Blending Force with Diplomacy

By Bill Clinton Dan Goodgame and Michael Duffy.

After his Friday press conference, President Clinton sat in the Oval Office with TIME Washington bureau chief Dan Goodgame and White House correspondent Michael Duffy for an exclusive interview. Clinton talked about his learning process on foreign policy, his philosophy of military force and his recollections of a bully who pushed him too far.

TIME: You've had a string of successes overseas lately. Has anything about your handling of foreign policy changed?

Clinton: First of all, it's a more disciplined, tightly focused process now than it was in the first year. The weekly meetings with the national-security team, which we have now even when some of the principals are gone, enable us to take a long view. We've also allocated slightly more time every day for the national-security briefing, and it's amazing what a difference -- it's another 15 minutes to 30 minutes over and above the base-line time we normally give it.

TIME: What does that total now?

Clinton: Normally, it's 45 minutes. The second thing that I think I've learned about this is that explaining to the American people what our interests, our values and our policies are requires a more systematic and regular explaining. In a time when the overall framework is not clear and when people are bombarded by information, I think a President has to do that with greater frequency and to try to make a continuing effort not only to shape a new world but to find ways to explain that world to the American people. And I don't think I did that as well as I should have in my first year. Even when I was doing the right things, I'm not sure I communicated it as clearly as I should have. I think I'm doing a better job of that now.

TIME: You're not talking as much on the fly either.

Clinton: I've completely stopped that. I think that is a mistake. Then the third thing I would say is that even if your larger strategy is right, and your big picture is right, and if you are very persistent, just working at it means that you learn things and you make fewer tactical mistakes.

I think my objectives and my strategy have been right. The best thing we've done is to stick with it. A lot of these things, really, we've been working on for a long time. But I think, tactically, we are making better moves. We're doing it better; we're making fewer mistakes. Part of that is, I think, just learning.

TIME: You were quoted in the first year as saying you didn't want to spend much time on foreign matters. Do you feel more confident than you were before?

Clinton: Yes. I think the more you work at any job, and the more you succeed and the more you learn from the things that don't work, the more your confidence rises. So there's no question about that.

I came here as a Governor. I'd never served in the Congress. My exposure to foreign policy, as an adult at least, was largely through international economic measures. I also think, in fairness to our whole team, we were confronting a very different world than had previously been the case. When the past is sort of like the present, and you think the future is going to be like the present, then you can put a lot of smart people in, and it's almost like they're going in and putting on the same suit of clothes, you know? And we had to come in with a whole new wardrobe. So I think there is a greater level of confidence now too, because we're a little more comfortable with this time in which we live, with all its ups and downs.

When I came in, I knew there was a limit to how much I could get done. I wanted to have as much time as I could to get my economic program going, because I was afraid that unless we reversed our economic course, nothing I did in foreign policy would permit the U.S. to really succeed. So for the first eight months I was here, an enormous amount of my energy was devoted to what turned out to be a very important economic victory in the Congress.

TIME: Now, about this time four years ago, George Bush said that foreign policy was just more fun than domestic policy. Was he right?

Clinton: No, I wouldn't say that. But I have a different orientation. I like foreign policy a lot. I've found it very interesting, and I enjoy doing it. If "more fun" means you have more control, and you can do it with less interference and static in Congress, to that extent of course that's true.

The domestic-policy issues are still exhilarating and important to me. "Fun" is the wrong word, but ((domestic policy)) is gripping to me; it is terribly important. I don't get tired of those issues. When you're dealing with these domestic problems, the President is one of a zillion decision makers: not just Congress, but you've got people in the private sector and individuals in their own lives. They make up their minds; they go out and do things that you think are right or wrong or good or bad.

So foreign policy has a certain satisfaction when you can be active and you can achieve a result, and sometimes it's easier to see a beginning, a middle and an end. When you go out and start fighting crime, and you pass the crime bill, it's still up to people at the local level how they hire the police, who the police are, how well they're trained, whether the crime rate goes down. You're more like a catalyst, and you try to empower other people to do things. Whereas in foreign policy your actions are more self-contained.

TIME: Would it be fair to say that you now have a better idea of what Bush was talking about?

