Further global economic and social integration

To understand her foreign policy, it is important to understand the evolution of American strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Clinton is a creature of the beliefs, values and illusions that dominated American policy from 1991 until 2008. By understanding that world, we can understand Clinton’s core beliefs and then consider the extent to which they have evolved. Clinton represents the American and global consensus that emerged after the Cold War.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, there was a general assumption that the world of war, near war and distrust had been put behind us. This is normal when a global conflict ends. After Napoleon was defeated, the victorious powers met at the Congress of Vienna and decreed two things. The first was that the victorious anti-Napoleon coalition would continue in place and administer the peace. The second was that there were no fundamental differences among these coalition partners. The same assumptions were made after World War I in the League of Nations. After World War II, the United Nations was created, with the victorious ensconced as the permanent members of the Council.

Great wars are won by coalitions and not individual states. There is an illusion that the common interests of these states during the war will endure to administer the peace. Leading powers will suppress new challengers and all that will be left is to maintain discipline in the system. War is obsolete and unnecessary, and the only thing that matters is enjoying the economic blessings that come with victory. These periods of comforting delusion can last for decades, as happened after the Napoleonic wars, or a few months, as happened after World War II.

This same thing happened after the end of the Cold War. The U.S. and President George H. W. Bush generally believed that the coalition that won the Cold War and the institutions that were created in the Cold War would govern the peace. NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and others, as well as the coalition of anti-Soviet nations that had used these institutions, would create a perpetual peace, and history would come to a happy end.

There were only two tasks at hand. One was integrating the shattered Soviet Empire into the Western security and economic system. The other was managing unruly marginal nations. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the United States marshalled a wide range of countries, including some former communist states, to punish the unruly Saddam Hussein, and the U.S. did this without concern about the Russian or Chinese reactions. The U.S. dominated a global coalition, the coalition was of one mind and minor irritants like Iraq would be dealt with as one. coalition Security

This is the world that President Bill Clinton’s administration came into. It saw the world that George H. W. Bush had crafted as the world’s permanent condition and focused on further global economic and social integration. It extended Cold War institutions and engaged in intermittent military actions with primarily humanitarian goals (though not in every case) that were appropriate to coalition management. These were the only real reasons for having a