The US Secretaries of State and Transatlantic Relations

Klaus Larres

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138998186
• eBook ISBN: 9781317966494
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Transatlantic relations have been among the most crucially important areas for US foreign policy since 1945. For reasons of self-interest and with regard to common transatlantic values and political, economic and security interests, every American Secretary of State to date has dedicated a considerable period of time to America's relations with Europe. This book assesses the transatlantic policy which America's most important post-Second World War Secretaries of State pursued. Brief profiles of each Secretary's political philosophy and his/her policy towards Europe provide insights into the continuities and changes US foreign policy towards Europe has displayed from 1945 to the present.

The book provides a synopsis of America's relations with Europe during the last six decades. It establishes an overview of the crucial problems in American-European relations and indeed in America's global role. Each chapter embeds an assessment of the respective Secretaries of State within a general survey of American foreign policy during both the Cold War and the post-Cold War world.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Transatlantic Studies.

Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State: A New Engagement with the World

Klaus Larres

School of History and International Affairs, University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK & SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC.

Hillary Clinton was the Democratic front-runner in the presidential election campaign of 2008 until her campaign strategy veered off the tracks. Much infighting and a lack of coherent direction doomed her initially very promising bid for the Democratic nomination.¹ She narrowly lost the race to Barack Obama, who achieved an impressive victory against his Republican opponent, John McCain, in November 2008 and became the first-ever African American to be elected president. Although not unexpected, Obama's victory was a profound shock to Clinton. At the age of 60, she could have little hope of running again in eight years time, after Obama quite possibly would have completed a two-term presidency. But Hillary had abilities and willpower, not unlike those that are the hallmark of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and she, too, proved to be a comeback kid. Rather than retreat and find solace in resuming her position as New York's respected two-term junior senator, she accepted Obama's offer to become secretary of state, the third female secretary of state after Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

There were convincing reports that before conceding the Democratic nomination to Obama in early June 2008, negotiations between the two fierce rivals had taken place. Presumably, Clinton had intended to extract the highest possible price for withdrawing from the Democratic race and asking her supporters to give their votes to Obama. Her accrued campaign debt of over $25 million remained, however, a serious problem.² There were also rumours at the time that Obama agreed to give her the choice between becoming vice president or secretary of state.³ Yet, in late August 2008 Senator Joseph (Joe) Biden was chosen to be Obama's running mate.⁴

Once Obama had won the election and become President-elect he announced in December 2008 that Clinton had been nominated to head the State Department. Hillary Clinton seems to have concluded that this position would offer her much greater possibilities for pursuing her interest in America's global role and making use of the undoubted political talent that she had shown as a member of the influential Senate Armed Forces Committee for the previous six years. It is a little-known fact that Clinton was also a long-serving commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. As secretary of state, she may have reasoned, she might be able to come across as a more independent player and thinker in the administration than would have been possible in the role of vice president. Clinton must also have realised that Obama was hardly likely to give as much influence and power to his vice president as George W. Bush had extended to Dick Cheney.⁵

When Clinton's appointment became known she was widely acclaimed as a wise choice. Even former Republican Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told reporters: ‘I believe it would be an outstanding appointment. If it is true, it shows a number of things, including great courage on the part of the president elect. To appoint a very strong personality to a prominent cabinet position requires a great deal of courage.’⁶ Yet this was also a clever strategic move on the part of Obama. He effectively neutralised Clinton as a political rival and competitor. It was unlikely that Clinton would be able to run against him for the Democratic nomination in 2012 if she served as one of his most prominent cabinet colleagues. As a member of his administration, she would also be unable to criticise his policy from the outside. Instead, she would have to be loyal and accept his predominant position.

When Clinton was sworn in as the 67^th secretary of state on 21 January 2009, this capped a highly unusual and rather unexpected political career.⁷ While still a student at Wellesley College, the then Hillary Rodham had been an active member of the Republican Party and worked on Nelson Rockefeller's campaign to obtain the Republican nomination of 1968. Attending the Republican National Convention in Miami was a turning point in her political outlook. She felt greatly antagonised by what she perceived as the convention's racist undertones and Nixon's negative portrayal of Rockefeller, so she turned towards the Democratic Party. Soon, at Yale Law School, she met Bill Clinton and eventually accepted his repeated proposal of marriage. Subsequently, she left Washington, DC, to live with Bill in Arkansas, where she began a very successful career as a lawyer and partner of Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. They got married in October 1976, and in November 1980 their only child, a daughter Chelsea, was born.

