The Clinton administration wasn’t nearly unilateral enough for my taste, but it also was multilateral enough to satisfy current Democratic standards. Here’s a bit from my latest syndicated column:
“If a U.S. administration were to dictate war policy to its allies in a situation in which the allies’ troops were in danger; were to wield its veto at the United Nations in defiance of all other Security Council members; were to wage a war without U.N. approval to avoid a veto by another permanent Security Council member — what, then, would that administration be called? Unilateralist? Cowboyish? Dangerously prone to “going it alone”? Perhaps all those things, but the best label would simply be “the Clinton administration.” President Clinton did all the above in the 1990s. Liberals now demanding near international unanimity before Bush moves on Iraq should recall the stark lessons of the limits of “multilateralism” from an administration whose foreign policy they supported….”