Lieutenant General Wesley K. Clark said Bosnia will be the turning point in defining United States foreign policy in a post-Cold War world in his speech Saturday night titled "What is America Trying To Do?: Bosnia and Beyond."
Clark, the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy for the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded the week-long Senior Symposium in Collis Common Ground with an audience of about 75 people.
"Bosnia is the pivot point on which American foreign policy is going to be judged," Clark said. "If we succeed, you are going to see an American foreign policy that is international and collaborative."
Clark then explained that the fall of the Cold War order, in which the Brezhnev Doctrine no longer maintains the divisions between East and West.
"We have today a post-Cold War world. We have different dangers and different challenges," he said.
Clark then outlined four categories of danger the U.S. faces in this new world order.
The first two categories were "international instability," created by regional instabilities in areas of the world such as the Balkans and the "danger of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
The other two categories were "threat of dangers to democracy and reform in the former Soviet Union" as well as transnational dangers seen in terrorism and drug trafficking complete his list of four problem areas.
Mentioning a series of conflicts in which the U.S. has engaged since the end of the Cold War, Clark pointed out the new type of foreign policy the U.S. has demonstrated.
He discussed the military's efforts in Greece, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Rwanda, Somalia and Turkey.
"I could name another 25 hot spots that we are tending," he added.
Despite all of this recent activity, Clark emphasized that "nothing has been tougher than Bosnia."
"Our vital interests in NATO and the cohesiveness in Europe ... are at stake," he said. "Our vital interests with the Soviet Union as well as our vital interests in our relations with the Islamic World" all come together in Bosnia.
Giving a brief history of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, Clark attributed the government's final decision to militarily intervene in the war to Serbian atrocities.
Labeling it "a terrible time," Clark said that "by late July of last summer, the U.S. knew we had to act."
As the senior military advisor to the assistant secretary of state in the former Yugoslavia, Clark was personally involved in negotiations with all parties of the conflict.
He described the difficulty outside powers encountered in attempting to end the war.
Explaining that the time he spent in negotiations in the former Yugoslavia blurs together into a general haze, Clark said in going through the negotiations, "you've lived more than you can remember."
But Clark said he is optimistic about the future of United States foreign policy.
He stressed the need for the U.S. to stay engaged internationally, citing that worldwide problems occurred as a result of isolationist policy at the end of World War I.
"American leadership is needed no less today in the world scene that it was 70 years ago," he said.
Clark made an appeal to the Class of 1996.
"We'll need your help, your leadership, if we're going to keep the country as the last best hope of mankind," he said.
Opening up the speech to a 20-minute discussion, Clark answered a barrage of student questions about Bosnia and other "hotspots" in U.S. foreign policy.
Lieutenant General Clark graduated from West Point as valedictorian of his class and moved on to spend two years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Serving as a White House Fellow under President Ford, Clark has been directly involved with foreign policy issues of the United States.
