Clinton 'Doctrine:' Is It Substance or Spin? President Outlines New Tenet on When to Intervene Abroad, but Critics

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For a president to get the word "doctrine" attached to his name, he's got to do something big, something lasting, in the area of foreign affairs.

Remember the Truman Doctrine? That was the cold war strategy to contain communism. The Monroe Doctrine? That was the 1823 policy to keep Europe out of the Americas, a guideline that influenced presidents into this century.

Now, in the aftermath of Kosovo, there's the "Clinton doctrine." As recently explained by the president, the international community should stop ethnic cleansing and genocide whether it's within, or beyond, a country's borders. "If the world community has the power to stop it," it should, he said. But …