Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State
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Hillary Rodham Clinton
is serving as United States Secretary of State
under President Barack Obama
, and is the head of the department conducting the foreign policy of the Obama administration
. She was preceded in office by Condoleezza Rice
and is the third woman to hold this position. She is also the only former First Lady of the United States
to become a member of the United States Cabinet
. As secretary of state she has traveled widely and initiated many diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Obama administration.
Within a week after the November 4, 2008, presidential election, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed over telephone the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State
in his administration. Clinton later related, "He said I want you to be my secretary of state. And I said, 'Oh, no, you don’t.' I said, 'Oh, please, there's so many other people who could do this.'" Clinton initially turned Obama down, but he persisted. Some Democratic senators welcomed the idea of her leaving, having been allied with Obama during the campaign and believing that Clinton had risked party disunity by keeping her candidacy going for so long.
Obama and Clinton held a meeting on the subject on November 11. When the possibility became public on November 14, it came as a surprising and dramatic move, especially given the long, sometimes bitter battle the two had waged during the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries
. However, Obama had been thinking of the idea as far back as the 2008 Democratic National Convention
. Despite the aggressiveness of the campaign and the still-lingering animosities between the two campaign staffs, as with many primary battles the political differences between the candidates were never that great and the two rivals had developed a respect for one another as well.
Consideration of Clinton was seen as Obama wanting to assemble a "team of rivals" in his administration, à la Abraham Lincoln
. The notion of rivals successfully working together also found applicability in other fields, such as George Marshall
and Dwight Eisenhower in relation to Operation Overlord
during World War II and Indra Nooyi
keeping on her top rival for CEO at Pepsico
. At the same time, the choice gave Obama an image of being self-assured.
Clinton was conflicted whether she wanted to take the position or remain in the Senate, and agonized over her decision. While the Senate leadership had discussed possible leadership positions or other promotions in rank with her even before the cabinet position became a possibility, nothing concrete had been offered. The prospect of her ever becoming Senate Majority Leader seemed dim. A different complication was Bill Clinton
; she told Obama: "There's one last thing that's a problem, which is my husband. You've seen what this is like; it will be a circus if I take this job", making reference to the volatile effect Bill Clinton had had during the primaries. In addition, there was a specific concern whether the financial and other involvements of Bill Clinton's post-presidential activities
would violate any conflict-of-interest rules for serving cabinet members. There was as well considerable media speculation about what effect taking the position would have on her political career and any possible future presidential aspirations. Clinton wavered over the offer, but as she later related, "But, you know, we kept talking. I finally began thinking, look, if I had won and I had called him, I would have wanted him to say yes. And, you know, I’m pretty old-fashioned, and it's just who I am. So at the end of the day, when your president asks you to serve, you say yes, if you can."
On November 21, reports indicated that Clinton had accepted the position. On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure". As part of the nomination, Bill Clinton agreed to accept a number of conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center
and Clinton Global Initiative.
The appointment required a Saxbe fix
, which was passed and signed into law in December 2008 before confirmation hearings began. Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration. Clinton stated during her confirmation hearings that she believed that "the best way to advance America's interests in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions" and "We must use what has been called 'smart power
', the full range of tools at our disposal — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural — picking the right tool or combination of tools for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy."
On January 15, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton. Republican Senator David Vitter
of Louisiana was the lone dissenting vote in the committee. By this time, Clinton's public favorable/unfavorable rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point in her public career since the Lewinsky scandal
during her time as First Lady, and 71 percent of the public approved of the nomination to the cabinet.
Even before taking office, Clinton was working together with Bush administration officials in assessing national security issues. The night before the inauguration of the new president
, contingency plans against a purported plot by Somali
extremists against Obama and the inauguration was being discussed. Clinton argued that typical security responses were not tenable: "Is the Secret Service going to whisk him off the podium so the American people see their incoming president disappear in the middle of the inaugural address? I don’t think so." (The threat turned out to not exist.)
On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2. Vitter and Republican Senator Jim DeMint
of South Carolina voted against the confirmation.
Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day. She became the first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet
. She also became the first Secretary of State to have previously been an elected official since Edmund Muskie
's less-than-a-year stint in 1980, with Christian Herter
during the Eisenhower administration being the last one before that. In being selected by her formal rival Obama, she became only the fourth person in the preceding hundred years to join the cabinet of someone they had run against for their party's presidential nomination that election year (Jack Kemp
ran against and was later chosen by George H. W. Bush
to be Secretary of HUD
in 1988, George W. Romney
by Richard Nixon
for Secretary of HUD in 1968, and Philander Knox by William Howard Taft
for Secretary of State in 1908 preceded her; Obama's pick of Tom Vilsack
for Secretary of Agriculture
followed her a couple of weeks later to be the next such person).
(On January 29, 2009, the constitutionality of her Saxbe fix was challenged in court by Judicial Watch
; on October 30, 2009, the courts dismissed the case.)
, Clinton found her own transition "difficult ... in some respects, because I never even dreamed of it." Then, and in the early days of her tenure, there was considerable jockeying for jobs within the department among those in "Hillaryland
", her longtime circle of advisors and staff aides, as well as others who had worked with her in the past, with not as many jobs as those desiring of them. Obama gave Clinton more freedom to choose her staff than he did to any other cabinet member.
Clinton's former campaign manager, Maggie Williams
, handled the staff hiring process. Longtime counsel to both Clintons Cheryl Mills
serves as the secretary's Counselor and Chief of Staff. Jacob Lew
was named Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, an unusual step designed to push to the forefront the emphasis on getting higher budget allocations from Congress and overlooking internal workings. Anne-Marie Slaughter
was appointed Director of Policy Planning
with a view towards long-term policy towards Asia. Huma Abedin
, Clinton's longtime personal assistant, is Deputy Chief of Staff for the secretary and remains a key member of Clinton's operation.
Much like she did at the beginning of her Senate career, Clinton kept a lowish profile during her early months and worked hard to familiarize herself with the culture and institutional history of the department. She met or spoke with all of the living former secretaries, and especially relied upon her close friendship with Madeleine Albright
.
At the start of her tenure, Obama and Clinton announced several high-profile special envoys to trouble spots in the world, including former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell
as Mideast envoy and Richard Holbrooke
as envoy to South Asia and Afghanistan.
On January 27, 2009, Secretary of State Clinton appointed Todd Stern
as the department's Special Envoy for Climate Change.
By May 2009, Clinton and the Obama administration intended to nominate Paul Farmer
, co-founder of Partners in Health
, as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID)., but by August 2009 his nomination was reportedly scotched by the White House for reasons unknown. This caused Clinton, while visiting USAID, to publicly criticize the long vetting process for administration appointments calling it a "nightmare" and "frustrating beyond words." In November 2009, an unconventional choice was nominated instead, Rajiv Shah
, a young Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics
. Clinton said, "He has a record of delivering results in both the private and public sectors, forging partnerships around the world, especially in Africa and Asia, and developing innovative solutions in global health, agriculture, and financial services for the poor."
Despite some early press predictions, in general Clinton's departmental staff has avoided the kind of leaks and infighting that troubled her 2008 presidential campaign
. One possibly lingering line of internal tension was resolved in earlyu 2011 when State Department spokesperson P. J. Crowley resigned after making personal comments about in-captivity leaker Bradley Manning and his treatment by the Department of Defense.
agreed with her, and also advocated larger State Department budgets. In the Obama administration's proposed 2010 United States federal budget
of February 2009, there was a proposed 9.5 percent budget increase for the State Department and other international programs, from $47.2 billion in fiscal year 2009 to $51.7 billion in fiscal year 2010. By the time of Clinton's May 2009 testimony before the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
, numbers had been restated following rounds of general federal budget cuts, and the proposed fiscal year 2010 budget request for the State Department and USAID was $48.6 billion, a 7 percent increase.
Clinton also brought a message of departmental reform to the position, especially in regarding foreign aid programs as something that deserves the same status and level of scrutiny as diplomatic initiatives.
Clinton spent her initial days as Secretary of State telephoning dozens of world leaders. She said the world was eager to see a new American foreign policy and that, "There is a great exhalation of breath going on around the world. We’ve got a lot of damage to repair." She did indicate that not every past policy would be repudiated, and specifically said it was essential that the six-party talks
over the North Korean nuclear weapons program
continue. Clinton re-emphasized her views during her first speech to State Department employees when she said, "There are three legs to the stool of American foreign policy: defense, diplomacy, and development. And we are responsible for two of the three legs. And we will make clear, as we go forward, that diplomacy and development are essential tools in achieving the long-term objectives of the United States. And I will do all that I can, working with you, to make it abundantly clear that robust diplomacy and effective development are the best long-term tools for securing America's future." Clinton also soon visited the United States Agency for International Development
, where she met employees and said they would be getting extra funds and attention during the new administration.
