Mme. Secretary is back in D.C. on the heels of her longest trip so far as Secretary of State. In her wake, a few short interviews and a really nice review of her job performance.
Interview With Greg Sheridan of The Australian
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of StateMelbourne, AustraliaNovember 8, 2010
QUESTION: Madam Secretary, thanks so much. I wonder if I might start by asking you, this year we’ve seen a lot of really tough, and some would say provocative actions by China – the rare earths matter that you referenced the other day, the South China Sea claims and the way they’ve preceded, the warning to the U.S. not to send its aircraft carrier into the Yellow Sea. How do you feel about that? I mean, why are we seeing such strident negative – I promise you that that noise is harmless.
PARTICIPANT: Sorry, (inaudible).
QUESTION: It is, it is, it is. Why are we seeing that and how do you assess those moves?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Greg, let me start by saying the Obama Administration decided very early on to reengage vigorously with Asia. The first trip I took as Secretary of State was to Asia, and obviously China was on that agenda, and this is now my sixth trip. And our goal has been to develop what we call a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship, where everything is on the table, and where if there are hiccups or challenges in the relationship it doesn’t upend everything else that we are doing. So to that end, Secretary Geithner and I co-chair the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, and we have upped the involvement on our side and seen a comparable level of involvement, government-wide on the Chinese side. So we’re having conversations that are in-depth and very substantive on a range of matters.
Having said that, we know there are the usual challenges that we’ve had to navigate, including Tibet and Taiwan. And in so doing, we’ve made it clear to the Chinese that we will not agree with them, but we’re going to continue to press them. And with some of these recent activities, we think it is part of the testing process that countries go through. And when China first told us at a meeting of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue that they viewed the South China Sea as a core interest, I immediately responded and said we don’t agree with that. So they were on notice that if they were –
QUESTION: Was that Dai Bingguo that said that to you?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, yeah. So if they were in the process of extending their efforts to claim and control to the detriment of international law, freedom of navigation, maritime security, the claims by their neighbors, that was a concerning matter. And therefore, we worked with a lot of the ASEAN countries who are directly impacted and 12 of us raised it at the ASEAN Regional Forum last July to make it clear that issues like that have to be resolved in accordance with the rule of law. And I think you just have to be constantly making clear that, speaking for the United States, we support the peaceful rise and the economic success of China, but in so doing, we expect China to be a responsible member of the international community whose actions are in accordance with their size and stature and in the context of the international rules of the road. So – I think you see that as part of the ongoing relationship between us and China and between others and China.
Now, with regard to the rare earth issue, the Chinese claim that they did not in any way interfere with the delivery and the continuing exporting of rare earth minerals. Whether or not their motivation was as they describe it or as the Japanese fear it, the fact is they control the vast majority of the supply. That’s not healthy. So in effect, the Chinese action was a wake-up call to the rest of the world. Now you see Japan and Vietnam cooperating; you see Australia moving forward; the United States is looking at our potential deposits. I think that’s a good outcome of what may have been an inadvertent effort to send a message to Japan.
QUESTION: Yes, yes. Madam Secretary, at the sort of – at the broadest level, the U.S. has sustained security in the Asia Pacific for 60 years. It’s been a big call on the U.S. budget. With the Iraq and Afghanistan commitments with the budget re-pressure the U.S. is under, does the U.S. have both the will and the budgetary resources to continue to sustain that forward military deployment in the Asia Pacific?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Speaking for this Administration, yes we do. And we are committed to doing so. Here, for the AUSMIN, are our Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen and our Pacific Commander Admiral Walsh. And we are looking for ways to modernize and update our presence in the Pacific, working with allies like Australia, looking for opportunities to partner with new countries that are assuming more active roles in the region, like Vietnam. So I think you will see the United States committed to its role as a Pacific power. And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve made six trips, why Secretary Gates went to the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ First Meeting – to make it clear that we’re here to stay; that our role in stabilizing and providing the context for peace and prosperity in the post-World War II era may not look exactly the same as it did for the past 60 years because the threats have evolved, the needs have altered, but we will be here and we will be very active.
QUESTION: Yes. Madam Secretary, one of the striking developments which you’ve over seen is the U.S. joining the East Asia Summit. That means the American President is committed to two Asia Pacific summits a year – the EAS and APEC. There is some level of skepticism about whether a president can actually do that. Do you think that’s completely realistic? And I guess the Administration really profoundly thought all the implications of this through before they did it.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we did. I strongly recommended to the President that we join the East Asia Summit, because APEC and EAS have different memberships and somewhat different missions. And if we are going to be sustaining and strengthening our leadership role in the Pacific, then we need to be part of the architecture that is developing in this part of the world. I feel similarly about ASEAN which is really at the core of the East Asia Summit, which is why I recommended accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.
