i think it is very important to know we did not do it. there was an echelon of social figures and theatrical figures who were constantly in the press, constantly interviewed, and whose clothing and jewels were described in great detail in the latter part of the 19th century. the public followed them just as feverishly as our public follows our contemporary celebrities. >> it was given as a gift by a wealthy industrialist to an orthopedic surgeon. >> you have been watching a preview of our weekly program. you can view entire programs online.

>> chris riley and the at&t vice president. >> we believe at the end of the day, internet need strong rules to protect neutrality. those needs include reasonable network management and they need to be effectively enforceable every >> the problem we have now is where the net neutrality issue has gone. i think there is a lot of consensus around the rules, but it's focused on the sec legal authority to adopt rules and the theory they sit use. our concern really is that they're going to undo potentially a regulatory status that has been inclusive now for over a decade. >> monday night on c-span2.

>> next, former members of president clinton's administration discussed the president's foreign policy strategy and achievements. they explore his response to events in bosnia, rwanda, and the middle east. including the search for osama bin laden. the clinton presidential center hosted this hour and 20 minute event as part of a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the clinton presidential library >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome editor in chief and copresident of the atlantic james bennett in the foreign policy panel. [applause]

>> good morning, everybody. welcome. we have five very strong panelists here who i'm going to introduce to you in a moment and a really long list of initiatives and crises that we could talk about this morning. i'm sure we will hit a number of them including the pursuit of in the middle east and ireland bosnia, the twists and turns in bosnia, nato expansion, the struggle against terrorism. that is before we've been get to haiti, or wanda, somalia india pakistan, and so on. anyone of the subject could consume any number of panel discussions. my hope is that we won't get too deeply into the details of any one of them but that we will drive toward an understanding of the principles that shaped or

maybe you've all possibly from considerable trial and maybe the occasional error. how did president clinton come to reconcile promoting american value with pursuing his interests? and how most broadly did he envision a new global architecture in this suddenly fluid time after the berlin wall came down. as much as possible, i'm hoping this will be a conversation among our panelist rather than a series of presentations and i hope you guys will react to each other's presentations and feel free to argue as it is appropriate. to bring all this to his final point is possible at the end i'm hoping to do a lightning round 30 panelist to ask them to define what they see as bill

clinton's legacy in global affairs. the audience as well will have the option to ask questions in our last 20 minutes. please start thinking of the good questions that i will fail to ask. i'm now going to introduce our panelist and they will talk about the texture of their roles during the clinton years. to my left is sandy berger, and is a global consulting, and he is involved in a number of projects worldwide, with a particular focus in asia russia, and the middle east. he served with bill clinton and his of ministration during the middle east, and he was a national security advisor in the first term before becoming of a national security advisor in the second term. to his left is general wesley clark, who retired in 2000 from military service after a 38 year

career that culminated in his achieving four-star rank and the role of nato supreme allied commander of europe. he has received numerous awards, from the purple heart to the silver star to the presidential medal of freedom. he is now at the center for international relations at ucla. to his left is mara rudman where she was chief counsel with the foreign affairs committee. at the white house she was the deputy assistant at the white house for foreign affairs come much of her quest was for middle east peace, and she continued stubbornly into the current administration, where she served as the deputy chief of staff answered as envoy for the middle east peace of state, and now a visiting fellow at the institute

for national strategic studies. nancy soderberg also joined the clinton administration from the hill, where she was senior foreign-policy adviser to ted kennedy. during the clinton years, she served on the nfc for national security affairs, and also served as an alternate representative to the u.n. ambassador soderbergh is now president and ceo of soderbergh solutions, nash ambassador soderberg -- ambassador soderberg is now president and ceo of soderberg solutions. his brush with public service spent time in lee hamilton's office as well as with senator richard lugar.

i think sandy we turn it over to you to begin your own and better summation of your biography. >> what i did in the administration as well as my background? >> yes. >> i was the deputy security advisor in the first term, the national security advisor in the second term, having been the foreign-policy adviser in the campaign. i often thought of national security advisers' jobs as being able to write on the elephant

and then having to clean up after the elephant. [laughter] it is really multiple jobs. you write on the elephant because you are one of three or four printable advisers to the president along with the secretary of state, secretary of defense, director of the cia you clean up after it because you essentially are the chief of staff for foreign policy. the national security staff which is about 150 men footnote, 400 now, has to ensure the president is ready for whatever he is doing. the speeches. the meetings. the trips. the phone calls. all of that work is done by the nsc staff. the third job of the national security advisor, and maybe one of the most important, is to run an interagency process i which -- by which the president is ultimately given the best options to decide hard problems.

