Hillary Clinton’s Impressive Legacy in Foggy Bottom
.. yes, SilverSurfer, the election race is on .. excerpt page 2 ..
Hillary Clinton is a shaper. She clearly believes that the United States ought to play an outsized leadership role in strengthening the international order. However, she entered an administration with more modest views about America’s role in the world. Obama places a greater priority on grand ideas about domestic policy and what the president calls “nation building at home.” Clinton also came into the office during one of the worst financial crises in U.S. history, after the divisive Iraq war, and with the United States generally appearing to be in decline. Moreover, even though she had a regular lunch with President Obama and put the divisive campaign behind her, it was always going to be difficult for her to forge the kind of bond that Acheson had with Truman, Shultz with Reagan and Baker with Bush.
To the extent that Clinton fell short, it was not for a lack of tough-mindedness, vision or effectiveness. It was that she was a shaper and a believer in America as the “indispensable nation” who was working for a restrainer who prioritized domestic policy and characterizes his own doctrine as “don’t do stupid s***.” For instance, as she acknowledges in the book, she favored supporting rebel forces in Syria early on in the civil war, before all the available options became lousy (she describes Syria, aptly, as a “wicked problem”). She was also more aware than the president of the risks of partnering with authoritarian powers, such as when she argued for hitting “the pause button” on the Russian reset. Clinton sometimes lost the argument for a strong American role—in Afghanistan as well as in Syria, for example—but not always. The “pivot to Asia” might be her greatest legacy, one where she demonstrated her vision, her ability to refine and reorient her boss’s thinking, her tough-mindedness and her ability to execute and garden.
Although she began her term more solicitous of China, downplaying the importance of human rights, she quickly adjusted to the reality that Beijing was pushing the United States and its allies around and that the United States needed to push back. Her strong advocacy for U.S. national interests must have been successful—the Chinese turned on her with a vengeance after she defined core U.S. national interests in the Asia Pacific at an annual meeting of Asian nations in Vietnam in 2010. Her work led to an opening to former pariah state Burma, a warming of relations with Indonesia and was concluded by a defense pact recently signed by Obama with the Philippines. And she found her voice again on human rights in China—over the objections of unnamed White House advisers, who opposed her efforts to free the blind dissident Chen Guangcheng. “Some of the president’s aides worried that we were about to destroy America’s relationship with China,” she writes in Hard Choices. “But no one was prepared to be responsible for leaving Chen to his fate by telling us to stand down.”
The pivot was not just her doing and it had the support of the president and senior White House officials, but it is inconceivable that it would have occurred if the secretary of state had been John Kerry or Susan Rice or, for that matter, Condoleezza Rice, who left most Asia matters to her deputy, or Colin Powell. Her leadership role was crucial. The Asia pivot is one of those grand strategic initiatives that will wax and wane but ultimately endure over time for the simple reason that greater U.S. engagement in Asia is a strategic necessity.
For someone with a hawkish reputation, Clinton also had considerable success in broadening America’s base of support around the world. This did not occur by accident but was the consequence of engaging civil society beyond other governments—something her successor has largely eschewed. After the soft power disasters of the 2000s, she showed how the United States can pursue a proactive role in the world while also building international legitimacy.
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Clinton may not have reached the heights of the five greats, but she has a strong claim to be the most consequential and best post-Cold War secretary of state.
Lawrence Eagleburger’s short tenure was defined by his determination to avoid involvement in the Balkans, which came at a very high cost. Warren Christopher had a legalistic understanding of the world, let the disaster in the Balkans unfold and accomplished little of note.
Colin Powell lacked influence in the White House, limited his travel for fear of bureaucratic infighting and is remembered mainly for his presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq’s chimerical weapons of mass destruction. Condoleezza Rice had a significant success in deepening relations with India but struggled to fix the strategic errors made while she was national security adviser.
Apart from Clinton, Madeleine Albright is the other post-Cold War secretary who enjoyed considerable success. She pushed successfully for intervention in Kosovo and NATO expansion, which has played a crucial role in ensuring today’s Ukraine crisis is much more limited and contained than it would have been if Central and Eastern Europe were left out in the cold.
In the post-Cold War world, Clinton’s record of rebalancing to Asia, pushing for a more assertive foreign policy within the Obama administration and reaching out to civil society to restore the perception of the United States as a legitimate leader in the international order stands out. It’s too early to reach a definitive judgment—something best left to historians—but she has provided a roadmap for other secretaries to follow.
Historically, success in American diplomacy has belonged to the shapers, to those who push the boundaries of America’s influence without breaching the limits. Clinton very much belongs in that tradition.
One of the reasons why it has been hard for her to explain her tenure as secretary of state is that after the economic crisis and a decade of difficult wars, the American people are more suspicious of international leadership. In his second term, and after the departure of key shapers like Clinton, Bob Gates, Leon Panetta and David Petraeus, President Obama has shifted more toward a restraint strategy, in keeping with the public mood.
History, however, shows that the pendulum of public opinion in American foreign policy is in perpetual motion between greater and lesser engagement in the world. When it swings back toward the shapers, Clinton may get the credit she deserves.
Thomas Wright is fellow at the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. Follow him on twitter at @thomaswright08.
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