Liz Saville Roberts: “Mr. President, Senator Cleland has very effectively outlined the evolution of our nation's foreign policy, from…”

“Mr. President, Senator Cleland has very effectively outlined the evolution of our nation's foreign policy, from Washington and Adams (chary of foreign involvement and alliances) to the Monroe Doctrine to Wilson's idealism and all of the so called ``ism's''--economism, realism, humanitarianism, minimalism, unilateralism, regionalism, isolationism with intervention and non intervention tossed in. Now, that is quite a foreign policy tossed salad. But, the point is, discussion and definition must preface clarity, purpose and consensus and Senator Cleland has done just that along with a Clelandism, a new concept he will define in his closing remarks, ``Realistic Restraint.'' In setting the framework for discussion on the global role our nation will play in the 21st century, the benchmark used by virtually all observers is the post-cold-war period. Ashton Carter, professor of science and international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and an Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy in the first Clinton administration, put it very well when he recently wrote: The kindest thing that might be said of American behavior ten years into the post-Cold War world is that it is A- STRATEGIC, responding dutifully to the (crisis du jour) with little sense of priority or consistency.…”