easy problems don't get to the president. the hard problems. the better process is one that has real bret -- breadth. we started at the assistant level, across the board, and these people were really up to their elbows in problems, they knew it really well, they lived it, and they would come up with a series of problems,. . and analysis, and options that would go up to the deputies -- problems, analysis, and options. that would go up to the deputy secretaries, and then that would go up to the next step and they would define it to the principles, and i always felt if

the principles could agree to 80%, that was a good thing, and the rest would be taken to the president. and the national security advisor sometimes was the one present in the options. you had to present them to the president and a fairway. -- in a fair way. i wanted to present madeleine's options in a way as if she were standing next to me and that she could believe that i had fairly stated her options. and in the fourth function is to make sure the president's policies are in demented. -- are implemented. you make these options, and the state has its own view, and it is quite easy for the policy to be unrecognizable, so the national security advisor has to

continue to push and prod to make sure that that policy is carried out. i would say that the last role and by far the most important role, and i said this to each of my successors, advisers, both republican and democrat, who have asked me about the job, is that you have to be able to tell the president the truth. you need to. all of the president's senior advisers tell the president the truth. but it is the truth from a diplomatic perspective, if you are a secretary of state. it is the truth from the military perspective if you are the defense minister, or it is the truth from the intelligence perspective if you are the head of the cia. you are looking at this from the

president's perspective. you need to be able to tell the president how you see the situation, how you see his actions and activities in that situation, even when you think he is not doing the right thing, and what you think the real options are. i often did that. a few time i got -- times i got my head snapped off. sometimes the president would be reading his crossword puzzle as i was talking, which meant that he was listening. [laughter] then i would go on my merry way. but that is the highest -- those simply are the truth tellers to the president from outside the bubble, outside the four walls of the administration. you are doing your job. >> general clark, can you tell

us a little bit about the role that you came to play in pursuing for a policy for this administration? and i'm also curious, how did you get to know the president? you are from arkansas and i don't know how far back? >> it is a humble, humble story, and a lot lower what said he has described, i had four positions during the clinton administration. i was the head of the calvary division at fort hood, texas, we had apache helicopters and 43 courses -- 43 horses, that i can to washington in the spring of 94, and in that job, i was part of the thousands of people that were part of the process. my job was to maintain the connectivity between military

activities and the diplomatic and residential directives at the staff levels. so i had to prepare the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to work with principals and deputies and that we had to function in the interagency working groups. it was like a total firehose of hundreds of actions going on from international arms transfers, narcotics, the summit of the americas, north korean negotiations, rwanda, haiti, bosnia, it ran the gambit, so it was a wonderful job, and eye-opening job, and i was across the river usually twice a day into the white house or the state department or both sitting in on meetings or

sometimes been the principal at a meeting representing the pentagon. i became a four-star general and i became the commander in chief of the u.s. southern command's, so -- commands, so i had to have regional responsibility in europe. so we were on the execution and some 1996-2000. how did i meet the president? good question. i was at writing a horse one morning at forward, texas, as there were 13 flag officers at fort hood, and the used my horses, so every saturday morning, we had a flag ride, and we rode for three or four hours and we talked about the day, and my boss was a three-star down there, and he looked down at me from the saddle one day and he said, in the spring of 1993, and he said, are you a friend of president's clinton -- president

clinton? and i said, sir, i have known him for a long, long time. he was up at west point, he said, and he said you are one of his friends. i just wanted to know. so he had a long shadow. i had actually met bill clinton when he was, i went to georgetown university for the conference on atlantic discussions, and i was a first glassman at west point, and i had gone down there, and it was the last -- first glassman -- classman at west point, and i had gone down there, and it was the last thing is going to do before becoming a rhodes scholar, and this girl said our you from arkansas, and i said yes, and she said there is somebody here from arkansas, and he is bill clinton. and i sit idle think he is from arkansas, and she said he is from arkansas because he talks about watermelons and stuff like this. [laughter]

you are in high school and things like that and you know people who are good enough to get to a school like georgetown so an hour later this young guy comes up to me and he is escorted by a young lady on each arm and he says, i am bill clinton, i am from hope, arkansas, and we talked for about an hour, and i was incredibly impressed. afterwards we talked again, and he said, what are you going to do? and i said i would trail for roads -- try out for rhodes, and then if that does not work i'm going to go to vietnam.

