Bill Clinton and the ‘Indispensable Nation’

Abstract

William Jefferson Clinton defeated George Bush in the 1992 presidential election largely by focusing on the nation’s troubled domestic agenda. The Democrats’ rallying cry against Bush was ‘It’s the economy stupid!’ Clinton entered the White House in January 1993 promising to focus on the domestic problems facing Americans, and particularly the failing US economy. Nonetheless, Clinton also had to address an international agenda that was much changed from that faced by other post-Vietnam presidents. With the Cold War now firmly consigned to history, scholars, analysts and practitioners alike attempted to provide a comprehensive framework through which a far more unpredictable and potentially unstable international system could be understood. During his two terms in office, President Clinton would give an increasingly greater emphasis to foreign policy and preside over more uses of military force than any of his post-Vietnam predecessors. As a result, he would face many of the same questions regarding the continuing influence of the legacy of Vietnam. He would also draw upon the belief in American exceptionalism in an attempt to pursue a foreign policy that he claimed was not divorced from ‘the moral principles most Americans share’.¹