She kept a low profile when diplomatic necessity or Obama's involvement required it, but maintained an influential relationship with the president and in foreign policy decisions. Her first 100 days found her travelling over 70000 miles (112,653.8 km), having no trouble adapting to being a team player subordinate to Obama, and gaining skills as an executive. Nevertheless, she remained an international celebrity with a much higher profile than most Secretaries of State. Her background as an elected official gave her insight into the needs and fears of elected officials of other countries.
By the summer of 2009, there was considerable analysis and speculation in the media of what kind of role and level of influence Clinton had within the Obama administration, with a variety of assessments being produced. A prominent mid-July speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
reasserted her role; she said, "We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage. Our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal."
In July 2009, Clinton announced a new State Department initiative, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review
, to establish specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions abroad. The most ambitious of Clinton's departmental reforms, it is modeled after the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review
, which Clinton was familiar with from her days on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The first such Review came out in December 2010. Entitled Leading Through Civilian Power, its 220 pages centered around the notion of elevating "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises. It also sought the elevation of U.S. ambassadors in coordinating work of all abroad-tasked U.S. agencies. Clinton said of the underlying message, "Leading with civilians saves lives and money." She also resolved to get Congress to approve the QDDR as a required part of the State Department planning process, saying, "I am determined that this report will not merely gather dust, like so many others." Another theme of the report was the goal of empowering the female population in developing countries around the world; the QDDR mentioned women and girls some 133 times. By attempting to institutionalize her goals in this area, Clinton – along with Anne-Marie Slaughter
and Melanne Verveer
, who also worked heavily in these efforts – were hoping that her initiatives and concerns towards the empowerment of women would persist past her time in office as well as break a past pattern of chauvinism in the department.
In September, Clinton unveiled the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative at the annual meeting of her husband's Clinton Global Initiative. The goal of the new initiative is to battle hunger worldwide on a strategic basis as a key part of U.S. foreign policy, rather than just react to food shortage emergencies as they occur. The secretary said that "Food security is not just about food. But it is all about security: economic security, environmental security, even national security. Massive hunger poses a threat to the stability of governments, societies and borders." The initiative seeks to develop agricultural economies, counter malnourishment, increase productivity, expand trade, and spur innovation in developing nations. Clinton said that women would be placed at the center of the effort, as they constitute a majority of the world's farmers. The next month, to mark World Food Day
, Clinton said, "Fighting hunger and poverty through sustainable agricultural development, making sure that enough food is available and that people have the resources to purchase it, is a key foreign policy objective of the Obama administration."
During October 2009, Clinton said, "this is a great job. It is a 24/7 job" and "this job is incredibly all-encompassing." She said she never thought about if she were making the same foreign policy decisions as president, and had no intention of ever running for that office again. While some friends and former advisers thought she was primarily saying that to focus attention on her current role and that she might change her mind about running for president in the future, others felt that she was genuinely content with the direction her career and life had taken and no longer had presidential ambitions.
By the close of 2009 there were 25 female ambassadors posted by other nations to Washington; this was the highest number ever.
This was dubbed the "Hillary effect" by some observers: "Hillary Clinton is so visible" as secretary of state, said Amelia Matos Sumbana, the Mozambique Ambassador to the United States, "she makes it easier for presidents to pick a woman for Washington." An added fact, of course, was that two other recent U.S. Secretaries of State were women, but Clinton's international fame from her days as First Lady of the United States made her impact in this respect the greatest of the group.
Clinton also included in the State Department budget for the first time a breakdown of programs that specifically concerned themselves with the well-being of women and girls around the world. By fiscal 2012, the department's budget request for such work was $1.2 billion, of which $832 million was for global health programs.
In February 2010 testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
, Secretary Clinton complained about the slow pace of Senate confirmations of Obama's nominations to diplomatic positions, a number of which were delayed for political reasons and had been subject to holds
by individual Republican senators. Clinton said the problem damaged America's image abroad: "It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with."
