US+Foreign+Policies+of+the+1990's



Foreign Policies

For Clinton, foreign policy was a mixed bag. He sent troops into Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 in an attempt to capture a local warlord. That operation included the "Blackhawk Down"* incident and was a miserable failure and embarrassment to the U.S.

In 1994, he sent troops into Haiti to prop up the administration of duly elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Clinton also twice sent U.S. troops into the former [|Yugoslavia] to stop the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated by the Serbs against local Muslims. Charges of war crimes were later pursued.

But perhaps his biggest gaffe was, because of Somalia, he, and other First World nations, declined to send troops into Rwanda to stop the genocide there in 1994. More than 1 million Tutsis and Hutus were slain in internecine fighting in about three months.

Also in 1994, Clinton negotiated the Nuclear Accords with North Korea. At the time, North Korea agreed to give up aspirations of developing nuclear weapons in exchange for assistance with their energy needs.



In Iraq, Clinton continued the economic sanctions put in place by George H.W. Bush, but were seen as largely ineffectual and contributed to the deaths of more than 100,000 people. Clinton also cultivated the notion that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) and was likely to deploy them or make them available to terrorists, organized crime, or drug traffickers. ([])