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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (14670)	12/25/2001 2:39:47 AM
From: tekboy	Respond to of 281500

Carter very much wanted to play a major diplomatic role during the Clinton years, and kept offering himself for various missions. But he was seen as his own person, not amenable to taking orders, and no president wants to use such an emissary. Moreover, Clinton was indeed probably averse to having the limelight shared, and insecure about having it seem that he needed help on foreign policy. So although Carter was used in Haiti (along with Colin Powell) to get the coup leaders to stand down before the planned invasion, he didn't play much of a role beyond that. Some give Carter credit, btw, for doing some useful freelance diplomacy against the wishes of the administration during the 1994 crisis with North Korea, but I don't know the details of the case well enough to judge whether he helped or hurt things... Clinton's reasons were pretty standard, btw, so it's not like another president would have leaped at the idea--and it's also not clear what kind of impact such fly-by emissaries ever have (think Jesse Jackson). James Baker also was happy to serve, and played a useful role as a Clinton special emissary on the Western Sahara question. The fact that it was such an unglamorous assignment shows that he was a stand-up guy willing to do real work without the prospect of headlines... tb@yawn.com