Clinton: Oh, I have a much better idea of what he was talking about. But I really am insistent on not giving up on either one, because if you slip the tracks one way or the other, not only will the presidency fail, but the country won't be well served. You know, the country will not permit a President to engage in foreign policy to the exclusion of dealing with the domestic problems. But the country might permit a President to engage in domestic problems to the exclusion of foreign policy, until some wheel runs off somewhere, and then it'll be obvious that that was an error as well.

TIME: You said a minute earlier that in a period like the cold war, where the foreign policy framework was pretty much there from President to President, you could hire smart people and leave it to them to run. Did you think you could do that early on?

Clinton: I don't know that you could leave it to them to run. I think you could hire smart people, and the American people would understand the framework in which you are operating. But when you don't have a conventional wisdom at all ((about foreign policy)), I think it's just harder to build it up. I think the burden was on me, more than I appreciated in 1993, to try to keep explaining this post-cold war world.

TIME: Do you think your Administration has sometimes suffered from a problem with the projection of forcefulness?

Clinton: The longer you're around, you understand the difference between what you do and how you're perceived. And I think that, again, people who have never been in this situation before can easily underestimate how important the latter is. Frankly, I had some things to learn on that score.

We're not the world's policeman, but we do have certain responsibilities. We will be more respected if it's clear that we're making every attempt to blend force with diplomacy. You may actually lose some political mileage if there is no actual force: if the bombs aren't dropped, and people aren't shot, and no one dies. I understand that. But I also believe that that is a form of strength when you know the power is there. It seems to me that restraint is, in itself, a policy instrument, which reinforces our good intentions.

You may sacrifice a little short-term emotional satisfaction in our own country and a little bump in the polls, but over the long run the image we're trying to build of America in the world is stronger because we went the extra mile in Haiti and because we acted so quickly in the gulf that we didn't have to use force.

TIME: There's a line of criticism that there are elements of appeasement in each of these successes. You were asked today about paying rent on the houses in Haiti. The North Koreans could still back out.

Clinton: I think, on balance, that no one with a straight face could say that there was significant appeasement in Haiti; it was strength, and it was honor. And many of the people who say that little old thing was appeasement weren't for what I was doing in the first place.

TIME: In Korea?

Clinton: In Korea, I just disagree. We wanted them to freeze and then get rid of their nuclear program. So now they said we'll freeze this, we'll get rid of it, we won't have any nuclear weapons, and we will ship out our spent fuel. So I think we've got a huge advance here. It seems to me this is a very good thing for the U.S. I do not consider it appeasement. So I just disagree with that.

TIME: I wonder if you feel that maybe you don't get as much credit as you might otherwise because you are perceived as conciliatory by nature.

Clinton: Well, that had nothing to do with this. We could not have been any quicker, any more forceful, any more decisive than we were in Iraq. And we were there lickety-split. We said, "You have to withdraw." And they began to withdraw. Now arguably you could say, Well, politically you shouldn't even have given them a chance; you should have just bombed them.

If you know your own strength, and you know what your objectives are, and you can achieve those objectives without taking lives of your own men and women in uniform. There is usually still time for the killing, if that has to happen. If you are willing to use your power but you give people a chance to get out from under it in an honorable way that fulfills your objectives, that is a measure of strength, not weakness.

TIME: Your friends growing up said you were always the kind of person who was breaking up fistfights. Were you ever in a fistfight growing up?

Clinton: I remember one actually that's very revealing about this whole deal. There was a guy who was a year older than me but not as big as me. He started picking on me at school one day when I was in the eighth grade. And I felt sort of sorry for him, because I knew he had a difficult life, and he was always kind of in a sour mood. And I let him throw a hit on me. He walked home one day; I was walking home from school. I bet that fellow followed me for 30 minutes trying to hit me on the shoulder. And finally I turned around and decked him, and he ran off. I was really afraid I'd hurt him. But he finally -- I told him not to do it, and he didn't believe me.

And the people who are dealing with me in the U.S. will find that out. I realize -- since the people that I deal with around the world may not know me as well as the people I grew up with, and may have never seen that story -- that's something that I have to be very clear and explicit about. I think it is clear and explicit now in a way that it may not have been six months ago. And I would hope that what happened in Haiti and Iraq would make it clear for all other countries in the future for as long as I'm sitting here.