NATO air strikes and the lifting of the arms
embargo, but at this time, early on in his admin-
istration, his stance lacked conviction. He could
do no more than Bush for the Bosnian Muslims,
the victims of aggression, since the administration
was not prepared to send ground troops, and air
strikes were vetoed by Britain and France. In
October 1993 more forceful intervention by the
marines to end the clan wars in Somalia ended
with the naked corpse of an American helicopter
pilot being dragged through the streets of
Mogadishu. Evidence of American impotence was
displayed on television screens around the world.
Clinton also dithered in his attempts to deal with
Haiti’s military junta; he was not prepared to risk
American lives to restore democracy. The 600
lightly armed US and Canadian peacekeepers
were ordered not to land on the island in the face
of an angry Haitian crowd assembled by the mil-
itary. The following year Clinton took the plunge
and the force sent to Haiti in October 1994
restored the elected president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, despite his suspected Marxist leanings. It
was one thing to take military action in the
Western hemisphere – America had been doing
so for a century or more – but quite another to
intervene anywhere else. With the end of the Cold
War, Clinton’s attention turned from Europe to
Asia, to trade with Japan and China, and human
rights. The US was no longer prepared to serve
as a universal policeman and in this Clinton
reflected the majority view in America. But the
wider world regarded the president as unequal to
the task of leadership.
At home during the first year of Clinton’s
administration Congress frustrated many aspects
of his domestic agenda, in spite of the Democrats’
majority in both the Senate and the House of
Representatives. His only partial success was the
passage of a budget that demonstrated a measure
of financial prudence, raising the taxes of the rich
and providing some help to the poorest section
of society; the underprivileged would be encour-
aged to move back into work, cutting welfare
spending. The flagship reform, universal health
provision, which had won him many votes in
the 1992 election, was in the hands of his
redoubtable wife, Hillary, but she lacked experi-
ence in handling Congress. Her ambitious plans
to help 37 million Americans who had no health
care were vetoed by special-interest groups and
conservative Democrats and Republicans in
the House; they raised the old scare of social-
ised medicine, claiming that the ‘new tax’ would
increase unemployment. Meanwhile, Hillary
Clinton’s own standing was being undermined
by allegations of wrong-doing. The Whitewater
scandal even cast doubts on the credibility of
the president himself. In the summer of 1994
the health bill was withdrawn. Hillary Clinton,
both admired and derided for running a ‘co-
presidency’, had to abandon her key role in the
administration, changing her image and support-
ing good family causes.
Clinton displayed remarkable resilience in the
face of political setbacks and personal attacks and
doggedly pursued his agenda of building a solid
foundation for America’s future prosperity and
influence, primarily through economic diplomacy.
He overcame the opposition of both Democrats
and Republicans who feared that free trade would
lead to unemployment, securing the passage of
the North American Free Trade Association
(NAFTA), which linked the US with Canada and
Mexico, in November 1993, and of the Uruguay
Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) in December 1994. He planned
to extend free trade agreements to include Chile
and the Argentine, and the whole of Latin
America (except Cuba) by 2005. Another free
trade goal was to link the US with Asia. First,
however, he needed to correct the trade imbal-
ance with Japan. Clinton’s threats had little
impact on the Japanese who, in many ways, con-
tinued to maintain barriers against foreign
imports. His efforts to link human rights in China
to trade with the US and to the granting of ‘most
favoured nation’ status were even less successful.
In the last resort American exporters were keener
on markets than on dissidents in China and
Clinton’s economic agenda in the end took prece-
dence. ‘Constructive engagement’ was now
deemed the best way to influence China. Fences
were mended with the European Union and in
December 1995 free trade between Europe and
the US was set out as a future aim. Thus Clinton
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