Clark, Wesley Kanne (1944-…), is a retired United States Army general. He declared his candidacy in 2003 for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in the 2004 election. However, he dropped out of the race in early 2004 due to insufficient voter support.
Before entering politics, Clark—who is often called Wes Clark—had served 34 years in the armed forces. At the climax of his career, he was commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a defense alliance of European and North American nations.
Clark was born Wesley Kanne on Dec. 23, 1944, in Chicago. His father, Benjamin Kanne, died when Wesley was a child. Wesley’s mother then moved the family to Little Rock, Arkansas. She later remarried, and Wesley’s stepfather, Victor Clark, adopted him.
In 1966, Wesley Clark graduated first in his class from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. On a Rhodes scholarship, he received a master’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University in England in 1968. In 1975, he received a master’s degree in military science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. In 1983, he graduated from the National War College, an institution operated jointly by all branches of the armed forces for study in national security policy and strategy.
Clark headed a company of infantry in Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1957-1975). In 1970, he received four bullet wounds in a battle. During the next 30 years, Clark moved up through Army ranks. From 1984 to 1991, he served as an instructor and then as commander of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, the U.S. Army’s center for desert training.
In the mid-1990’s, Clark led military negotiations for the peace plan that ended Bosnia’s war for independence from Yugoslavia (see Bosnia-Herzegovina ). In 1996, he was promoted to the rank of four-star general. From then until he retired from the military in 2000, Clark led the U.S. European Command and served as head of NATO. Under his command, NATO carried out air strikes against forces of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia to halt attacks against ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s province of Kosovo (see Kosovo ).
Clark is the author of Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat (2001); Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire (2003); and A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country (2007).
