Clinton, William Jefferson

Born in Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton was educated at Georgetown University. He then became a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University in England. After he returned to the United States and graduated from Yale Law School, Clinton lost a race for Congress in 1974. In 1978, however, he was elected governor of Arkansas at the age of thirty-two. He went on to become the forty-second president of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001.

A rising star in the party, he won the Democratic nomination for president in 1992. Clinton defeated President George Bush despite accusations that he had dodged the draft to avoid being sent to Vietnam in 1969. When his draft notice was imminent, Clinton had sought a deferment by signing up to join the Arkansas ROTC program. After a few months, when United States policy changed to make it unlikely he would be drafted, he changed his mind and declined the deferment. Even after taking office, the president's relation to the military was tenuous. There was some uneasiness among veterans when Clinton accepted an invitation to participate in a commemoration at the Vietnam Memorial in 1993.

Clinton's personable nature and good communication skills gave him high approval ratings among the American public. Though a foreign policy novice, Clinton was known for debating all angles of a situation and for his willingness to listen at length to comments from advisors and cabinet members. He advocated a global economy. Although Clinton's years in office were mainly a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity, he came into office at a time when the world political scene was undergoing rapid change.

With the end of the Cold War (1946–1991), the United States had entered what Clinton's predecessor, President Bush, had called a "new world order." The fall of Communism across Europe had been a major event during Bush's presidency. Many Americans believed that this new era, in which the United States stood as the world's only superpower, would result in reduced military engagement and increased attention to domestic issues rather than foreign policy.

President Clinton recognized the importance of maintaining a dialogue with Boris Yeltsin, the president of post-Communist Russia. The two held several cordial summits during the course of Clinton's presidency, discussed economic issues, and agreed to some arms cuts. Still, the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was a sensitive topic for Yeltsin and caused tension between the two countries.

While enjoying the dividends of the triumph over Communism, the nation began to assume new global responsibilities that required continued, even expanded, military actions to stop ethnic cleansing and to thwart terrorism. Without a declared enemy, United States engagement depended on persuading the American people to support American policy. Human rights and peace-keeping causes were examined on a case-by-case basis. Print and broadcast media played a significant role in influencing Americans' support for interventions and "nation-building" efforts.

Civil war in the African country of Somalia had prompted the United States, with United Nations approval, to send troops there in December 1992. The unstable situation only worsened after Bush left office, and the United States resolved to pull out most of its troops, leaving only a few thousand to support the UN's presence. A June 5 fight between UN forces and a Somalian warlord, Mohammed Aidid, left twenty-four UN soldiers dead. On the approval of Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers were sent in to help the UN. On October 3, 1993, eighteen U.S. Army Rangers died in Mogadishu during an attempt to capture Aidid. In a scene broadcast on television that set off outrage at home, an American soldier's body was dragged through the streets and stoned. The experience left Clinton hesitant to commit American troops to overseas conflicts.

During the Bush administration, unrest had broken out in multiethnic Yugoslavia as republics broke away and constituent ethnic and religious groups fought for power. Civil war in Bosnia erupted when the Bosnian Serbs fought for control against the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. President Clinton favored air strikes against the Serbs, which the United States conducted as part of NATO, whereas Powell was against them. After the tide turned with heavier NATO bombing, a ceasefire was declared in October 1995. President Clinton arranged a peace summit in Dayton, Ohio, which led to the Paris Peace Accord in December 1995. In 1996, at the urging of UN Envoy Madeleine Albright, Clinton sent 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia as part of the UN peacekeeping force.

The shadow of terrorism loomed over the administration for eight years. In June 1993 President Clinton authorized a cruise missile attack against Iraqi intelligence headquarters in retaliation for an Iraqi assassination plot against former president Bush. In August 1998, 250 people were killed when two American embassies in Africa were bombed by terrorists. At the direction of President Clinton, the United States executed an air strike on a terrorist camp in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan where chemical weapons were allegedly being made. The factory turned out to be harmless, and the bombing drew criticism. The timing of the retaliation, in the midst of a sex scandal, also drew fire from Clinton's opponents. In a statement soon after the bombing, Clinton said, "terrorists must have no doubt that in the face of their threats, America will protect its citizens and will continue to lead the world's fight for peace, freedom, and security."

One of Clinton's most concerted foreign policy efforts was to negotiate peace in the Middle East. Throughout his presidency, he worked closely with both the Israeli government and representatives of the Palestinians. In a ceremonial event in September 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat signed an agreement and shook hands on the White House lawn. Rabin was assassinated two years later. A few months before he left office, Clinton held a summit at Camp David, but Arafat rejected the provisions for a Palestinian state as set out in the Clinton plan. At this time violence by Palestinians against Israel spiked.

In 1999, another crisis in the Balkans erupted with the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people from Kosovo. The plight of these people, dramatized in the media, moved popular opinion to support President Clinton's decision to intervene militarily with the aid of NATO. Both Clinton's responses to interethnic violence in Europe and the inability of the United States and the UN to stop the slaughter of nearly a million people in Rwanda have contributed to the debate among Americans on the role the nation should play as an international peacekeeper, nation builder, mediator, and combatant in the war against terrorism.

Antiwar Movement; Bush, George H. W.; Bush, George W.; Military Bases; Politics and Elections; Powell, Colin.

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Maraniss, David. First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Powell, Colin, with Persico, Joseph E. My American Journey. New York: Random House, 1995.

Schier, Steven E., ed. The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.