Tough Words Don’t Equal Results
Paul J. Saunders is the executive director of the Center for the National Interest. He was senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for global affairs from 2003 to 2005.
UPDATED MAY 12, 2013, 7:00 PM
What is perhaps most remarkable about Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state is how little time she apparently spent thinking about U.S. foreign policy. Clinton rarely seemed to move beyond “round one,” or whatever she wanted to do, to consider “round two," how others would react, much less the last round and the results. Because of this, America’s former top diplomat was often less a secretary of state than a secretary of unintended consequences.
Clinton rarely seemed to move beyond what she wanted to do to consider how others would react, and what would be accomplished.
On the surface, toppling Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya sounded like a no-brainer: remove a dictator, save his likely victims, promote freedom — all for the cost of some jet fuel and a few smart bombs. Today’s predictable reality is far more complex, with continuing violence and instability in Libya that has spread to some of its neighbors. Worse, after the Bush administration’s commitment to a live-and-let-live relationship with Libya in exchange for an end to its weapons of mass destruction programs, the intervention that Clinton championed could not but strongly discourage Iran from taking a similar deal in the future. That could prove quite costly to America and some of its allies.
Americans don’t think much about Libya today because Syria is on the front pages, but Clinton’s role there was similarly short-sighted. Her successor, John Kerry, and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have just announced plans for a conference that could have happened nearly a year ago after June 2012 negotiations in Geneva among the United States and a group of international powers and regional states. The conference may or may not help now, but it didn’t happen then no small part because Clinton publicly sought credit after the meetings for persuading Lavrov that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had to go. This clearly contradicted not only Moscow’s public position, but also the position that she accepted in the Geneva communique — that the Syrian people would decide how they are led. Tens of thousands more Syrians have died in the intervening months.
Finally, Clinton was a failure in dealing with the world’s two most important countries that are not American allies. Her empty bluster — saying that China and Russia should “pay” for their positions on Syria when there was no way she could deliver — managed simultaneously to provoke two governments whose support she wanted in dealing with Syria, Iran and North Korea and to demonstrate her and America’s weakness.
Speculation about Clinton’s plans is again widespread. But even setting aside the Benghazi controversy, which reflects worse on Clinton as more becomes known, her time at the State Department has weakened her case as a future presidential candidate, if she wants to be one. Americans don’t need more half-baked foreign policy.