From 1979 to 1982 and from 1984 to 1992, Clinton was first lady of Arkansas, where Bill served a total of 12 years as the state's governor. Afterwards, she was the nation's very activist first lady during the eight years of her husband's presidency from 1993 to 2001. In the course of this time, her strenuous (and ultimately failed) efforts to introduce universal health care in the United States earned her much credit in Democratic circles and much enmity in Republican circles but also among Liberals who criticised her somewhat chaotic approach.⁸ Subsequently, she made a mark as the first-ever former first lady to embark on her own political career, becoming a respected US senator and secretary of state in January 2009.

At the time of writing, less than three — quarters of a year have passed since her appointment; this is a narrow basis for judging anyone's political performance. It is therefore difficult to arrive at a fair assessment of her achievements as secretary of state. Yet a number of characteristic features can already be discerned.

Popularity within the State Department.

Hillary Clinton is a highly popular secretary of state within the ranks of the State Department. From her first day in office, she frequently noted the great expertise and experience of her new staff. She emphasised that the Obama administration was ‘a team’ and that employees of the State Department were ‘members of that team.’⁹ She also made it be known that she preferred career diplomats to political appointees and has vigorously campaigned to obtain more and better funding for the State Department, further endearing herself to the department's employees.

Relationship with Obama

Clinton drew a lesson from the fate of Colin Powell on the importance of having a close, trusting relationship with the president. This has led her to go out of her way to overcome the deep political and personal rift that had developed between her and Obama during their hard-fought campaign for the Democratic nomination in the spring and summer of 2008.¹⁰ She soon succeeded in coming across as an absolutely loyal member of Obama's team and has made a great effort to praise Obama's leadership when giving public speeches and interviews.

In the summer of 2009, rumours surfaced regarding tensions between her and the president. In the course of a news conference Clinton let it be known that she was less than happy that positions at the US Agency for International Development and several ambassadorships had not been filled. Moreover, she frequently was unable to appoint candidates of her choice to important ambassadorial posts. For instance, she intended to fill the ambassadorship to Japan with Harvard academic Joseph Nye; instead the post went to John Roos, a little-known lawyer but a very wealthy fundraiser for Obama's presidential campaign.¹¹ Obama's decision to appoint a new US ambassador to Syria reportedly took the State Department by surprise. But Clinton could hardly object to Obama's wish to use Syria as a test-case for engaging one of the world's rogue regimes without pre-condition.¹² The move of Dennis Ross, the administration's foremost expert on Iran, from the State Department to the White House may also have displeased Clinton. Yet she did not attempt to resist Obama's request, which was meant to give the National Security Council greater depth.¹³ Shortly after being sworn into office, Clinton was unable to push Richard Holbrooke as her deputy secretary of state. Instead, James Steinberg, an Obama loyalist and initial candidate for National Security Adviser, was appointed her deputy.¹⁴

Still, it is difficult to detect a clear rift with the White House. On the contrary, Clinton goes out of her way to praise the president. She refers to herself as Obama's chief adviser and chief diplomat, but ‘at the end of the day, it is the president who has to set and articulate policy,’ as she explained on ‘Meet the Press’ in July 2009. She added, with enthusiasm, ‘I am here to say, as somebody who's spent an enormous amount of time and effort running against him, I think his performance in office has been incredible.’¹⁵ Fred Kaplan may well have been right when he wrote in Slate magazine that ‘relations between the White House a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• US Secretaries of State
• Introduction
• 1. Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State: A New Engagement with the World
• 2. George W. Bush's Secretaries of State and Europe: Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice
• 3. President Clinton's Secretaries of State: Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright
• 4. Ronald Reagan's and George H. W. Bush's Secretaries of State: Alexander Haig, George Shultz and James Baker
• 5. The scholar statesman: Henry Kissinger
• 6. The quiet man: Dean Rusk and Western Europe
• 7. John Foster Dulles: moralism and anti-communism
• 8. President Harry Truman's Secretaries of State: Stettinius, Byrnes, Marshall and Acheson
• Index