Presidential schedules are incredibly difficult. I will not imply anything other than that. But the President is committed to the East Asia Summit next year in Indonesia; APEC will be in Hawaii in 2011. And we should work out scheduling so that those who have to travel the furthest perhaps could have their needs taken into account. But however the logistics work out, the United States is very pleased to have joined the East Asia Summit and we look forward to being at the table when political and security and other matters are discussed.
PARTICIPANT: I think we have time for one more.
QUESTION: Well, Madam President – sorry, Madam Secretary, I think I heard you call Kevin Rudd prime minister the other day.
SECRETARY CLINTON: You know what, I didn’t know I had, and it was the last thing I said to him at the end. Yeah.
QUESTION: (Laughter.) Madam Secretary, my last question is I guess a two-parter. The Australian commitment in Afghanistan, you’ve been very complimentary about, but at the end of the day, the U.S. has 80,000 odd troops there or more; we have 1,500. We had even few in Iraq. My specific and then my general – my specific is: Isn’t the truth really that we’re doing a disproportionately small amount of heavy lifting, and you kindly Americans are just being very polite about the weakness of our effort? And secondly, is Australia contributing everything it needs to keep this alliance vital between the U.S. and Australia going forward in the decades ahead? And I apologize about that.
SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s okay, don’t worry about it. Well, first Greg, I want to underscore how much we value the Australian contribution. You’re a nation of 22 million people, we have 300 million. Your 1,550 complement is certainly proportionate, but also more importantly qualitative. If you speak with our commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, they are very impressed by what you’re doing in Uruzgan and your special forces that work literally hand-in-hand with our NATO ISAF efforts.
So we, number one, are impressed by the commitment and the quality of the presence that you have sent to Afghanistan, but that’s not all you’re doing. I mean, you are training police in Australia; you are working with Malaysia to train teachers for Afghanistan; you are very helpful with embedded military and civilian experts in both NATO ISAF headquarters and working with the Afghan Government. So the commitment from Australia is highly regarded and very necessary. And, in fact, we’ve just finished the first hour or so of our AUSMIN dialogue, and I think the Australian people would have been quite gratified by the praise that Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen heaped on your troops. We know it comes with a sacrifice. You’ve taken casualties, and we’re deeply sorry for your losses. And I want to extend through you my condolences to family members.
But Australia understands that we are in this fight together because we have to take a stand against the forces of terrorism and extremism in the very place where they emanated from and where they continue to threaten on that Pakistan-Afghan border the well-being of people in my country, your country, and so many others. And I followed the debate that you had in your parliament. I thought it was a vigorous, intelligent, well-informed debate, and we appreciate the bipartisan support that we get from your political leadership on behalf of this mission.
QUESTION: And the alliance overall, you think is going to go forward, hopefully --
SECRETARY CLINTON: I am very high on the alliance. We are used to working with our Australian friends. We see your diplomatic and security efforts as being first rate. We want to cooperate even more closely because you taken the lead in some places that you are much more knowledgeable about and more effective than we could be from far away. So --
QUESTION: Would you have in mind there the South Pacific?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I think the South Pacific is exactly right. We want to really learn from you what more we can do to improve the life of the people in the small island nations, but also to make sure that when it comes to climate change or terrorism or the plethora of issues that we deal with together between the United States and Australia, we are leveraging and taking advantage of the strengths that Australia brings to our alliance.
PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible)
QUESTION: Sure thing. Madam Secretary, thank you very much.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Such a pleasure. Thank you, Greg.
So NZ's John Key is not the only one to get titles mixed up! In all fairness, though, it is Kevin Rudd she was talking about, and he WAS PM.
Interview With Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of StateMelbourne, AustraliaNovember 8, 2010
SECRETARY CLINTON: Hi, Hillary Clinton.
QUESTION: Hello.
SECRETARY CLINTON: How are you, Peter?
QUESTION: Great pleasure to meet you.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Nice to meet you.
QUESTION: So how’s it been so far?
SECRETARY CLINTON: It’s been great. I mean, first of all, I love your country and I was disappointed that I had to turn back from my trip on the way here at the beginning of the year for AUSMIN because of the Haiti earthquake. So it’s wonderful to finally be here and to be in Melbourne, which is a city that I had not visited before.
QUESTION: And you’ll be waiting for what, 15 or something years to come back, right? (Laughter.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, I’m going to come back more often. That’s my hope.