and he said i would to try out for rhodes too. he was in hot springs and i was in little rock, and i followed his incredible career, and i asked him as we left that day, and i was leaving for georgetown to go back to west point, and i said, to you ever think you might do something in politics? and he said, well, i have thought about it. [laughter] so we went back a long way, and i always admired his drive, and he got into arkansas politics early, and he made a huge difference in this state. i do so many of you out here have followed his growth and leadership and have benefited enormously. >> and tell us your story. >> i came from capitol hill, and my job at the national security council, and i had a few jobs there, and the most important one was the chief of staff at

the national security council, so i was working for the national security council, but for sandy there, but without being too repetitive of what he described, while i did end up focusing a fair amount of time substantively on the middle east, i would say the main way that i saw my job was to in many ways clear away the underbrush to make it as easy as possible for sandy and the other deputy to take care of the number of things that sandy has described, because you can see how the complex -- how complex the coordination job was. if you are doing right behind the presidency in that job, what does that mean? what it meant for me under

sandy's direction was to figure out a way as we were working to shape and -- shapen and get this decisions made to ensure that we had a plan for implementing them and that they were going to be followed through on in the most effective way possible. so that meant that you had the money for them. and that you were going to follow the money all the way through. that you had a way to make sure that you are making those decisions and that the agencies had the right guidance and that you are following up, and sometimes the agencies that you are making the right decision but they would follow you from the beginning to the end all the way through. and congress felt of the decision, but it was part of the decedent -- part of the genius quite friendly, that the president was with us on every foreign trip that we took, and i was responsible at various points of managing members of

congress on those foreign trips. i think it was critically important for getting by in -- buy-ins. that was when you had republican controlled both the house and the senate and there were very challenging trips, including the trip to the west bank and gaza and members of congress went on every leg of that trip, members of congress went to the west bank and gaza. they went to bosnia and i went on a trip when i was on the hill as well, which was part of the clinton administration strategy, to bring along members. so money, congress, the mystically, internationally, specifically how you get the i in -- the buy-in, and the decision-making, how you peel away the curtain.

if you have a big thought or a big policy, what do you do to make it happen? not necessarily the drama, but the important gears behind it to make sure it is sustainable. >> i was going to say i remember american flags all over also during that trip, which is something we have not seen since. nancy? >> thank you very much, thank you to the miller center for this scholarly edition, i remember well doing my own interview, and i cannot remember what i said, so i will have to check that out. mara and i have almost exactly the same career, i would to the hill, we had him of the same job, and then i went to the united nations, and how i differentiate between previous white house occupants is that i

teach now and if you want to get a boost to your career, pick the next president of the united states and spend the next eight months with him as he runs for president. if it does not work, you are immediately unemployed, which happened to me two times before i worked for bill clinton, but i worked on the dukakis campaign with gene sperling and george stephanopoulos and learned how not to run a campaign, and then he called me and said, would you like to work for bill clinton? and i was working for ted kennedy at the time, and i said, you know, i have done to losing campaigns -- two losing campaigns, and george w. bush is -- george h.w. bush is at 90% in the polls, and there is this problem with clinton not inhaling, and i thought that ted kennedy was the most brilliant politician ever, and he said you should do it.