In 2009, and again in 2010 and 2011, Clinton stated that she was committed to serving out her full term as secretary, but would not commit to serving a second term should Obama be re-elected.
In February 2009, Clinton made her first trip as secretary to Asia, visiting Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China on what she described as a "listening tour" that was "intended to really find a path forward." She continued to travel heavily in her first months in office, often getting very enthusiastic responses by engaging with the local populace.
In March 2009, Clinton made her first trip as secretary to Israel. During this time, Clinton announced that the US government will dispatch two officials to the Syrian capital to explore Washington's relationship with Damascus.
On March 5, 2008, Clinton attended the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. At this meeting, Clinton proposed including Iran at a conference on Afghanistan. Clinton said the proposed conference could be held on March 31 in the Netherlands.
In March 2009, Clinton prevailed over Vice President
Joe Biden
on an internal debate to send an additional 20,000 troops to Afghanistan
.
In June 2009, Clinton had surgery to repair a right elbow fracture caused by a fall in the State Department basement. The painful injury and recuperation caused her to miss two foreign trips. Nevertheless, during President Obama's trip without her to Russia, Clinton was named as co-coordinator, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
, of a newly-created U.S.-Russian Presidential Commission to discuss nuclear, economic, and energy and environmental policies relating to the two countries.
Clinton returned to the diplomatic scene sitting down with ousted Honduran President
Manuel Zelaya
, who agreed on a U.S.-backed proposal to begin talks with the Micheletti government
.
Clinton will co-chair the high-level U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, D.C. on July 27–28, 2009 and will lead the Strategic Track for the United States.
In August 2009, Clinton embarked on her longest trip yet, to a number of stops in Africa. On August 13, 2009, Clinton reacted with fury when a Congolese student asked her what her husband, "Mr Clinton", thought of a Chinese trade deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Clinton looked bemused at the question and replied, "My husband is not secretary of state, I am...If you want my opinion I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband". The incident was played in newsrooms around the world. It later turned out the question was mistranslated and the student had intended to ask what Mr Obama thought.
In October 2009, Clinton's intervention – including juggling conversations on two mobile phones while sitting in a limousine – overcame last-minute snags and saved the signing of an historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations.
In late October 2009, Clinton travelled to Pakistan, where she had staged a memorable visit in 1995 while First Lady. Her arrival was followed within hours by the 28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing
; in response, Clinton said of those responsible, "They know they are on the losing side of history but they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort that it is." In addition to meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani
, she also staged numerous public appearances. In those, she let students, talk show hosts, and tribal elders repeatedly complain about and criticize American foreign policy and American actions. Occasionally, she pushed back in a more blunt fashion than usual for diplomats, explicitly wondering why Pakistan had not been more successful in combating al Qaeda "if they wanted to." Member of Parliament and government spokesperson Farahnaz Ispahani
said, "In the past, when the Americans came, they would talk to the generals and go home. Clinton's willingness to meet with everyone, hostile or not, has made a big impression – and because she's Hillary Clinton, with a real history of affinity for this country, it means so much more."
On the same trip, Clinton visited the Middle East, in an effort to restart the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.
In November 2009, Secretary Clinton led the U.S. delegation at the 20th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall
. There, she said: "Our history did not end the night the wall came down, it began anew. ... To expand freedom to more people, we cannot accept that freedom does not belong to all people. We cannot allow oppression defined and justified by religion or tribe to replace that of ideology."
In December 2009, Clinton attended the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, where she pushed forward a last-minute proposal of significant new amounts of foreign aid to help developing countries deal with the effects of global warming, in an attempt to unstick stuck negotiations and salvage some sort of agreement at the conference. The secretary said, "We're running out of time. Without the accord, the opportunity to mobilize significant resources to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation will be lost." The amount of aid she proposed, $100 billion, was in the modest terms of the Copenhagen Accord
that was agreed to by the summit.
Secretary Clinton finished the year with very high approval ratings. She also narrowly edged out former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
in being America's most-admired woman, per a Gallup finding
.
In January 2010, Secretary Clinton cut short a trip to the Asia-Pacific region
in order to see firsthand the destructive effects of the 2010 Haiti earthquake
and to meet with President of Haiti
René Préval
. Clinton said she would also evaluate the relief effort and help evacuate some Americans. She stressed that her visit was designed not to interfere with ongoing efforts: "It's a race against time. Everybody is pushing as hard as they can."