QUESTION: So what’s – what have you achieved today? I presume you’ve intensified the alliance.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I think we have had, so far, very intense and productive consultations. And I think your paper ran the op-ed that Bob Gates and I wrote about the alliance, which is a sort of shorthand version of our assessment. We are very happy with the cooperation that we receive in defense, diplomacy, and development – what I call the three Ds of national security and foreign policy. And we have an opportunity in this setting to go into depth on issues that affect both of us, and to look for ways that we can better coordinate our cooperation, better leverage Australia’s considerable strengths, particularly in this region, and gain insight from the knowledge and expertise. As Kevin Rudd said in our earlier meeting, because of Cricket and Commonwealth, Australia has a lot of relationships that are quite deep and longstanding that we think are going to be increasingly important for our security going forward.
QUESTION: So on the first D, defense, there’s been talk of an intensification, use of bases, space and cyber agreements. Have they all occurred?
SECRETARY CLINTON: No, this is a work in progress. This is an ongoing consultation. For decades, we have shared facilities, we’ve done joint exercises. We have appreciated Australia hosting some of our space facilities and technologies as well. So as we explore what each of us needs to bring to the alliance in accordance with our respective expertise and experience, we’re going to be looking at how we can really prepare for this alliance to be even stronger going forward. We face new challenges. I mean, that’s a self-evident and obvious thing to say. So what worked for the past 60 years in terms of America’s role in the Pacific, in terms of our AUSMIN in-depth cooperation has to be carefully evaluated to make sure that it’s meeting the challenges of the future.
QUESTION: And how do you adapt it to the future?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, (inaudible) take the Pacific island nations. When it comes to humanitarian needs, Australia is right in the forefront and so is the United States. How can we better prepare to mitigate, prevent disasters, and respond? We shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel. I mean, when disaster strikes, speaking for my own country, we shouldn’t say, “Okay, well, okay, where’s our check list? What are going to do this time?” We should have planning and contingency preparedness that we work out with Australia. Or take the unfortunate spread of terrorism. We can’t wish it away. We know that we’re facing an enemy that’s very adaptable, clever, and deadly. Australia knows that because of the horrors of the Bali bombing, and we, obviously, because of 9/11.
We have great intelligence cooperation, but we also need to be sure that we are keeping our eyes open as widely as possible and how do we go about ensuring that. I mean, I – you could go on and on. There is so much that we do together that is already successful, some of which is clear because you cover it in the press, but some of which is, for obvious reasons, not. And so we’re looking very thoroughly at every aspect of our alliance going forward.
QUESTION: Is this a part of the U.S. signal to the region that the U.S. is here to stay?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes. Absolutely. My first trip was to Asia; this is my sixth trip. The President is in Asia as we speak. We know that there was a feeling here in the region that the United States was abdicating its presence and leadership. As I have traveled the region, I can tell you that there’s been an enormous amount of relief on the part of leaders, and none more so than our alliance partners. We have close alliance relationships with Japan and South Korea and Thailand and the Philippines, obviously Australia. And what we are intent upon doing is not just demonstrating we’re back by flying from capital to capital, but putting real meat on the bones of that position so that – I talk about forward-deployed diplomacy. Obviously, our military, in close cooperation with yours, is looking at how we can upgrade the presence of the United States in partnership with Australia and others. So it’s a full court press, but also with a very conscious awareness that we just can’t do what we used to do and expect to be successful, because we have different challenges and unfortunately different threats.
QUESTION: Exactly on that point, when you say countries of allies have been reassured. Reassured – sorry, you said relieved. Relieved, why? What’s –
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I – without naming names, I can tell you that presidents and prime ministers with whom I have met across the region were very open in saying that they had felt that because of our involvement in Iraq and particularly Afghanistan, that we were not as engaged in the Pacific region as we historically had been. And so when I, clearly, explained that we intended to be, but that we had to do it in accordance with where we are today, not where we were in 1960 or 1950, that has started these intensive discussions that we’re having with a number of the countries in the region.
Now, it’s clear that with our alliance partners there’s an existing framework. But also with some of the emerging and burgeoning powers, we have a strategic dialogue now with Indonesia, and it’s not just because the President spent some of his time growing up there, it’s because we view the consolidation of democracy in Indonesia, the very successful counterterrorism efforts that the Indonesian Government has carried out to be extremely important to our position in the Pacific. We know that Australia has a deep relationship with Indonesia. So again, how do we better work together to enhance our relationship with Indonesia?
With a country that we know something about because of our history, Vietnam, we’re finding more areas of cooperation and openness on the part of Vietnam to – looking at ways that we can, not only through defense, but through working on government issues, on human rights, on commercial and trade agendas, deepen that relationship. And I could obviously go on and on. But the fact is that we have engaged in a very strategic review of where the United States is in the Pacific – Asia Pacific region in 2010; where our friends, partners, and allies are; and where we hope to move toward.
