Samantha Powers ruined the Clinton Administration for me. A Problem from Hell had no trouble castigating Bill Clinton for being almost criminally obtuse to the genocides of the 1990s. Between years of inaction on Bosnia, Blackhawk Down in Somalia, weeks of inaction and deliberate footdragging in Rwanda, and a lackluster policy for Kosovo, Powers had little trouble finding a soapbox. Still, her scope is American policy for the 20th century, and while Clinton is the best observed and documented, being the most recent and televised, he is treated more as a case study for the culmination of a century of failed policies than an independent exploration.
In contrast, although the narrative is structured around the same episodes, Halberstam's focus is Clinton's foreign policy and his relationship with the military; Rwanda is given junior billing to Haiti is their shared chapter (one of forty-three) and is covered in mere pages. Powers was galvanized by her reporting of Bosnia in the early 1990s to write on US fecklessness. Halberstam approaches his material as a curious but detached reporter, more concerned with the personalities of the principals than the events qua events. Accordingly, Halberstam's book doesn't provide much new about Clinton's ineffectual policies, but he sheds considerable light on a moment of transitioning values in American politics, caught in the lens of foreign policy. Standing at the cusp between two different generations of politics, each typified by a respective Bush, the Clinton Administration marked an era of transformation in American politics. Two separate, yet intertwined, changes created this alteration: the constituencies and thus character of the American two party system, and the personalities of the principals.
Whereas Reagan was savvy to modern media and reassuring to his constituents in his Manichean worldview, Bush Sr. was the last of the old guard of pols. As a President, Bush Sr. held foreign policy as the priority, not domestic politics; that was a legislative affair. As a politician, Bush Sr. felt that his accomplishments spoke for themselves and it would be gauche to promote his successes, despite helping Russia transition to a democracy and the stellar victories in the Gulf. In contrast, Bush W. ascended to the Presidency in a time when polling was sufficient to be determinative, and when one's influence was measured by their air time.
Betwixt these sharply opposed modes of politics stands the Clinton Administration. The product of the 1960s, the ghosts of civil rights and Vietnam stalked the halls of power. Civil rights drove conservative Democrats from the party, while Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority reshaped the character of the Republican Party, and both changes would drastically effect how Clinton shaped his policy. The Democratic Party became blacker (or more minority-er), more feminine, more urban, and more north-eastern, and Clinton needed to address their concerns, which were almost all domestic: jobs, education, affirmative action. As a rule, these were groups concerned more with problems at home than problems abroad, and Clinton needed to dance with them that brought him. Meanwhile, the Republican Party had become more convinced of it's righteousness, more partisan, and lead by leaders who played for keeps. It's hard to escape the impression the Republican leadership of the 1990s was more concerned with the fortunes of the Republican party than with the fortunes of America. As a result, Clinton's foreign policy was neglected in favor of domestic issues, and then sidelined to political survival. Halberstam frequently cites examples where Clinton suborned a foreign exigency to domestic concerns and where Clinton was moved to action only by compelling domestic pressure: Dole's decision to stress Bosnia in the 1996 elections, the grandstanding of Somalia and the creation of red tape to obstruct action in Rwanda, and the realization of NATO's imminent demise in the face of inaction in Kosovo.
But the uniqueness of Halberstam's book is his commentary on the personal changes in the principals, and their shifts across the Presidency. Clinton's original foreign policy staff, Lake, Christopher, Aspin, Powell, Lake, all came from a tradition that stressed staying in the shadows. As principals in the Washingtonian theater troupe, they all knew how to play the influence card, yet they respected the privacy of their positions, finding the spotlight to advocate the President's policies. Halberstam cites Lake explicitly as shunning the Sunday talk-show circuit, saying: "He believed others should speak for policy. He also held the old-fashioned view that the major decisions on foreign policy were private, and the more you were seen on television, the more you signaled you were out of the loop." This breed of Bush Sr.-style policy makers didn't even make it to the end of the Clinton administration.