and i said, why? three times and you are out. and he said, because he is going to win. so i said, you are a hopeless romantic. [laughter] he said because the economy is what it is all about. so i did, and i met sandy and tony lake, and i fell in love with them, and i move here to little rock in june of 1992, drove my car down from washington, which got awarded the worst car in the white house parking lot when i got there but i made it back, and we were in a building right around here that is now a charter school which was an old publishing newspaper, and we just set to work trying to unseat the

sitting president of the united states, who was actually quite popular, who had just won the first gulf war. i was the director of foreign policy, which really meant i was in the office here on the phone with sandy nearly every day, saying, you should do this. but president clinton was viewed as not having a lot of foreign policy experience, which was actually not true. he was traveling all his life, he had been living in london as a rhodes scholar, and so he had dealt with the international community quite a it, -- quite a bit, and with sandy's great help in 19 anyone at georgetown, we essentially laid out his philosophy, which was then and lamented as president very much. to win a presidency, to take a presidency from an incoming

president who has just won the gulf war is no easy task, but we talked about the economy and the famous war room, and it is the economy stupid, so we set about challenging george bush on a couple of foreign policy issues, haiti, bosnia, the need to engage in the collapse of the soviet union more effectively to support the independence of the countries who were trying to join the west, and laid out a visionary speech that was my job as campaign director here to make sure that we put out statements and inserted that into various debates on the campaign. and of course, the election really was more about the economy, but he had laid the foundation during the campaign for a presidency that would actually have to put those into office.

when we won, it was fabulous, i still remember looking at the statehouse and we were all watching the big scene 20 years ago, and all of a sudden reality set in. first of all, i thought i was going home, and sandy said, you are staying there, and he said you are staying there, and he said you are going to a new do this, and it was the next three month and they were the best. of my life. and then the sky said we are here, and it was the cia briefing team, and -- this guy said we are here, and it was the cia reaping team, and they had set up themselves into a hotel nearby, and they said the haitians have come to clinton's inauguration, so literally 400,000 haitians were ripping the roofs off their house and building boats to come to the inauguration, and most of them would have done, -- most of them would have died, and so that was her first campaign flip-flop but we ended up if limiting

every single one of them, but in some cases took a few years. the other was thanksgiving day i was taking a day off, in theory, on thanksgiving day, and we got a phone call that we were sending 25,000 troops to somalia, which was of announced to me, so i called of the national security adviser at the time, and he said, don't worry, they will be out when you get here. it was very extraordinary, and my role when i got to the white house was the same position that mara had, and it was essentially to not play the soccer ball. when there is a crisis everybody is going here, but you have to step back and make sure that other things are getting thought about as well. also, to ask the question of why not? why is that -- why is it that we don't involve ourselves in the

question of northern ireland which is what we got involved in doing, why not get involved in bosnia, and those kinds of things became questions, but i will end with the need to avoid kind of what sandy was saying, the game of telephone, where you put out the present's policies and then all of a sudden it goes to this person, to this person to this person, to this agency to this agency, and then it turns out to look like nothing the way it started, and then you have to find a way for it to be intimate, so i will stop there and thank you. >> russell riley, maybe you can set the table for the rest of the discussion? >> thank you, i had no association with the clinton administration, but over the years i had a long association with the presidential oral history project from the carter administration through now. those polled in norman's leave valuable material to me and two

other scholars -- those hold enormously valuable material to me and as well to other scholars. the clinton administration in terms of foreign policy is nestled in this very interesting. , we just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the berlin wall -- very interesting period, we just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the berlin wall. we were the most powerful nation in the world, we had the largest economy, we had a culture that had influence and impact all around the globe, we have the world's most able military

forces, and in case anyone did not know that, the first gulf war give them a demonstration. we were in many ways an enormously -- in an enormously advantageous position. the end of the cold war made challenges for the clinton administration greater. let me just mention a few of the obvious ones. after the cold war, the large nuclear arsenals that we had built no longer mattered in the same way they had in the past. as a matter-of-fact, the leftover nuclear material in the soviet union turned out to be a huge liability and a complicated set of problems that had to be solved. those in the united states -- the united states was a powerful nation without an enemy of to -- without an anatomy -- without an enemy.

this is, again, an interesting and challenging. -- challenging period, and i hope the panel will talk about how they managed and maneuvered through it. >> thank you all very much. sandy, maybe we should begin at the beginning? as professor strong said, you studied history very carefully. you said clinton's operating style was to solicit advice from people from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, but

it occurs to me that you all, to some degree, were deprived of the lessons of history as you came to office, at least the foreign policymaking and the cold war era was potentially no longer relevant to the world that you are suddenly faced with. or perhaps it was. i wonder what intellectual traditions you found yourself drawing on? >> was great, i think we were nestled between two events that were closer to us. one was the end of the cold where -- cold war and the collapse of the soviet union which had shaped america upon role in the world for 45 years. the allocations of our