QUESTION: One of the other op-eds in the papers today is from a former Deputy Secretary of the Defense Department, which in our system is a nonpartisan public service job – Hugh White. He’s been advocating strongly that because of the increase in growth of China that Australia should be reassessing its alliance with the U.S., with the implication downgrading the priority on the U.S. and increasing the priority on China. What’s your response to that as the other half of the alliance with Australia?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that the core values of the Australian people, the quality of life, the standard of living, the aspirations that Australians feel are very much in line with the way Americans think and act. So our relationship is essential to both of us. That doesn’t mean we won’t have relationships with others, but it does mean that this will remain the core partnership. And it is, I think, important to recognize that just because you increase your trade with China or your diplomatic exchanges with China, China has a long way to go in demonstrating its interest in being and its ability to become a responsible stake holder. There’s no doubt about its economic success. But any fair reading of history would argue that unless that economic success if matched by growing political space and openness, there are going to be a lot of tensions within China that will have to be dealt with. And that’s an internal matter for China, except insofar as – because of internal tensions, China acts out externally that will impact the interests and wellbeing of its neighbors and beyond.
So I don’t understand this either/or mentality. I think that Australia and the United States will remain core allies, not just because we have government-to-government relations, but because we have people-to-people connections that are deeply rooted. And as each of us develop our relationship with China, we want that to be a win-win. But it will more likely be a win-win if Australia and the United States are working in concert.
QUESTION: Earlier this year I heard you make, I thought an electrifying point about the current position of the U.S. and the West as one model for other countries, and China as an alternative. How do you see that at the moment?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I think that I can’t claim that that’s an original point. I think others have made it. But there are those who look to China and say, “Well, gosh, they’re growing at 9, 10 percent a year and they’re keeping the lid on.” And if you are of an authoritarian mindset and if your history may be such that that’s a more comfortable position for you to assume, that might be attractive. But I think it comes with many inherent contradictions. And particularly given the global economic crisis, many in the world looked and said, “Well, look at the United States. They had this great financial collapse. They couldn’t control the excesses of the market and they paid a huge price for it.” So there’s a clear difference. But, of course, that discounts in my view, both history and reality.
Economies like ours, which are free and very much focused on entrepreneurial energy and individual initiative are resilient, dynamic, come back, reinvent themselves, because we don’t wait for somebody in our national capital to tell us what we can and cannot buy. We are out there making hundreds of millions of decisions a day that are motivated by a desire to increase productivity, to make a claim for greater profitability, and it has worked. And it is, by far, along with democracy, the winning models. Free markets in democracy have proven themselves time and time again.
So, I again, would just offer a word of caution that if you really care about the development of your country, if you believe in the wellbeing of your people over the long run, then you will have to match political freedom and respect for human rights with economic progress.
PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.)
QUESTION: Can I ask, on a different angle, last question. Just to pick up on a point you made yesterday, when you were for the ten trillionth time ruling out the president – running for presidency, and you said that were other things you want to get on and do in your life.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, of course.
QUESTION: What are they?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I’ll talk to you after I’m done with this job, Peter. (Laughter.) I’m someone who takes one day at a time. I am 100 percent focused on the enormous responsibility that I bear as Secretary of State in taking our message around the world. So I don’t – I’m not thinking about what I would do next, but I am very focused on trying to do this as well as I can.
QUESTION: But there's a plan, right?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Not yet, not yet.
QUESTION: Oh, okay.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Just a lot of things like catching up on sleep. I think I’ve been sleep deprived for about 18 years. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: All right. Well, thank you very much.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you. What a pleasure.
QUESTION: It’s my pleasure.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thanks so much.
Finally, there is this nice review of her work as SOS by Harry Melkonian is a senior lecturer, specializing in the US Constitution, at the US Studies Centre of the University of Sydney. An outsider looking in, he provides a refreshingly positive perspective in contrast to what we often see in our own press. The message, to me, is that we should assess and appreciate what we have in this still young and vibrant woman. Not to reflects badly on us in the world, reminding me of this:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!From “To a Louse,” by Robert Burns
A good read:
American asset: Clinton's hidden talent
Read the rest >>>>Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has brought wonderful and woefully-needed leadership administrative competence to the US State Department.
The same skills that she employs in managing her bureaucracy served her well in her Asian excursion. Her ability to use diplomatic tools, as opposed to the US navy, as a mechanism to further American policy is easy to recognise but difficult to describe.
Her techniques represent a welcome departure from the style employed in the previous administration. With the exception of the rather eccentric though effective Nixon/Kissinger duet, American foreign policy has invariably been that of a solo player – sometimes looked at as a bully. Hillary Clinton, who has been given a broad charter by US president Obama, clearly recognises the limits of unilateralism and is working to build American foreign policy built on cooperation and consultation. From an Australian perspective, as a regional power, the secretary’s efforts are to be commended.
