Clinton’s strategy of engagement and enlargement
Introduction
Clinton’s strategy of engagement and enlargement had better outcomes compared to George Bush’s strategy of primacy. Though both strategies had flaws and ideologies that were not perfected as per their speeches, they also had commonalities. However, Bush’s strategy was heavily challenged by endemic credibility issues. It focused on the issue of the Soviet Union without much focus on significant American priorities. On the other hand, Clinton employed multilateralism instead of the aggressive unilateralism approach applied by Bush. The world felt more comfortable, especially Americans, since Clinton advocated for peaceful engagement with other nations to uphold democracy and human rights. During Clinton’s administration, the USA acted like the big brother and the global policeman, ensuring that there is global stability while still putting Americans’ interests first (Lobel & Ratner, 2013). While Clinton fostered peaceful co-existence, Bush flaunted U.S. primacy. Its confrontational disposition even worsened the US-European relations since the rest of the world was suffocating under his perpetuated imperialism.
The main aim of Clinton’s strategy of engagement and enlargement was to transform the containment strategy that had made the U.S. a democratic nation and spread these democracies to the rest of the world through peacefully engaging other nations. The aim was to create a free global community through market democracies, where nations are viewed as equals throughout the corner of the world. Clinton averted Bush’s use of power politics to incorporate international relations whereby the U.S. led through world opinion or consensus, international institutions, and markets(Suri, 2010). It was rather a soft power. The enlargement strategy focused on four major actions. The first action was to reinforce the global community of market democracies, putting much effort into U.S. democracy since it was the center of this spread of democracy. The second action involved unifying these market economies and new democracies, especially those that were significant and offered better trade opportunities to the U.S. Third action involved political liberalization of nations that had declined to make their nations democratic and free economies. The last action was to ensure that every nation across the world upholds human rights. By creating democracies across the world, nations would exist peacefully and not wage war on each other. Besides, this open foreign policy offered the U.S. more trade opportunities through increased market economies. Major critics of Clinton’s strategy argue that though the strategy had a purpose, the strategy lacked a well-defined process forcing Clinton to have uncertainties on whether to commit its political capital and military in solving the world’s problems. Clinton administration showed wavering inconsistency regarding any foreign policy issues leading to half-thought measures like bombing without ground troops(Suri, 2010). This administration also used the same ineffective triangulation when it came to domestic policy.
Bush believed in a false primacy rooted deeply in unilateralism, where the U.S. was the absolute superpower. In his strategy, the U.S. would aggressively lead the fight to ensure democracies without questioning this imperialism. Unlike his predecessors, Bush thought that his strategy was improvement solely because he was ready to act whenever there was any opposition to the United States’ interests. For this reason, his administration boasted of advancing the military and making it ready to use at disposal. As long as the U.S. military was the best, Bush believed he could achieve anything even though foreign policy required more than just defense-oriented policies(Suri, 2010).
One major success of Clinton’s strategy is its massive impacts on globalization that did promote not only democratization but also created market economies that facilitated the economic growth of the U.S. (F.P. Editors, 2009). This globalization led to reduced wars while he massively revolutionized trade opportunities by reducing trade barriers by finalizing NAFTA with Mexico and Canada and pushing for WTO’s creation. However, despite this global integration, Clinton’s biggest failure was the American-led NATO bombing of Serbia even though he had promised in rhetoric that military action was his last incentive (Suri, 2010). Bush’s primacy strategy has accredited the success of putting more efforts in the war against terrorism, as he used the U.S. military prowess to launch attacks on any suspected terrorist activities. However, Bush’s aggressive and provocative nature of applying strategies, especially even without consulting the U.N. Security Council in the war against Iraq, created tensions in the international relations between Europe and the U.S. The worst bit is the Iraq war just further facilitated destabilization in the Middle East and made the U.N. lose control in maintaining peace.
Even though the lack of coherence and the failures in both strategies, Clinton’s enlargement strategy brought more benefits to the U.S. and the rest of the world; unlike Bush’s unilateralism and imperialism, Clinton left a more integrated and democratic world that fosters economic interactions and minimizes international conflicts. However, both the intervention exercises employed in the strategies led to the expansion of democracies. Though Bush violated other countries’ sovereignty and even threatened their national interests, he would have opposed the use of mass destruction weapons in solving international conflicts instead of advancing the U.S. military against any threat. These perceived threats from the Bush administration led to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in other nations such as Korea (Creamer, 2014). Bush ought to have implemented better strategies beyond just common defense.