resources, the weight -- the way we viewed other countries, the way we dealt with the caribbean, the way we dealt with that whole set of burdens that were no longer on her shoulders, and it enabled us to look at the world in a different way. what we were entering, and president clinton saw it before any other leader understood it was the beginning of a new reality. and that is an increasing rapidity of the flow of goods, services, and ideas from around the world, and the increasing rapidity of our interdependence, globalization. that is the moment, i think, in which we become, in which president clinton becomes president. i think that confluence very

much defines the base of the presidency. he was charged with dealing with completion of the cold war, the aftermath, and what came after that. for example, nuclear. we got all of the former nuclear weapons -- all of the weapons out of the former soviet union. we got all of the weapons out of kazakhstan. we got soviet union to sign the ballistics treaty and the chemical weapons treaty, so we had a lot of business done on the nuclear agenda. there was a lot going on in the closing down of the old chapter. on the globalization side, which was merging, i think president

clinton got that and understood that much earlier than other leaders and better than many of us to it and he understood that that globalization, at one point, he said globalization train has left the station, but we don't know what the destination is, and the only way we can determine the destination is to lead. so whether it was 300 trade agreements, including getting china a nuclear nonproliferation treaty for the world, across a broad spectrum, he saw building

on that interdependence as a priority, and he also saw, the last thing i'm going to say, the dangers of globalization. what he would call the dark side of globalization. all of those forces that enabled good things to happen also enabled bad things to happen. the same computer that allowed some scientists in russia to help map the human genome also could help them hack into a power system in the united states and close it down. so we also begin the process of trying to protect our critical infrastructure, deal with terrorism, and i think that is the wedge into which president clinton begins his presidency, and way before 9/11, it seems that was a frame. -- that was the frame.

>> i was thinking about the layering and the work that was going on, for example, while you are doing the work on nuclear weapons, you had nato enlargement, and the freedom support acts. i was on the hill at that time see you had a norma's amounts of money being generated on the public side -- had enormous amounts of money being generated on the public side, so it was layering and doing everything you can and maximizing the opportunity, and at the same time, you are taking care of the precautions on the counterterrorism side so that it is taking care of working on the positive side and doing the protective work as well on the

globalization points that said he was mentioning. i was just try to wrap through my head trying to think of those things going along as he was talking. >> in 1993-19 94, the world was a pretty confusing place, a lot of things were happening and there was not an organizing -- 1003-1994, the world was a pretty confusing place, a lot of things were happening and there was not an organizing idea. there was enormous problem with refugees coming out of haiti and we put an economic embargo in place, there was the north korean challenge with nuclear weapons, saddam hussein was still in charge in a rock and people were asking, what is the strategy -- in iraq, and people were asking, what is the strategy? so i was called in by my boss to figure out what the strategy

was, i thought it was a test question, i did not know what the strategy was, i thought he knew the answer. so sandy and tony and all of us worked on a strategy, and it is on the web right now, it is the national security web of engagement, and it involved nafta, the world trade organization could be seen, and we were going to engage in promoting democracy all over the world, we were going to use our armed forces constructively, and we recognized threats. today when you look back at that

document, which was published in the spring of 1995 when it came out, but it took more than a year in being written, it said there were four principal challenges, regional instability, it has certainly been the case, proliferation of nuclear and chemical, biological weaponry, that is certainly a problem, transnational threats like organize crime and trafficking and terrorism, that i certainly been a problem, and the fourth was, there could be a case in which there was a resurgent russian threat in the world, and so i look back at that 20 years ago, and i think there must've been some pretty smart people on the national security council staff to get that document going, because i think it has stood the test of time and amazingly well. >> let me ask you, general, to talk a little about applying that framework in the world, and maybe we should take the example of bosnia, where during the campaign, james baker had said

we don't have a dog in that fight, not enough american interest to get involved there so there was the idea to do something about the humanitarian catastrophe, and what you said it was the set of organizing principles with how the ministration thought about this. before you could arrive at a peace agreement, you had to decide what the policy was going to be, and nato took action in its own history to do something about that complex. can you talk about that struggle to actually put those principles into action? or sandy? whoever would like to take this one? >> is very frustrate problem for the first couple of years, as net is in europe, europeans saw it i merrily as a humanitarian -- saw it primarily as a humanitarian mission.

europe was ambitious. in the beginning, we believed that we should lift the arms embargo, which only applied to the albanian muslims, because of the serbs had weapons from serbia, and strike the serbs if they bombed. warren christopher went to europe to sell that, and came back with his tail between his legs. it went nowhere. the europeans a said, no, no no, this is a humanitarian mission, we could not do those things by ourselves, we could not activate nato by ourselves we could not bomb by ourselves. so for two years, we were in an extraordinarily frustrating.

