When this blog began in 2008, Hillary Clinton was a Senator and a
former presidential candidate. She was campaigning for the Obama-Biden
ticket, and she and all of the rest of us fully expected that after the
election she would simply return to the Senate and put her pretty nose
to the grindstone once again. The focus here has been on Hillary's
work and not on her job, and the blog handle has never included her
titles. So while the past four years have necessarily focused on
foreign policy because of her job, there has never been an intention
for this blog to be mistaken for one that lent more attention to State
Department matters than to the last Secretary of State.
That said, I am drawn back to matters of State today due to yesterday's
Politico article by Glenn Thrush,
John Kerry: The un-Hillary Clinton.
Thrush's take on the Kerry secretariat, stunningly premature since all
Kerry has done so far is make a speech and board the Big Blue Plane,
overwhelmingly shifts the paradigm back to years not only before Hillary
Clinton, but pre-Rice and pre-Albright. It is as if he is broadcasting
"Thank God, mature white men are back in charge at Foggy Bottom."
Prejudgment
this predictive has not been seen since Barack Obama received the Nobel
Peace Prize prompting a clear-sighted Michelle Obama to remark, "But he
hasn't
done anything yet," unless you count all of the
hysterical momentum behind Hillary 2016 PACs and the assuredness with
which they insist that she will run and will win. We shall see about
that when she makes her decision and not when third-hand rumors abound.
Thrush begins with this astounding statement.
...
she’s not necessarily his model for how to do the job. He’s more drawn
to power players of recent history — George Shultz, James Baker, Henry
Kissinger and George Marshall — secretaries who have wielded
considerably more influence inside the White House than Clinton.
“He’s
going to be more willing than Hillary was to tackle the big things… If
he were able to help broker an exit for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad,
for instance, that would be huge for him,” says a veteran senior
diplomat who knows Kerry and has served as an adviser to officials in
both parties.
People who "knew"
Hillary, in late 2008, insisted that she would remain in the Senate and
not accept Secretary of State. There were cries of protest from certain
Hillary quarters when she agreed to tackle the job. Dark scenarios
arose wherein the sub-secretaries for regions-at-risk, Holbrooke,
Mitchell, and Ross (her idea) would steal her fire. Some feared security
players in the White House, particularly Susan Rice and Samantha Power
(the latter of whom Thrush apparently is unaware), would override her
every agenda, a fear resoundingly overturned when,
between
stops in Paris on March 14 2011 and March 19 2011, both women were
instrumental in helping her change President Obama's prior stance
on joining the No Fly Zone cooperative over embattled Libya. If this
was not tackling a "big thing" I do not know what is. The trio also
helped prove that government by women can be every bit as bold and risk-taking as government by men.
Issues
surrounding Syria are unlikely to differ simply because the U.S. has a
new SOS. If a trustworthy opposition coalition does not emerge, aid to
the opposition is unlikely to change. Kerry heroically driving Assad
out is wishful thinking on the part of Thrush.
It’s
not that Clinton didn’t try to do big things, State Department watchers
say. But Obama’s determination to avoid new foreign entanglements — and
his insistence on tight control over diplomacy — dictated a narrower
approach, focusing on women’s rights and smaller international
initiatives, like re-establishing relations with Myanmar.
Oooohhhhh!!!!
Suddenly I see! First of all that word "entanglements" somehow implies
military rather than diplomatic. We should pursue the latter in
avoidance of the former, and HRC was never Secretary of Defense. She
certainly generated plenty of treaties (many of which the administration
failed to push for ratification) and memoranda of understanding during
her tenure . Anyone who thinks Hillary Clinton's efforts on the part of
women and girls was Obama's idea, has not been paying attention.
Folks have pointed to several of HRC's major speeches as ground-breaking, her
internet freedom speech of January 2010 among them. For my money it was the very low profile
Barnard commencement speech of May 18, 2009
that laid out her agenda very clearly. There she truly broke new
ground, but hardly anyone noticed. Can it be the "girls' school" venue,
the emphasis on conditions for women globally, the encouragement to
make bold moves using everyday social networking tools, the notion that
half the world's population should and might finally be spotlighted as
deserving a place at the table? Nothing about that agenda was narrow.
The degree to which she was able to weave her agenda into a single
cloth of a foreign policy that can rightly be dubbed Clinton Doctrine is
highlighted in the following as she wrapped up her tour as Secretary of
State.
1.
Hillary Clinton’s Classic Speech to the Lower Mekong Initiative Womens’ Gender Equality and Empowerment Dialogue
2.
Video: Hillary Clinton at the Foreign Policy Group’s “Transformational Trends 2013″ Forum
3.
American Leadership: Hillary Clinton’s Final Address as Secretary of State
Former
State Department official Aaron David Miller says Kerry can afford to
be “more ambitious” because he poses less of a threat to Obama’s team -
Interesting remark! The team-player non plus a threat? What would make them think that?
Thrush
goes on to quote Kerry on George Marshall. Certainly, in the course of
her many remarks as SOS, Hillary made clear her admiration of Marshall
and agreement with his motives and strategies. At least once, as a
vehicle to explain how foreign policy is also domestic policy, (the
topic of Kerry's maiden major address as SOS - and not a new idea), she
put the Marshall Plan in the context of her own family, the plan
following on the heels of her father's return from war, just as Kerry
did from the perspective of his father's diplomatic service in post-war
Germany. Where is the great difference there?
Discussing Kerry's decision to travel first to Europe and the
Middle East Thrush suggests he will tackle the Middle East peace process
more robustly than Hillary did, ignoring Hillary's tough stance against
settlement construction in East Jerusalem in late Spring 2009, and
Netanyahu's intransigence at the time. Recent Israeli elections are
likely to affect Netanyahu's position. This does not guarantee Kerry a
success where every secretary of state since 1947 has failed, and we
wish him luck. But if he does succeed it will be arguably not that
Hillary was weak, but that Netanyahu has been weakened. I am not even
factoring in here Obama having reined Hillary in by November 2009 (
Secretary Clinton’s Remarks With Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu) when she stated:
What
the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the
policy of settlements, which he has just described – no new starts, for
example – is unprecedented in the context of the prior two negotiations.
It’s also the fact that for 40 years, presidents of both parties have
questioned the legitimacy of settlements.
All
of this is not to say that Secretary Kerry will not do well. In fact
it has little to do with Kerry and more to do with Thrush's POV which
appears to be one of relief that after 16 years DOS is finally back in
the hands of someone who is not going to nag about inclusion of women
and girls at the big table, someone who is more likely to be spending
time behind closed doors in ministerial halls and not imposing upon the
office the indignity crawling into tents - as Condi Rice did - to talk
to women in African refugee camps or tour women's start-ups, give town
halls, visit the marketplaces, and mix with civil society on every
continent she visited, as Hillary Clinton did.
Hillary
Clinton brought statecraft into the 21st century. Thrush's psychic
predictions see foreign policy moving backward into the 20th century -
an "ambitious" time machine agenda that is stale and stuffy. No matter
what John Kerry said or the "insiders" intimate, it is unlikely that a
smart man like John Kerry will abandon Hillary Clinton's innovations.
