Historian Gaddis critical of Clinton's foreign policy

MICHAEL MORSAND/OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS History professor John Gaddis believes that the Clinton administration has squandered the harmony achieved by the great powers after the Cold War.

Though the Clinton administration's humanitarian involvement in Kosovo seems appropriate to many, History professor John Gaddis, an expert on the Cold War, contends that America's response may have set some unfortunate precedents. Gaddis sat down with the Herald to discuss the implications.

Gaddis pointed out that historically, the approach of American foreign policy-makers has been one aimed at cooperating with large nations such as China and Russia."The traditional approach to achieving a more humane international order was to try and work with the great power concerned, to try and convince the great power that was abusing human rights that it was in its own best interest to stop and to change itself from within," he said. "This is exactly what happened with the Soviet Union, which did in the end change itself from within. So it is a policy that has a track record of considerable success."

Clinton's current policy, he argued, is one that ignores this tradition of preserving the sovereignty of great powers. "The Clinton administration's policy is to come riding in with flags flying to the rescue of the small power. But then you pay no attention to the interests of the great power who controls this particular sphere of in-fluence in the way it was traditionally done—through dialogue."

He stressed that alienating great world powers such as Russia or China in order to secure benefits for smaller nations raises the potential for instability and violence on a larger scale, even if it provides a measure of freedom on a smaller one. "It seems to me that if in the pursuit of justice for small nations, you run the risk of confronting larger ones, then you can wind up making things worse," he explained.

Gaddis said that in Kosovo, the Clinton administration failed to take Russia's interests into account. "Once you have proclaimed it to be your policy to come riding in to the rescue of every op-pressed group wherever brutality takes place, then of course the next time that happens questions are raised as to why you aren't there," he said. "That is what has happened in East Timor, the first such outbreak of brutality since Kosovo." He added that he expected this new foreign policy to result in increased American intervention in other countries in the future.

According to Gaddis, American foreign policy now appears to commit itself to the goal of self-determination above all else in the international arena. He strongly cautioned that this approach should not be uniformly extended in the practice of foreign policy. "How far does this principle extend?" he asked. "Does the practice of self-determination not ultimately lead to the proliferation of hundreds of micro-states? Is there then not the danger that war increases?"

At the end of the Cold War, the great powers were closer to agreeing with one another than at any other point in the 20th century, Gaddis said. "The Clinton administration, through its preoccupation with regional humanitarian issues, has squandered that global achievement. That, in retrospect, is going to be viewed as the single greatest failure of this administration's foreign policy—the extent to which it allowed that very favorable situation to erode."

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