furthermore, the strength of the American economy enhanced Clinton's ability to deal with the most dangerous, implacable foes his foreign policy ever encountered: his domestic critics. Economic growth and full employment weakened opposition to NAFTA, the WTO, and permanent normal trading relations with China. At the same time, economic success gave him the standing in the opinion polls which kept his international authority intact during the impeachment trial and frequently forced his Republican adversaries in Congress to yield ground on policy disputes.

The success of the administration's economic policies should not, however, blind us to the continuing political problems of its international economic policy agenda. The failure to renew fast track negotiating authority was a major blow to the president's ability to conduct foreign policy; time will tell whether this ground can be recovered. The screeching halt to progress towards agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas proposal and the failure to launch a millennial round at the WTO revealed a striking loss of momentum and direction in American trade policy. Yet despite these failures, and despite the fact that a strong economy at home did not always translate into dramatic victories abroad, American prosperity under Clinton has set the groundwork for future strategic and diplomatic successes.

Despite the foreign policy-making power that prosperity helped to create, Clinton's record in foreign relations is a not atypical mixture of striking successes, great disappointments and muddles. The two most important geographic regions on the American map of the world -- Europe and East Asia -- saw an eminently mixed performance by the Clinton administration. At least in some part thanks to U.S. efforts, most of the former Warsaw Pact nations have continued to move toward the consolidation of stable democratic governments. This progress has not only included the relatively "easy" cases of such Central European states as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, but some of the harder cases as well -- notably Bulgaria and the Baltic states. While local forces and the attraction of EU membership have something to do with this success, the United States has clearly played an important, benign and much appreciated role in the region. Over the long term, this cannot but help U.S. interests. The Central and Eastern European states are eager to see the United States remain politically, militarily and economically active in Europe in part to balance the potentially excessive power of the larger Western European states in this region -- and in part to safeguard against the possibility of a renewed Russian challenge to the European security order. As these states move into EU institutions, the Atlanticist element in the EU is likely to grow stronger with lasting and beneficial consequences for U.S.-European relations.

Failure in Russia

Set against this success, however, must be the relative failure of U.S. policy toward Russia. By any reasonable measure, the United States has fewer friends and less influence in Russia today than it did in 1992. The United States allowed itself to be too closely associated with a group of "reformers" whose agenda was never as transparent and democratic as the United States appeared to believe. U.S. confidence in the policies of the IMF and the Russian reformers was clearly misplaced, and the catastrophic failure of Russian reform from the standpoint of ordinary Russian citizens has dealt a serious blow to American prestige in Russia. Furthermore, such U.S. policy stands as supporting the expansion of NATO and attempting to make the United States a major player in the oil and regional politics of Central Asia lent unnecessary credence to those in Russia who argued that U.S. and Russian interests doomed the states to inevitable conflict. The so-far fruitless effort to help Ukraine stabilize its independence has also irritated Russia without contributing to American security or prosperity in any significant way.

Given Russia's relative weakness and its dependence on Western investment and trade, these failures have not resulted in massive international setbacks for the United States. They certainly contributed to Russia's intransigence over relations with Yugoslavia, dangerously aggravating the Kosovo crisis, but in the end, Russian weakness meant that its ability to frustrate U.S. plans was minimal. In the event, when NATO needed a mediator to end the Kosovo campaign, Russian diplomacy actually played a useful role. Nevertheless, unless future administrations can put U.S.-Russian relations back on firmer footing more in keeping with the fundamental interests of both states, the United States will face unnecessary Russian hostility and suspicion.

NATO expansion had another unfortunate consequence. By rushing to expand NATO, the U.S. unwittingly played into the hands of the powerful interests in the EU which want to postpone EU expansion into the indefinite future. Because an expanded EU is at once a better guarantor of the peace and prosperity of an undivided Europe and also less capable of fulfilling misguided European ambitions of forming a 'rival' superpower to the United States, encouraging the rapid expansion of the EU should be an important priority of U.S. policy. NATO membership was a kind of pacifier tossed to Central European countries, reducing the pressure on the EU to do the right thing and expand. A better approach, then and now, would be to say that the U.S. supports NATO expansion pari passu with EU expansion into the east.

The Clinton record in the wars of the Yugoslav succession will be debated for many years to come. It is much too early for a definitive assessment, but certain things seem clear. The administration was correct to see that events in Yugoslavia affected key American interests. The security of Europe is of vital concern to our closest allies; it therefore inevitably matters to U.S. That insight, which many domestic critics vigorously disputed, was correct, and the administration deserves high praise for not losing sight of this basic truth despite the domestic pressure to avoid becoming further involved in the Balkans.

On the other hand, it is unlikely that the historical judgment on the means as opposed to the ends of Clinton policy in Yugoslavia will be favorable. Had the Clinton campaign and administration supported the Vance-Owen peace plan for Bosnia, the war there might have ended sooner and on better terms than it ultimately did. The diplomatic record in the run-up to the Kosovo war is profoundly unsettling; looking at the difference between NATO's original "non-negotiable" demands and the terms on which the war was actually settled, it would appear that Milosevic forced NATO to improve its terms and accept a compromise peace. Thanks to Milosevic's stubborn persistence, NATO has now accepted the principle of continued Serb sovereignty in Kosovo -- a commitment that will be hard to break now that a post-Milosevic regime is in power in Belgrade.