, we try to have some peace negotiations, but it became more and more -- frustrating period we tried to have a some peace negotiations, but it became more and more frustrating. eventually the president said enough. the president was at a putting green, and a couple of days before jacque chirac, who was a bit of a grandstand or, he said he was going to have a rapid force, and that was a very bad french accent, and i'm going to send 10,000 soldiers anyplace if there is a threat in bosnia, it meant nothing. it was just rhetorical. if schrock -- if chirac can do this, why do you give me new ideas? well it with parallel to that,

and we were working on a new idea inside the ncs, tony and myself and nancy, and simply basically, it was that we would present to milosevic a take it or leave it package. if he did not take it, we would bomb. we would go to the europeans and we would say, we are going to do this. we would like to do it together, but if we are not together we're going to do it ourselves. the president liked it. it was consistent with his own i think predilections, not everyone in the event a station liked it, i think there were very few people who liked it within the restriction. [laughter] but we had a constituency of one who really liked it. [laughter]

but the state, and the pentagon, the military did not like it but the chairman of our joint chiefs really liked it, he was an eastern european by birth and he understood the dynamic of this situation. we went to europe, the europeans started sweating, when they thought, my god, the americans are going to end the war in bosnia and we are going to look like fools. so they signed on, and we went to milosevic, we had a bombing campaign, and it lasted 77 days. at one point, this fine judgment, who did a fine job as the ellet commander of that war, said, i will do this as long as i have to, but i am not sure --

who did a fine job as the elite commander of that war, said, i will do this as long as i have to, but i'm not sure it will work. one day i get a call from the white house, and they said, i think i need 90 days. [laughter] that means we had about two weeks to make a decision. and i sat in my office one night, writing a memo to the president, saying, basically here is your choice. we either give up or we go in on the ground. and my recommendation was that we cannot lose. which i think was the president's thought as well. an hour later i got a phone call, and it was milosevic and the russians in scandinavia, and milosevic has surrendered.

the president took an indoor miss -- took an enormous gamble. he did not have a lot of congressional support, but he believed that we could not allow ethnic cleansing in europe at the end of the 20th century. and i think he deserves a lot of credit for that. >> nancy, i would also love to hear the question where you saw a risk of ground forces all along, or if you thought that was something that really presented itself late in the game? >> let me just jump in on the balkan scenario that said he just laid out, and to me, that was the pinnacle of president clinton recognizing what the

right role in the united states was in the post-cold war era was. that action was tell, don't ask, if you remember the ask, don't tell regarding gays in the military fiasco, and so this was a flip, the president of the united states is telling the world that we are going to tell and not ask the world. we came in with europeans taking the lead partly because they had no dog in this fight comment with secretary baker, but also a new president that did not want to challenge of the bat, and there was a probe and they were trying to figure out what works, and we had one fiasco after another, somalia, haiti, bosnia, and nothing seemed to be working, which of course meant sandy was the brunt of the putting green, that later

explosions of why we are not fixing these problems, but it really came down to not understanding in the early part of the administration what was appropriate use of force and diplomacy as the lone superpower in the world. and the bosnia decision fundamentally changed the way the president uses his powers of office on a foreign policy, and what he did was lead so that you had competence -- had confidence from the rest of the world that the united states was on the right side of history in trying to solve problems, confidence on the part of our partners so that we did not have to do anything alone as a superpower, and it made america a respected power in the world, which enabled us to promote our agenda much more easily. to me that was the right role of the united states in the post-cold war air on, and it was more important than fighting the war on terror, i think we got off track on that with some of

