The Clinton Doctrine

"Democratic Enlargement: The Clinton Doctrine" by Douglas Brinkley, in Foreign Policy (Spring 1997), 2400 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037–1153.

When President Bill Clinton unveiled his grand strategy of "democratic enlargement" in a 1993 speech at the United Nations, Americans yawned. Even Secretary of State Warren Christopher shunned it, reportedly regarding enlargement as a trade policy masquerading as a foreign policy. Yet, argues Brinkley, a historian at the University of New Orleans, the concept guides Clinton’s day-to-day foreign policy decisions.

Clinton entered office as a foreign affairs novice, Brinkley notes, and in his presidency’s early months, U.S. foreign policy was "the product of crisis management rather than strategic doctrine." As a candidate, Brinkley says, Clinton had outlined three foreign policy priorities: "updating and restructuring American military and security capabilities, elevating the role of economics in international affairs, and promoting democracy abroad." In August 1993, Clinton directed national security adviser Anthony Lake to come up with a single word or slogan that would do for him what "containment" had done for the Cold War presidents.

According to Lake, Clinton "embraced the enlargement concept almost immediately," understanding, Brinkley says, "that it signified the notion that as free states grew in number and strength the international order would become both more prosperous and more secure."

But this did not imply that the United States was obliged to promote constitutional democracy and human rights everywhere. For the concept to be "politically viable," Brinkley says, its focus had to be on "primary U.S. strategic and economic interests." In some cases, that might mean not pushing hard for more democracy right away. "For example," he writes, "Asians in general took a vastly different view of what constituted democracy, preferring to emphasize social order over individual rights. Under enlargement, America’s chief concern in Asia would therefore be free market access—the rest, for the most part, would be left to sort itself out."

"We have put our economic competitiveness at the heart of our foreign policy," Clinton said in 1994. In the Clinton formula, economic advantage and national political interest do not conflict but go hand in hand. Emerging democracies with a growing middle class eager to consume American products, in this view, serve both America’s need for markets and its desire for a world of peaceful and prosperous liberal-minded nations. "Relations with countries with bright economic futures such as Mexico and South Korea," Brinkley writes, "would thus be placed on the front burner in his administration; poor, blighted nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America," would ordinarily be given little attention.

Some critics favor "a more militarily activist" foreign policy, Brinkley notes. Others complain that enlargement is mostly empty rhetoric that avoids unpleasant realities and hard choices. But the president, Brinkley writes, sees more promise "in helping Toys ‘R’ Us and Nike to flourish in Central Europe and Asia than in dispatching Marines to quell unrest in economically inconsequential nations."

With his strategy of enlargement, Brinkley says, Clinton is hoping to go down in history "as the free trade president and the leading architect of a new world economic order."