The first foreign policy issue I was involved in concerned land mines. President Clinton wanted to sign the international treaty banning them and receive the credit that he felt the United States was due under his leadership for being the world's principal systematic remover of land mines. From 1996 through 1998, the United States destroyed 3.3 million land mines. We had lost a team of deminers in 1997 when their plane crashed in Namibia. The way the treaty was written, antitank mines were exempted except those of the specific type deployed by the United States in its patrol of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a barren, unpopulated strip of land that was heavily mined. It was an entirely arbitrary distinction. Clinton asked that the treaty include a provision granting the United States additional time to create an alternative to these mines, but the International Campaign Against Land Mines, the group spurring on the issue, influenced the international community, especially Canada, to refuse the American request. In these circumstances Clinton could not allow the United States to sign the treaty; he could not put the thirty-seven thousand US troops on the other side of the demilitarized zone at risk. On September 17 I joined the group working in the Oval Office on a speech he was going to give on the subject, which included the statement “There is a line that I simply cannot cross, and the line is the safety and security of our men and women in uniform.” “I like that,” the President remarked, marking up the text. He reviewed the entire policy record verbally as he read.
In his speech, Clinton pledged to destroy all stockpiles of U.S. mines, besides those in the DMZ, by 1999, and all mines deployed outside Korea by 2003, and to end their placement in Korea by 2006. This was a unilateral decision. Then Jody Williams, chairperson of the International Campaign, won the Nobel Peace Prize in October and used her new prominence to attack Clinton. “I think it's tragic that President Clinton does not want to be on the side of humanity,” she said. Clinton, dismayed by her grandstanding, belatedly sent her a note of congratulations. But he did not regret his decision on the treaty.*