Hillary Clinton: ‘The Superstar Of Obama Cabinet’

How does one make the USA, or the world, more secure? History tells us that ultimately a nation has to fall back upon the tried and tested “civilian instruments” such as diplomacy and foreign aid. The world has seen the dangers inherent in “creeping militarisation” of US foreign policy.

Lexington, in his column in The Economist,
states: “Mrs (Hillary) Clinton’s success has partly been a matter of good fortune. The State Department is delighted to see the arrival of an administration that does not regard Foggy Bottom as enemy-occupied territory. It also has better relations with the Pentagon than it has had for years.

“Mrs Clinton has also brought a tough-minded professionalism to her job. She has inevitably encountered resistance, given the number of fingers in the foreign-policy pie—including those of a vice-president, Joe Biden, with a long-standing interest in foreign affairs.

“But she has won more battles than she has lost—notably with Mr Biden, over whether America should send 21,000 troops to Afghanistan. And America’s foreign-policy machinery is now working as well as it has in years.

“Mrs Clinton has also seemed content to delegate the day-to-day management of some of the world’s most volatile regions to special envoys: the Afghanistan-Pakistan region to Mr Holbrooke; the Middle East peace process to George Mitchell…

“But in general Mrs Clinton has disentangled herself enough from the daily demands of these regions to focus on strategic questions that are too often given short shrift: overhauling the management of foreign aid. More here…