Word: foreign
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Senate vote makes us look bad with both allies and adversaries, weakening our position for dealing with all of them," says TIME Washington correspondent Massimo Calabresi. "It calls into question our credibility in negotiating treaties and other foreign policy initiatives, and raises doubts about whether the U.S. is capable of providing leadership." Following the CTBT defeat, the President came out swinging, telling the world that he was engaged in a titanic struggle with "isolationist" Republicans, and that he planned to prevail. That was unlikely to reassure Washington?s friends abroad; the fact that the Senate debacle occurred when partisan skirmishing...
...Clinton?s righteous indignation over those who had placed domestic politicking over foreign policy priorities raised a few eyebrows among some U.S. allies, who have long been concerned that the President has a habit of doing the same thing. "This was badly mishandled on both sides of Washington," says Calabresi. "The Republicans scheduled a vote and then tried but failed to find a way out. But the administration clearly hadn?t done nearly enough work to muster support for the treaty." Adds TIME White House correspondent Jay Branegan, "It?s too bad that the President offered his most spirited defense...
...Clinton has long been criticized for an apparent failure to generate a coherent foreign policy ? and to risk any of his own political capital on going to bat for it. On the issue of the U.S. repaying its long-standing delinquent debt to the United Nations, for example, the White House periodically throws up its arms in exasperation but has for the most part declined to go head-to-head with the Republican legislators obstructing the funds. "Clinton has been accused of offering no overarching vision in his foreign policy, instead simply managing crisis after crisis with no clear sense...
...foreign policy drift precedes the Lewinsky scandal. In fact, the CTBT debacle confirms a steady trend throughout the '90s of diminishing attention to Washington?s international commitments, and a diminishing of the office of the presidency as the locus of foreign policy decision making. Voting down an arms control agreement painstakingly negotiated with Washington?s key allies and adversaries would have been almost unthinkable during the Cold War. Not that the Senate didn?t have the constitutional right to do so, but the global conflict with the Soviets created a political culture in which partisan debates ended at America...
Perhaps it should be of no surprise that in recent years the most successful cinematic portrayals of American life have come not from native directors but foreigners. Unlike often-jaded American filmmakers, foreign directors have a unique perspective and can be more attuned to more subtle aspects of American culture. Ang Lee has proved himself to be quite an insightful observer of American life, directing both Pushing Hands, a well-told story about a mixed Asian marriage and the cultural struggles it creates, and The Ice Storm, a subtle and powerful film about WASP culture in the '70s. Both films...