The Clintons had a special interest in Haiti going back decades, to their delayed honeymoon there
up to Bill Clinton being the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti at the time of the earthquake.
In a major speech on January 21, 2010, Clinton, speaking on behalf of the U.S., declared that "We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas", while highlighting how "even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable." She also drew analogies between the Iron Curtain
and the free and unfree Internet. Her speech, which followed a controversy surrounding Google
's changed policy toward China and censorship
, appears to mark a split between authoritarian capitalism and the Western model of free capitalism and Internet access. Chinese officials responded strongly, saying Clinton's remarks were "harmful to Sino-American relations" and demanded that U.S. officials "respect the truth", and some foreign policy observers thought that Clinton had been too provocative. But the White House stood behind Clinton, and demanded that China provide better answers regarding the recent Chinese cyberattack against Google
. Clinton's speech garnered marked attention among diplomats, as it was the first time a senior American official had clearly put forth a vision in which the Internet was a key element of American foreign policy.
In February 2010, Clinton made her first visit to Latin America as secretary. The tour would take her to Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica and Guatemala and Argentina. She first visited Buenos Aires
and talked to Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
. They discussed Falkland Islands sovereignty and the issue of oil in the Falklands. Clinton said that "We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the table in a peaceful, productive way." Clinton offered to help facilitate such discussions, but did not agree to an Argentinian request that she mediate such talks. Within 12 hours of Clinton's remarks, Downing Street
categorically rejected a U.S. role: "We welcome the support of the secretary of state in terms of ensuring that we continue to keep diplomatic channels open but there is no need for [direct involvement]." Clinton then went on to Santiago, Chile
to witness the aftereffects of the 2010 Chile earthquake
and to bring some telecommunications equipment to aid in the rescue and recovery efforts.
In April 2010, there was a flurry of speculation that Clinton would be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by Justice John Paul Stevens
' retirement, including a plug from ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch
. The notion was quickly quashed by the White House, which said, "The president thinks Secretary Clinton is doing an excellent job as secretary of state and wants her to remain in that position." A State Department spokesperson said that Clinton "loves her present job and is not looking for another one."
By mid-2010, Clinton and Obama had clearly forged a good working relationship; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside, and was careful to make sure that neither she nor her husband would upstage him. He in turn was accommodating to her viewpoints and in some cases adopted some of her more hawkish approaches. She met with him weekly, but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents, such as Condoleezza Rice
with George W. Bush
, James A. Baker with George H. W. Bush
, or Henry Kissinger
with Richard Nixon
.
During an early June 2010 visit to Colombia
, Ecuador
, and Peru
, Clinton dealt with questions at every stop about the recently passed and widely controversial Arizona SB 1070 anti-illegal immigration law, which had damaged the image of the U.S. in Latin America. When answering a question from local television reporters in Quito
about it, she said that President Obama was opposed to it and that "The Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act." The was the first public confirmation that the Justice Department would act against the law; a month later, it became official as the lawsuit United States of America v. Arizona
. While at a hotel bar in Lima
, she completed an agreement with a representative of China over which companies could be specified in a UN resolution sanctioning the nuclear program of Iran
. Returning to SB 1070, in August 2010 she included the dispute over it in a report to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
, as an example to other countries of how fractious issues can be resolved under the rule of law.
In July 2010, Clinton visited Pakistan for the second time as secretary, announcing a large new U.S. economic assistance package to that country as well as a U.S.-led bilateral trade agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan. She then travelled to Afghanistan for the Kabul Conference on the situation there, during which President Hamid Karzai
vowed to implement much-promised legal, political, and economic reforms in exchanged for a continued Western commitment there. Clinton said that despite the scheduled U.S. drawdown there in 2011, the U.S. has "no intention of abandoning our long-term mission of achieving a stable, secure, peaceful Afghanistan. Too many nations – especially Afghanistan – have suffered too many losses to see this country slide backward." She then went on to Seoul
and the Korean Demilitarized Zone
where she and Defense Secretary Robert Gates
met with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan
and Minister of National Defense Kim Tae-young
in a '2+2 meeting' to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War
. There she said that the U.S. experience in staying in Korea for decades had led to a successful result, which might also be applicable to Afghanistan. Finally, she went to Hanoi
, Vietnam
for the ASEAN Regional Forum, wrapping up what The New York Times
termed "a grueling trip that amounted to a tour of American wars, past and present". There she injected the U.S. into the long-running disputes over the sovereignty of the Paracel Islands
and Spratly Islands
, much to the displeasure of the Chinese who view the South China Sea
as part of their core interests, by saying "The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea."