Moreover, the cost of the Kosovo war to the NATO alliance was extremely high. At least for the present, the idea of NATO acting out-of-area now appears to be dead. It seems almost inconceivable that any future German government will participate in a NATO campaign without a Security Council resolution. In that sense, although Milosevic lost the battle in Kosovo, Russia and China won the Kosovo war, successfully asserting the principle that the Security Council can veto out-of-area NATO action. Even so, defenders of Clinton policy can and will point out that through it all the Clinton administration defeated Serb expansionism, ultimately stopped ethnic cleansing, and saw Milosevic thrown out of power -- without losing a single U.S. life in combat.

The Clinton administration's grades in East Asia are similarly mixed. The administration's North Korea policy must provisionally be judged one of its greatest successes and one for which it has not yet received sufficient credit. Clinton's refusal to be stampeded by domestic critics into more confrontational policies toward this difficult state and his steadfast support for Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" have gone a long way toward reducing tensions in what remains the single area where U.S. forces are closest to a direct combat role. While the North Korean endgame remains complicated and dangerous, conditions on the Korean peninsula are clearly much more favorable than they were in 1992.

If matters in Korea continue to go well, this success will assume increasingly greater importance in current policy and in historical memory. The Korean confrontation, after all, is the real justification for a U.S. military based on the need for a "two-war" capability. As the danger in Korea continues to diminish, a fundamental re-thinking of defense policy may become possible, with significant budgetary and political consequences. In assessing the administration's record in Korea, one must give full credit to the administration's steady political courage in choosing a difficult path and walking it with a strength of conviction that, if extended to other difficult foreign policy issues, might have significantly increased the president's historical stature.

Clinton's other successes in the region are mostly due to economics. Robert Rubin and Larry Summers helped to stabilize Asia in the wake of the 1997-1998 crisis. The negotiation and final ratification of the PNTR agreement with China undoubtedly strengthened the hands of those in Beijing who counseled patience on the Taiwan issue and identified Chinese interests with peaceful economic progress based on close relations with the West.

Yet the economic success in Asia was limited. The U.S. failed utterly to anticipate the potential for economic crisis, and well after the Asian economies had begun their descent, U.S. officials were defending the economic performance of countries like Indonesia and Korea. Given that where Asian economies have recovered they have largely done so without making the sweeping reforms U.S. officials claimed were necessary, it may be that the U.S. government has not yet developed a full understanding of the potentials and pitfalls facing Asian economies.

The political fallout from the financial crisis continues and could ultimately be extremely costly for U.S. interests. The most dramatic case, of course, is Indonesia, where the financial crisis and the collapse of the Suharto regime have left the United States largely without a policy toward this strategically important country. Less dramatic, but in the long term perhaps more important, were the broader political consequences of the crisis. Many in East Asia were embittered by the slowness and, as they saw it, the insufficient U.S. response to Asia's crisis -- especially when they contrasted U.S. policy in the Asian crisis of 1997-1998 with U.S. policy toward Mexico in 1994-1995. The veto of Japan's proposal for an Asian fund, the support for IMF programs that were later abandoned by the IMF as too restrictive, the relatively small amount of U.S. funding available for resolving the crisis, and the perception that U.S. policy was to some degree driven by the commercial interests of major U.S. banks and financial service companies created a legacy of bitterness and distrust that, over time, may seriously impair U.S. policy in Asia. It may be premature to say so, but some say that the 1997-1998 shock in Asia will have a long-term effect comparable to that of the collapse of Bretton Woods on Europe, driving Asian countries to new forms of regional financial coordination to end their economic dependence on Washington.

Mexico Si, Cuba No

Mexico policy represents a strong success. The decision to bail out the Mexican economy following the crisis and devaluation of 1994-1995 was politically risky, required great courage and skill, and was entirely correct. Throughout the Clinton administration, U.S. policy toward Mexico achieved a standard often sought but rarely attained elsewhere: The United States managed to support forces making for democratic change in Mexico without making U.S. policy and U.S. interference an issue in Mexican politics.

By contrast, our Cuba policy has been ill conceived. The administration's hasty and poorly considered response to the 1996 Cuban shootdown of two civilian American planes was something that future administrations will have reason to regret. The Helms-Burton Law weakens the institutional authority of the presidency, complicates the task of future administrations attempting to manage what will always be a difficult U.S.-Cuba relationship and has introduced unnecessary strains in U.S. relations with major European allies. The president should not have signed it – and should have done a better job of managing U.S.-Cuban relations in the preceding months.

A Sad Record in Africa

In the Middle East and Africa, the Clinton record was also mixed. In the Middle East the administration continued to wrestle with the problems of containing Iran and Iraq while continuing to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process first inaugurated by Henry Kissinger. Although a breakthrough on Jerusalem eluded the administration (as of the date of this writing), the outlines of a comprehensive settlement seemed clearer in 2000 than ever before.

In Africa, the record was sadder. Clinton became the first U.S. president to set foot in Africa while in office, and sought to heighten U.S. awareness of and commitment to the second-largest continent. Unfortunately, the results were almost uniformly poor. There are many more failed states in Africa than when Clinton took office; HIV is a much more serious problem than it was; what remains of the international order in Africa is closer than ever to collapse and no real progress has been made in addressing the continent's many economic problems.

On balance then, the president gets a C+ or, perhaps in this era of grade inflation, a B-. Clinton will not be remembered as one of the most outstanding practitioners of U.S. foreign policy. Though disappointing to the president's friends, this is not necessarily bad for the United States. Happy the nation whose annals are blank and, in general, the United States was a happy country on President Clinton's watch.

Walter Russell Mead is senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of a forthcoming book on the history of U.S. foreign policy and also author of Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition [Houghton Mifflin, 1987]. E. Benjamin Skinner is research associate for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This file last updated on January 26, 2001