Clinton Doctrine

 
Wikipedia:

Clinton Doctrine

The Clinton Doctrine is not a clear statement in the way that many other United States presidential doctrines were. However, in a February 26, 1999, speech, President Bill Clinton said the following, which was generally considered to summarize the Clinton Doctrine[1]:

It's easy ... to say that we really have no interests in who lives in this or that valley in Bosnia, or who owns a strip of brushland in the Horn of Africa, or some piece of parched earth by the Jordan River. But the true measure of our interests lies not in how small or distant these places are, or in whether we have trouble pronouncing their names. The question we must ask is, what are the consequences to our security of letting conflicts fester and spread. We cannot, indeed, we should not, do everything or be everywhere. But where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must be prepared to do so.

Clinton later made statements that augmented the doctrine of interventionism:

"Genocide is in and of itself a national interest where we should act" and "we can say to the people of the world, whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it."

The Clinton Doctrine was used to justify the American involvement in the Yugoslav Wars. However, President Clinton was criticized for not intervening to stop the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Other observers viewed Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia as a mistake.

References

  1. ^ Michael T. Klare (1999-04-19). "The Clinton Doctrine". The Nation. Retrieved on 2008-09-16.



Search unanswered questions...
Search our library...
Community Q&A Reference topics
 
 

Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Clinton Doctrine" at WikiAnswers.

 

Copyrights:

Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Clinton Doctrine" Read more