By this time, Secretary Clinton was quite busy with another role of a kind, "M.O.T.B." as she wrote in State Department memos, making reference to her being the mother of the bride in daughter Chelsea Clinton
's July 31, 2010, wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. She confessed in an interview in Islamabad
less than two weeks before the wedding that she and her husband were both nervous wrecks, and that "You should assume that if he makes it down the aisle in one piece it's going to be a major accomplishment. He is going to be so emotional, as am I." The event itself gained a large amount of media attention.
In a prominent September 2010 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations
, Clinton emphasized the continuing primacy of American power and involvement in the world, declaring a "new American moment". Making reference to actions from reviving the Middle East talks to U.S. aid following the 2010 Pakistan floods
, Clinton said that "The world is counting on us" and that "After years of war and uncertainty, people are wondering what the future holds, at home and abroad. So let me say it clearly: The United States can, must, and will lead in this new century."
With Democrats facing possible large losses in the 2010 midterm elections
and President Obama struggling in opinion polls, idle speculation in Washington media circles concerning Obama's chances in the 2012 presidential election
led to the notion that Clinton would take over as Obama's vice-presidential running mate in 2012 to add to his electoral appeal. Some versions of this idea had Vice President Biden replacing her as Secretary of State if Obama won. That it would ever happen was quite unlikely, but did not stop the chatter; when the job swap idea was mentioned in public to Clinton, she smiled and shook her head. A couple of months later, Obama shot down the idea, saying the notion was "completely unfounded" and that "they are both doing outstanding jobs where they are."
Over the summer of 2010, the stalled peace process in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was potentially revived when the various parties involved agreed to direct talks for the first time in a while. While President Obama was the orchestrator of the movement, Secretary Clinton had gone through months of cajoling just to get the parties to the table, and helped convince the reluctant Palestinians by getting support for direct talks from Egypt and Jordan. She then assumed a prominent role in the talks; Speaking at a September 2 meeting at the State Department between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas
of the Palestinian Authority, she acknowledged that, "We’ve been here before, and we know how difficult the road ahead will be." Her role in the ongoing talks would be to take over from U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George J. Mitchell
when discussions threatened to break down. The talks were generally given little chance to succeed, and Clinton faced the history of many such past failures, including the near miss of her husband at the 2000 Camp David Summit. Nevertheless, her prominent role in them thrust her further into the international spotlight and had the potential to affect her legacy as secretary.
In October, Clinton embarked on a seven-nation tour of Asia and Oceania. In New Zealand she signed the "Wellington Declaration", which normalized the diplomatic and military relationship between it and the United States. The signing marked twenty-five years after the United States suspended ANZUS
treaty obligations with New Zealand in the wake of the USS Buchanan
incident.
Clinton maintained her high approval ratings during 2010. Indeed, an aggregation of polls taken during the late portion or all of 2010 showed that Clinton (and her husband as well) had by far the best favorable-unfavorable ratings of any key contemporary American political figure.
In late November, WikiLeaks released confidential State Department cables
, selections of which were then published by several major newspapers around the world. The leak of the cables led to a crisis atmosphere in the State Department, as blunt statements and assessments by U.S. and foreign diplomats became public. Clinton led the damage control effort for the U.S. abroad, and also sought to bolster the morale of shocked Foreign Service officers. In the days leading up to the publication of the cables, Clinton called officials in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France, Afghanistan, Canada, and China to alert them to the pending disclosures. She did note that some foreign leaders were accepting of the frank language of the cables, with one telling her, "Don't worry about it. You should see what we say about you." She harshly criticized WikiLeaks
, saying: "Let's be clear: This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community – the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity." The State Department went into immediate "war room" mode in order to deal with the effects of the disclosures, and began implementing measures to try to prevent another such leak from happening in the future.
