Five Inauguration Days: the US and the Middle East

• Autores: RICHARD A. CLARKE
• Localización: Middle East Journal, ISSN 0026-3141, Vol. 71, Nº. 1, 2017, págs. 147-154
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The most contentious American Presidential election in 125 years had finally been settled by the US Supreme Court the month before. Now the outgoing President, William Jefferson Clinton rode up Pennsylvania Avenue in a mammoth new Cadillac, sitting next to the man he did not want to be his successor, the former Governor of Texas, George W. Bush. America stood in generally high regard in the Middle East on that day. In his eight years, Bill Clinton had used force sparingly in the region and had tried to promote peace negotiations. Indeed, Clinton had failed only weeks before in a final attempt to negotiate a peace agreement between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The new American President had little personal foreign policy or national security expertise. That lack of familiarity with the issues, peoples, and leaders of the Middle East was, however, thought by the punditry of the time to be more than compensated by his choice of a national security team