Title: Bill Clinton: Foreign Affairs | Miller Center
Headings: Bill Clinton: Foreign Affairs
Bill Clinton: Foreign Affairs
Missteps in Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti
Doctrine of Enlargement and Policy Successes
Ethnic Wars in Europe
Dealings with the Former Soviet Union

Content: Dealings with the Former Soviet Union
The former Soviet Union and its East European client states constituted yet another challenge for the Clinton administration. The President lobbied successfully for the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), indicating to Russia that neither nuclear weapons nor large numbers of troops would be placed in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, some Russians regarded expansion as an aggressive step by NATO and the United States. Clinton also supported the besieged leadership of Russian president Boris Yeltsin as well as the funneling of billions of dollars in loans to Russia from the International Monetary Fund. In 1999, Clinton's support for financial aid to Russia came under attack in the face of mounting evidence that much of the borrowed money may have been stolen by an organized criminal syndicate which included members of Yeltsin's own family. However, supporters of Clinton's pro-Yeltsin policies credit his administration with an important achievement not easily measured in dollars or in the short run: the security of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Working through the provisions of the Nunn-Lugar Act, the administration provided extensive technical assistance and funding to the former Soviet states in the safeguarding of nuclear power plants and dismantling of nuclear weapons—an astounding achievement in view of the animosity that once existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. By the end of the Clinton presidency, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange between the superpowers was almost nonexistent.