A few of the cables released by WikiLeaks concerned Clinton directly
: they revealed that directions to members of the foreign service had gone out in 2009 under Clinton's name to gather biometric details on foreign diplomats, including officials of the United Nations and U.S. allies. These included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, work schedules, and other targeted biographical information in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley
said that Clinton had not drafted the directive and that the Secretary of State's name is systematically attached to the bottom of cables originating from Washington; it was unclear whether Clinton had actually seen them. The guidance in the cables was actually written by the CIA before being sent out under Clinton's name, as the CIA cannot directly instruct State Department personnel. The disclosed cables on the more aggressive intelligence gathering went back to 2008 when they went out under Condoleezza Rice
's name during her tenure as Secretary of State
. The practice of the U.S. and the State Department gathering intelligence on the U.N. or on friendly nations was not new, but the surprise in this case was that it was done by other diplomats rather than intelligence agencies, and that the specific types of information being asked for went beyond past practice and was not the kind of information diplomats would normally be expected to gather. In any case, the instructions given in these cables may have been largely ignored by American diplomats as ill-advised. Responding to calls from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
and a few others that Clinton possibly step down from her post due to the revelation, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
said, "I think that is absurd and ridiculous. I think Secretary of State Clinton is doing a wonderful job."
On December 1, Clinton flew to a summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
in Astana
, Kazakhstan
. There she would encounter some fifty leaders who were subjects of embarrassing comments in the leaks, including President of Kazakhstan
Nursultan Nazarbayev
. A Kazakh official said that during such encounters, Clinton "kept her face. She didn't run away from difficult questions." During the encounters she emphasized that the leaked cables did not reflect official U.S. policy but rather were just instances of individual diplomats giving unfiltered feedback to Washington about what they saw happening in other countries. The situation led to some leaders turning her strong remarks about Internet freedom earlier in the year back against her. The OSCE summit also featured a meeting between Secretary Clinton
and Ban Ki-moon
, Secretary-General of the United Nations. In an attempt to repair the strain caused by the Humint spying relevations, Clinton expressed regret to Ban for the disclosures, but did not make an apology per se. A U.N. statement relayed that Ban thanked Clinton "for clarifying the matter and for expressing her concern about the difficulties created."
Upon the December 13 death of veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke
(who had initially fallen ill during a meeting with her), Clinton presided over a spontaneous gathering of some forty senior State Department personnel and Holbrooke aides at George Washington University Hospital
, reminiscing about him. At a memorial service for him days later, both Clinton and her husband praised Holbrooke's work, and she said, "Everything that we have accomplished that is working in Afghanistan and Pakistan is largely because of Richard."
On December 22, 2010, Secretary Clinton returned to the floor of the Senate during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress to witness the ratification, by a 71–26 margin, of the New START treaty. Clinton had spent the several days beforehand repeatedly calling wavering senators and seeking to gain their support.
As the year closed, Clinton was again named by Americans in Gallup's most admired man and woman poll
as the woman around the world they most admired; it was her ninth win in a row and fifteenth overall.
in Brazil, having been sent by President Obama to represent the U.S. Rousseff was the first woman to rule that country. While there, she ran into Venezuelan ruler and U.S. antagonist Hugo Chávez
, but the two had a pleasant exchange; Chávez said "She had a very spontaneous smile and I greeted her with the same effusiveness."
In mid-January, Clinton made a four-country trip to the Middle East, visiting Yemen
, Oman
, The United Arab Emirates, and Qatar
. Speaking at a conference in Doha
, she criticized Arab governments' failure to move more rapidly vis à vis reform in unusually blunt language, saying, "In too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand. The new and dynamic Middle East that I have seen needs firmer ground if it is to take root and grow everywhere." Her visit to Yemen, the first such visit by a Secretary of State in 20 years, found her focusing on the dangers of terrorism emanating from that country. An impromptu tour around the walled old city of Sana'a
found Clinton being cheered by onlooking schoolchildren. A trip and fall while boarding the departing airplane left Clinton unhurt but news services making predictable witticisms.
