Navigating the PostDCold War World: President Clinton's Foreign Policy Rhetoric | Date: 28 April 2011, 03:56
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Navigating the PostDCold War World: President Clinton's Foreign Policy Rhetoric (Lexington Studies in Political Communication)
By Jason A. Edwards
* Publisher: Lexington Books
* Number Of Pages: 220
* Publication Date: 2008-10-28
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0739122266
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780739122266
Intro:
For over forty years, the Cold War structured America’s foreign policy universe
as a contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, characterized
as much by a war of words, as by physical confrontation.1 During that
era, American presidents presented a clear image of the United States as the
leader of the free world and defender of civilization; whereas the Soviet
Union was portrayed as a bastion of evil that had to be stopped through a
grand strategy of containment.2 The Soviet threat was the central organizing
principle for U.S. foreign policy during this era.
However, when the Cold War ended the rationale for American foreign affairs
lost much of its former coherence. Phillippe Le Prestre contends that the
defeat of America’s central enemy “destroyed familiar guideposts, undermined
the traditional means of mobilizing support for foreign policy, and
overthrew whatever bureaucratic consensus may have existed.”3 The implosion
of the Soviet Union created discord and debate among America’s foreign
policy establishment concerning issues that included defining America’s role
in the world, justifying the use of force, and articulating a grand strategy to
replace containment. These pundits, policymakers, and political leaders
struggled to communicate a direction for international relations and create
consensus on how to conduct foreign policy in a different epoch.
To complicate matters further, the United States faced a post–Cold War environment
with unprecedented change and full of new challenges, including
a rise in ethnic conflict and a greater focus on transnational dilemmas such as
global warming and AIDS, the homogenization of cultures, emergence of
rogue states, and exacerbation of wealth disparities between developed and
developing nations.4 Meanwhile, the importance of international organizations
and corporations as international actors increased, accompanied by an
expansion of technology and global communication, acceleration of free
trade, and interdependence/integration of the global system.5 The implosion
of the Soviet Union, along with the changes of the international arena, left a
rhetorical vacuum within American foreign policy rhetoric. These changes
meant that post–Cold War American presidents had to “invent” different foreign
policy arguments that moved away from the Manichean logic of the Cold
War and recognized the opportunities, challenges, and changes of the international
environment.6
President George H. W. Bush attempted to invent a new rationale for American
foreign policy by proclaiming a “new world order” based on the promotion
of democracy, human rights, and free trade. Yet, much like his Cold War
predecessors, a good deal of Bush’s discourse revolved around the metaphor
of war.7 Bush’s declaration of a “new world order,” while simultaneously employing
discourse reminiscent of the Cold War, yielded discursive incoherence.
As Timothy Cole makes clear, Bush enjoyed considerable foreign policy
success with his triumphant missions in Panama and Kuwait, but he was
“clearly not articulating a vision of politics that might transcend Cold War
prescriptions.”8 Roy Joseph further contends that Bush’s New World Order
was supposed to be shorthand for a new form of moral leadership for the
post–Cold War world, similar to the prescriptions enshrined in the charter of
the United Nations.9 But Bush was unable to fully define what he meant by
the phrase. Consequently, his defeat in the 1992 presidential election gave the
Clinton administration its own chance to shape and adjust the direction of
U.S. foreign policy.
This book examines how Clinton “invented” arguments for U.S. foreign
policy. As the first true post–Cold War president, Clinton presided over one
of the key transition periods in the history of American foreign affairs. His
discourse shaped the direction of U.S. foreign policy for years to come.10
Moreover, the Clinton administration was extremely active in foreign affairs
where rhetoric played a key role in the success and failure of the passage
of 300 bilateral and multilateral trade agreements like NAFTA and
GATT; the creation of the WTO; the Mexican and Asian Financial Crises;
the peace negotiations in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia and
Eritrea, and East Timor; the Kyoto Accords; the expansion of NATO; the
terrorist attacks on American targets in New York City, Saudi Arabia,
Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen (the USS Cole); the Rwandan Genocide; and
the interventions into Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, along with the
bombing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. This legacy of foreign policy
activity, along with the fact that Clinton presided over a key transition period,
makes our 42nd president a pivotal figure in the evolution of U.S. foreign
policy discourse.
As yet, no book offers an account of Clinton’s eight-year rhetorical sojourn
in international affairs. Scholars have largely focused on Clinton’s domestic
agenda and the Lewinsky scandal,11 while only a few projects on his foreign
policy discourse have been produced.12 This book aims to partially correct
this omission by exploring Clinton’s discourse as it pertains to three areas: 1)
how he defined America’s role in the world, 2) his justifications for the use of
force, 3) and how he articulated a grand strategy for a new era. I focus on
these three issues because, on the one hand, these subjects raised the most
questions and debate among America’s foreign policy intelligentsia after the
Cold War.13 On the other, the ideas that underwrite each of these issues, discussed
in more detail in chapter 1, have deep roots in American history and
serve to shape foreign policy culture. These ideas have been important
sources of invention for foreign policy rhetoric since America’s founding.14
This lexis is a repository of foreign policy traditions that gets reproduced and
reinterpreted throughout the ages. Individually, each one represents a pillar of
U.S. political culture in foreign affairs that deserves to be studied on its own.
Together though, they create a foreign policy vocabulary—a set of underlying
assumptions, ideals, beliefs, and conventions—that presidents draw upon
to define a particular issue or provide a broad vision of their foreign affairs.
Presidents who use this lexicon do so to shape the national understanding of
international relations; guide the nation through complex international terrain;
offer parameters under which specific action may be taken; educate the
American public in the “realities” of a dangerous world; supply rhetorical
support for policy decisions; and outline the opportunities and obstacles facing
U.S. interests.
However, not all presidents use these ideas in similar ways. They adapt
them to circumstances they face within the domestic and international
arena. The alterations they make tell us as much about the president, as
they do about the circumstances in making foreign policy. It is the subtle
nuances that a president introduces, along with his own unique contributions,
which creates a rhetorical signature and a symbolic legacy in foreign
relations.
Based on these premises, this book investigates Clinton’s foreign policy
rhetoric as it relates to America’s role in the world, justifying the use of
force, and reformulating America’s grand strategy. I argue that Clinton was
one of the first leaders to recognize the massive changes brought upon by
globalization and the need for the United States to adapt to this new era. To
that end, he recast America’s foreign policy vocabulary to m
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