ABSTRACT
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 reversal of campaign undertakings to admit Haitian refugees, pushed for active policies to restore Aristide. Clinton's activism was explained in some quarters by reference to the 'green' 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.