his successor, but i think that was the turning point in the administration in the two and a half years, and then he laid the groundwork for a very successful foreign policy. and you have this card in your packet, and i was just looking at this and thinking that every one of these things was monumentally historic, none of these things would have happened without bill clinton and his legacy. take some time and ponder this card, because every one of those was an enormously difficult thing to achieve and is a very impressive. on your point of ground troops there is no tougher decision that a president has then to decide to send our most treasured resources into harms way -- harm's way. you know some of them are going to die, just in accident, things happen, so it is always dangerous to do that, but you have to weigh the benefit for

the country and you have to be able to look the mom and dad in the eye and say, look, your son or daughter's life was absolutely worth it, especially when it is not the big bad soviet union that you are combating. is it really worth it to try and feed somalia? is it really worth it to restore aristide to power their? -- power there? we knew that the soviet union could attack eastern europe, and we could be there, so it took a while for the president to be able to make that case, and it came down to, yes, we actually do have interest in that area, but if we do it, we have leverage with other people. at the end of the presidency one in 10 soldiers in the balkans was not american, in

contrast to after the first term of george w. bush, the numbers are flipped, almost every soldier in iraq was. so he figured a how to leverage diplomacy and leadership to share the burden as well, which made that decision easier. >> general clark? >> you can have a whole conference on civil military relations, but i don't think you could have this situation again, so what i remember from the. was that general powell was the first -- from this period was that general powell was the first commander coming he had been a national security advisor under reagan. he believed in, and we wrote it at the time, in 1983, decisive overwhelming force, and we applied in grenada in 1983, and it later became caspar weinberger's document of overwhelming force, so when

these early questions of the use of force came up, general powell and the military, who had just come off a very successful campaign in iraq, the military was lionized, we had 700,000 american soldiers, sailors, and marines in the gulf, it was an overwhelming force, and then now a new present -- president comes in, he does not have the military behind him, he is a democrat and not a republican, democrats were known as a wishy-washy, so i can only imagine how difficult this problem must have looked to president clinton when he looked down at it. he got a general who really had an appreciation for the difficulties in europe and a man who was incredibly adroit at finding ways to keeping the

military supportive of the president's directions. so i saw a lot working under him as he would listen to what the president wanted and then take the military response, whether it was on comprehensive test ban treaty or something else, and move it toward something else toward the president's priorities without damaging the military's interests. when it came to the balkans, in particular, this was an anonymous problem in particular, because it europe was not designated as one of the two major theaters of war. the military came out of the gulf war, and we were all geared up to finish the job against saddam hussein, one senior officer said to me, it was the war we wanted to fight. what he told the in september of 1998, he did not want to fight in kosovo or in europe, and i said, chief, where do you want to fight? and he said, iraq, and i said, do we want to fight anywhere, do

we? so there was this assumption and sandy was talking about anxiety. first there was this thing about putting peacekeeping forces on the ground in somalia, and there was a joke about real men not doing military operations other than war, they just do real war, and here was the clinton administration and the president directing us to use military force in very unconventional ways. and then came the problem in kosovo, where what started as an air campaign, we could not be sure. as winter approach, we had to have another alternative to sibley sain, g, mr. president, we have run out of targets, and we could just want dirt or surrender -- as winter approach, we had to have another alternative to simply saying gee, mr. president, we have run

out of targets, so we could just on the dirt, or surrender? so we have to head into comic because this was incredibly difficult politically. >> i want to move this to a different set of -- >> i want to have a quick,, we have said that there was national unity during the cold war. but there were also hugely divisive issues -- cold war period, but there were also hugely divisive issues, there was also southeast asia and vietnam, it divided american society and divided the aquatic party. -- the democratic party. in the interviews, madeleine

albright mentioned that during the reagan and bush administrations, she frequently had dinners at her home with people who worked on democratic campaigns, people who were interested in foreign policy and they talked about what we would do if we were in power. she said the hardest thing for them to agree on was when should we use force? and that is because it is an inherently difficult issue, that it is also a politically difficult issue for democrats after the vietnam experience. >> it was madeleine albright who famously confronted general powell on the question, what is the point of having such a great army if you never use it right? >> that is the question, and i think after the cold war, it was more polarizing, because there was a huge move on the isolationism and the economy was very weak, and nobody understood in a broader public why we

couldn't just put up the walls and come home and rebuild america. and i think one of the toughest challenges that president clinton did brilliantly was explain why it had to involve u.s. leadership in meeting these challenges or american prosperity would suffer.