The presidential campaign of 1992 is remembered for its focus on the US economy, as George Bush, Ross Perot, and Bill Clinton proposed solutions for the state of the nation’s finances. A key challenge for the Clinton campaign was to present their candidate as a viable commander-in-chief, with a viable foreign policy, without betraying the campaign’s focus on the domestic economy. A consideration of key speeches reveals the evolution of the candidate and his foreign policy, as the campaign served as a training ground for power. What emerges is Clinton’s adoption of foreign policy as a positive force in American domestic political life, in contrast to his many predecessors and successors, who regularly utilised foreign policy to assail foreign nations and entities. In doing so, parallels and contrasts with the Trump’s 2016 message emerge, enabling a greater appreciation of the use of campaign rhetoric in the development of US grand strategy.

President Clinton’s time in office coincided with historic global events following the end of the Cold War. The collapse of Communism called for a new US Grand Strategy to address the emerging geopolitical era that brought upheavals in Somalia and the Balkans, economic challenges in Mexico and Europe and the emergence of new entities such as the EU, NAFTA and the WTO. Clinton's handling of these events was crucial to the development of world politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Only by understanding Clinton’s efforts to address the challenges of the post-Cold War era can we understand the strategies of his immediate successors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom inherited and continued Clinton-era policies and practices. James D. Boys sheds new light on the evolution and execution of US Grand Strategy from 1993 to 2001. He explores the manner in which policy was devised and examines the actors responsible for its development, including Bill Clinton, Anthony Lake, Samuel Berger, Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright and Richard Holbrook. He examines the core components of the strategy (National Security, Prosperity Promotion and Democracy Promotion) and how they were implemented, revealing a hitherto unexplored continuity from campaign trail to the White House. Covering the entire duration of Clinton’s presidential odyssey, from his 1991 Announcement Speech to his final day in office, the book draws extensively on newly declassified primary materials and interviews by the author with key members of the Clinton administration to reveal for the first time the development and implementation of US Grand Strategy from deep within the West Wing of the Clinton White House.

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The policy brief is an innovative and underutilised form of teaching, learning and assessment which provides undergraduate students with practical skills that translate directly into the workplace. This alternative to standard essays also challenges students to expand their research, writing and presentation skills. Further pedagogical advantages include assisting students in building personal development portfolios, improving internship programmes and making it difficult to plagiarise. International relations and political science curricula in the UK would benefit from the wider use of this tool.

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Bill Clinton did not seek the presidency to initiate an activist foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War, but instead to champion domestic affairs and economic renewal. However, his foreign policy advisers entered office with their own, often differing, interpretations of the United States' position in the post-Cold War era. After the unity demonstrated by the Gulf War, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations advocated a tactic of Assertive Multilateralism with which to provide international leadership. This acknowledged President George H.W. Bush's approach to foreign policy and was viewed as a way to reduce costs, casualties and American exposure in overseas deployments. Despite these hopes, Assertive Multilateralism did not prevail -why was this the case? Twenty years on, this paper analyses the concept of Assertive Multilateralism, and specifically, the challenges posed to its continued implementation by the Somali mission. The paper finds that unrealistic mission expectations, the prioritizing of domestic agendas, and an inability to control the mission narrative all contributed to cause a fundamental shift in the United States' implementation of foreign policy and raised doubts over its continued commitment to the United Nations. Ultimately, the events in Somalia ensured that foreign policy become a tool with which to attack an administration focused on domestic affairs and unwilling to expend political capital on overseas operations.2 Given the historic junction at which the Clinton Administration came to power it is surprising that more has not been written on its foreign policy initiatives. Nancy Soderberg noted in 2005 "no insider of the Clinton White House has discussed the broad challenges involving the use of force and diplomacy faced by the administration." Such a pattern continues, with no former Clinton official having adequately addressed the administration's development of foreign policy. Accordingly, the administration risks A Lost Opportunity : The Flawed Implementation of Assertive Multilateralism (...