Sale (Traitors
) offers a postmortem of Clinton's evolving foreign policy strategies, which reveals years of covert ops, almost wars and bombing campaigns, in a heavily researched chronicle. From initially posturing as a populist with little inclination to define a foreign policy, through clashes with Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, Clinton developed into a tough player and replaced Anthony Lake and Warren Christopher (lightweights, in Sale's eyes) with Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright and Peter Galbraith. Focusing the narrative on the key players and their internal rivalries and agendas, Sale keeps the pace relatively brisk through what could be a dry parsing of bureaucratic maneuverings. The book occasionally suffers from an excess of detail, and Sale's penchant to lionize or demonize personalities is overwrought and unnecessary (e.g., Galbraith is “a humane man, with a real courtesy of heart”). Still, the book provides insight into an administration that sought to “wage war in a way that would do the least political damage while achieving the maximum effect,” laying bare facets of Clinton's foreign policy that are largely underexamined, including early encounters with al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. (Oct.)
