Now it seems Bill Clinton, much like the presidents of the 1950's to 1980's, is eager to compensate for America's past hesitation. The lesson that was learned by not participating in World War II was "aggression must be resisted or it gets worse." .

             Now, Clinton wants to draw an analogy between the United States' eventual involvement in World War II with the decision for bombing runs in Kosovo: the United States must act again to prevent acts of tyranny or mass destruction. Further, the United States in the post World War II era has taken up the responsibility for making sure the world is "safe". McDougall refers to this postwar attitude as meliorism, which "assumes that the United States alone possesses the power, prestige, technology, wealth and altruism needed to reform whole nations." The United States tends to view himself morally favorable and interprets democracy as something that should be actively promoted. At the same time, fascism and authoritarianism are things that should be suppressed. Because the United States has the large resources to promote his vision of a global order, he can choose to involve himself in places where any benefits for such involvement may not be apparent.

             Clinton has to find a way of justifying American military involvement by invoking the United States' global responsibility of ensuring that misdeeds are punished and that its vision of harmony can be maintained. "He knows the public needs a sense of sacrifice, an illusion of moral righteousness, to go with its abdication of global responsibility." However, this kind of argument is limited, because it seems the United States only chooses to exercise its moral superiority only when other, perhaps, economic interests are involved. There was no economic deployment to Rwanda when massive ethnic warfare was happening. This is perhaps because the United States does not consider the region of critical economic importance.