By the second term, and the second NSC staff, self-promotion was understood, and policy was made by understanding what the public wanted then leading them to that. Albright had discovered the narcotic of a reporter's camera while UN Ambassador, and Holbrooke was unashamed in shilling his exploits in ways now common. While tempting to dismiss the changes as mere changes in the proclivities of the principals, Halberstam makes the case that the generation of middle and lower management saw cultivating public ties as a positive career move. It was understood that policy was made of public opinion; the public elected a Representative to the White House, not a trustee. Accordingly, foreign policy formulation in the Clinton White House became a matter of backburnering issues until the tea leaves told the powers that be further prevarication would incur political consequences domestically.
Meanwhile, Vietnam, and it's little cousin Somalia, were the concrete formative events of the Clinton NSC team. To say the Clinton team was adverse to force simply because they had been protesters would be facile, yet Vietnam was the military event when Democrats entered the system. Gulf War I might have expunged the ghosts of Vietnam for the country, but for the individuals of Clinton's administration, they had been out of power at the time, as they had for Grenada and Panama. Consequently, when Somalia blew up in Clinton's face, the immediate reaction was to link it to their last experience with force, Vietnam. Somalia would gain singular influence of the Clinton NSC team, but Vietnam shaped their preconceptions and made them cautious, hesitant, most concretely seen in the Powell-Weinberger Doctrine. Unshaken by the massive loss of life in the 1990s, the Powell-Wienberger Doctrine remains the authority determining appropriate American use of force. Even though the UN pledged "never again" after the catastrophe of Rwanda, it is worth remembering that Powell-Weinberger is unchallenged as the authoritative slide rule for US foreign policy, and that it was formulated in response to Vietnam, not genocide or global hegemony.
All of this begs the question: what are the formative events for today's generation of foreign policy experts? Sure, Rwanda and Kosovo are traumatic events, but for someone else, not us. What will be the lessons of 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan and what shapes the modern, ascendant foreign policy guru? It is tempting to cite the length of these conflicts as on par with Vietnam and thus suggest equal salience. We are quick to suggest "quagmire" and promote our current conflicts as equally influential as Vietnam, but I personally find it hard to believe either the general public or the policy corp views either conflict/war as emotionally as Vietnam was regarded in it's day. Today's corp of military personnel is all-volunteer, as is the diplomatic corp, and the brief furor over Baghdad stations two years ago notwithstanding, I don't see the equivalent of burning draft cards, or widespread public protests or teach-ins. Lake was distinguished by his decision to resign in protest over the invasion of Cambodia; who today can make similar claim?
If we accept there is a generation in power, and a generation waiting to ascend to power, then what events formed the opinions of today's principals? If we hypothesize a 20-year lag between an event and it's influencees ascending to power, then we're saying Obama's NSC team was created in the fires of Panama and Gulf War I, with hints of Somalia and Rwanda to guide them. Accepting a longer-term lens, we have to question the legacies of Rwanda and Kosovo as formative events because they eventually only affected a small portion of the FSO population, and only Somalia's influence appears determinative (and that's highly suspect).
So, is our current generation the product of the genocides of the 1990s? Or is it the products of the institutes of modern foreign policy, with homage paid to the case studies of Rwanda and Kosovo? Despite hundreds of millions in ethnic cleansings across continents, the lackluster response of US policy and US opinion suggests those events are not determinative. So what shapes the personalities of today's (and tomorrow's) foreign policy authorities? Schools or exigencies? Were they formed in the harried fires of crises or the calm contemplations of case studies? Are they guided by the necessities of preserving human life in the face of evil, or the abstracts of assessing America's position in the world as a function of relatively declining economic power and political legitimacy? Will we nominally note the "wars" while we continue to spend as usual? What ghosts will haunt the halls of future Presidents, and more importantly, the halls of State and the Pentagon? Halberstam suggests our future will be shaped by an omnipresent media, a political corp that craves public validation, and by wars disassociated from the American public (and even the majority of the FSO corp). He doesn't propose his own model, but all the same, his narrative is the story of how the legacy of Vietnam is applied to present contingencies. What future will we bequeath our next generation of foreign policy?
