Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Making

The bureaucracy of foreign affairs seemed likely to become less streamlined, and more accessible to interest lobbying. This chapter reviews a series of important foreign policy events and decisions of the Bill Clinton years. Plans and agreements for a free trade alliance in North America were be-queathed to Clinton by President Bush. The Congressional Black Caucus, protesting Clinton&s;s reversal of campaign undertakings to admit Haitian refugees, pushed for active policies to restore Aristide. Clinton&s;s activism was explained in some quarters by reference to the &s;green&s; Irish lobby among American Democrats. Clinton inherited from President Bush an attitude of caution towards the ethnic conflict which marked the post-Cold War disintegration of Yugoslavia. The Clinton administration succeeded before 1995 in paring down that total by more than half, with much of the depleted figure going to short-range missile defence, rather than the intercontinental rocket systems.