The Return to Realpolitik: American Identity, Foreign Policy and the Clinton Administration in the Post-Cold War World, 1991-1994

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between the identity crisis in the United States during the early 1990s, a result of the end of the Cold War and the abatement of anti-communism, and the rejection of liberal internationalist principles by the Clinton administration. This rejection was most apparent in the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia and the lack of an interventionist or humanitarian response to the genocide in Rwanda. The goals of this study are to demonstrate the lack of consensus amongst foreign policy intellectuals and policymakers in the absence of anti-communism and containment policy, to establish the real world implications of ideological uncertainty and doubt in the United States, and to assert the importance of the early 1990s as a pivotal point in the history of American foreign policy. Ultimately, this study concludes that the identity crisis of the 1990s and its influence on the Clinton administration fostered the inaction of the United States during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.