Overview: Clinton's International Policy 

For decades, the contours of the Cold War had largely determined U.S. action abroad. Strategists saw each coup, revolution, and civil war as part of the larger struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, President Clinton was faced with international crises in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, and Haiti on their own terms. He envisioned a post-Cold War role in which the United States used its overwhelming military superiority and its influence as global police to preserve the peace. This foreign policy strategy had both success and failure.

The Middle East

One relative success was a level of peace in the Middle East during Clinton's administration. In September 1993, Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, signed the Oslo Accords at the White House, granting some self-rule to Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. A year later, the Clinton administration helped facilitate a second settlement and negotiation of relations between Israel and Jordan. 

The Balkans

As a small measure of stability was brought to the Middle East, violence erupted in the Balkans. The Communist country of Yugoslavia consisted of six provinces: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Each was occupied by a number of ethnic groups, some of which shared a history of hostile relations. In May 1980, the leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, died. Without him to hold the country together, ethnic tensions increased, and this, along with the breakdown of Communism elsewhere in Europe, led to the breakup of Yugoslavia. In 1991, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia declared their independence. In 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina did as well. Only Serbia and Montenegro remained united as the Serbian-dominated Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Almost immediately, ethnic tensions within Bosnia and Herzegovina escalated into war when Yugoslavian Serbs aided Bosnian Serbs who did not wish to live in an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. These Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the existence of autonomous Serbian regions within the country and attacked Bosnian Muslims and Croats. During the conflict, the Serbs engaged in genocide, described by some as “ethnic cleansing.” The brutal conflict also gave rise to the systematic rape of “enemy” women—generally Muslim women exploited by Serbian military or paramilitary forces. The International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia estimated that between 12-50,000 women were raped during the war.

The North American Treaty Organization (NATO) eventually intervened in 1995, and Clinton agreed to U.S. participation in airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs. That year, the Dayton Accords peace settlement was signed in Dayton, Ohio. Four years later, the United States, acting with other NATO members, launched an air campaign against Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia to stop it from attacking ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Although these attacks were not sanctioned by the United Nations (UN) and were criticized by Russia and China, Yugoslavia withdrew its forces from Kosovo in June 1999.

Somalia and Rwanda

In December of 1992, President George H. W. Bush had sent a contingent of U.S. soldiers to Somalia, initially to protect and distribute relief supplies to civilians as part of a UN mission. Without an effective Somali government, however, the warlords who controlled different regions often stole food, and their forces endangered the lives of UN workers. In 1993, the Clinton administration sent soldiers to capture one of the warlords, Mohammed Farah Aidid, in the city of Mogadishu. The resulting battle proved disastrous. A Black Hawk helicopter was shot down, and U.S. Army Rangers and members of Delta Force spent hours battling their way through the streets; 84 soldiers were wounded and 19 died. The United States withdrew, leaving Somalia to struggle.

The sting of the Somalia failure probably contributed to Clinton’s reluctance to send U.S. forces to end the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In the days of brutal colonial rule by European forces, Belgian administrators had given control to Tutsi tribal chiefs, although Hutus constituted a majority of the population. Resentment over ethnic privileges, and the discrimination that began then and continued after independence in 1962, erupted into civil war in 1980. The Hutu majority began to slaughter the Tutsi minority and their Hutu supporters. In 1998, while visiting Rwanda, Clinton apologized for having done nothing to save the lives of the 800,000 massacred in 100 days of genocidal slaughter.

Military Coup in Haiti

In September 1991, a military coup led by Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras ousted Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who escaped to the United States. In 1993, thousands of Haitians tried to flee to the United States as well, but more than half were sent back to Haiti by the U.W. Coast Guard. Although Clinton had criticized former President Bush for returning Haitian refugees to their country, he continued part of Bush's policy because he feared that accepting refugees might encourage many more to flee to the United States and slow the formation of a democratic government in the country.

Operation Uphold Democracy

In 1994, Clinton publicly demanded that the Haitian military junta step aside and restore democratic rule, despite the fact that, before the coup, Washington had repeatedly undermined Aristide's regime. Congress was united in opposition to American intervention. Despite this opposition, however, Clinton deployed a large U.S. military force to the country in September 1994. Operation Uphold Democracy (19 September 1994 – 31 March 1995) was an intervention designed to remove the military regime installed by the 1991 coup; the operation was effectively authorized by the UN Security Council's Resolution 940 on July 31st, 1994.

The operation began with a preparation to invade and a diplomatic envoy led by former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, and retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to Haiti. This delegation persuaded the leaders of Haiti to step down and allow the elected officials to return to power. Cédras agreed and surrendered the government to Aristide. Cédras and his top lieutenants left the country in October, and just days later, U.S. troops escorted Aristide into the capital. The democratic government of Aristride was restored, but only on the condition that it adopt the economic program of the defeated U.S.-backed candidate in the 1990 elections.

This effort was successful in part because the U.S. delegation was able to point to the massed forces poised to enter the country. Once Cédras agreed to step down, the mission changed from a combat operation to a so-called "peace-keeping" and nation-building operation with the deployment of the U.S. led multinational force in Haiti. Special forces teams and marine teams were deployed throughout the country. Operation Uphold Democracy officially ended on March 31, 1995, when it was replaced by the UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH). From March 1995 until March 1996, 2,400 U.S. personnel from the original Operation Uphold Democracy remained as a support group under a new operation called Operation New Horizons. 

Operation Uphold Democracy

American soldiers secure Port-au-Prince Airport on the first day of Operation Uphold Democracy.