When the 2011 Egyptian protests began, Clinton was in the forefront of the administration's response. Her initial public assessment on January 25 that the government of President Hosni Mubarak
was "stable" and "looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people" soon came under criticism for being tepid and behind the curve of developing events, although others agreed that the U.S. could not be out front in undermining the government of a long-term ally. By the next day, Clinton was criticizing the Egyptian government's blocking of social media
sites. By January 29, Obama had put Clinton in charge of sorting out the administration's so-far confused response to developments. During the frenetic day of January 30, she combined appearances on all five Sunday morning talk shows – where sheo stated publicly for the first time the U.S.'s view that there needed to be an "orderly transition" to a "democratic participatory government" and a "peaceful transition to real democracy", not Mubarak's "faux democracy" – with a flight to Haiti and back to mark the anniversary of its terrible earthquake, all the while engaging in conference calls again regarding Egypt.
The Egyptian protests became the most critical foreign policy crisis so far for the Obama administration, and Obama came to increasingly rely upon Clinton for advice and connections. Clinton had known Mubarak for some twenty years, and had formed a close relationship with Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak
by supporting the latter's human rights work. Clinton originated the idea of sending Frank G. Wisner
as an emissary to Cairo, to tell Mubarak not to seek another term as the country's leader. As Mubarak's response to the protests became violent in early February, Clinton strongly condemned the actions taking place, especially those against journalists covering the events, and urged new Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman
to conduct an official investigation to hold those responsible for the violence accountable. When Wisner baldly stated that Mubarak's departure should be delayed to accommodate an orderly transition to another government, Clinton rebuked him, but shared a bit of the same sentiment. Mubarak did finally step down on February 11 as the protests became the 2011 Egyptian revolution
. Clinton said that the U.S. realized that Egypt still had much work and some difficult times ahead of it.
President Obama was reportedly unhappy with U.S. intelligence agencies following their failure to foresee the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
as well as the Egyptian protests. Responding to criticism that the State Department had failed to see the developments in Egypt coming, Clinton defended the U.S. in an interview on Al-Arabiya, saying "I don’t think anybody could have predicted we’d be sitting here talking about the end of the Mubarak presidency at the time that this all started."
Reflecting on not just the situation in Tunisia and Egypt but also on the, the 2011 Yemeni protests, and the 2011 Jordanian protests
, Clinton said at a February 5 meeting of the Quartet on the Middle East
, "The region is being battered by a perfect storm of powerful trends. ... This is what has driven demonstrators into the streets of ... cities throughout the region. The status quo is simply not sustainable." She said that while transition to democracy could be chaotic – and free elections had to be accompanied by free speech, a free judiciary, and the rule of law in order to be effective – in the end "free people govern themselves best". The transformations highlighted that traditional U.S. foreign policy in the region had sided with rulers who suppressed internal dissent but provided stability and generally supported U.S. goals in the region. When the monarchy's response to the 2011 Bahraini protests turned violent, Clinton urged a return to the path of reform, saying that violence against the protesters "is absolutely unacceptable ... We very much want to see the human rights of the people protected, including right to assemble, right to express themselves, and we want to see reform." At the same time, she said that the U.S. "cannot tell countries what they are going to do [and] cannot dictate the outcomes." As the situation in Bahrain lingered on and continued to have episodes of violence against protesters, Clinton said in mid-March, "Our goal is a credible political process that can address the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain ... Violence is not and cannot be the answer. A political process is. We have raised our concerns about the current measures directly with Bahraini officials and will continue to do so."
When the 2011 Libyan uprising began in mid-February and intensified into armed conflict with rebel successes in early March 2011, Clinton stated the administration's position that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
"must go now, without further violence or delay". As Gaddafi conducted counterattacks against the rebels, Clinton was initially reluctant, as was Obama, to back calls being made in various quarters for imposition of a Libyan no-fly zone. However, as the prospects of a Gaddafi victory and possible subsequent bloodbath that would kill many thousands emerged, and as Clinton travelled Europe and North Africa and found support for military intervention increasing among European and Arab leaders, she had a change of view. Together with Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and National Security Council figure Samantha Power
, who were already supporting military intervention, Clinton overcame opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates
, security advisor Thomas Donilon, and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan
, and the administration backed U.N. action to impose the no-fly zone and authorize other military actions as necessary. Rice and Clinton played major roles in getting the United Nations Security Council
to approve the resolution and Clinton had earlier helped gained the financial and political support of several Arab countries.
While Clinton recognized some of the contradictions of U.S. policy towards turmoil in the Mideast countries, which involving backing some regimes while supporting protesters against others, she was nevertheless passionate on the subject, enough so that Obama joked at the annual Gridiron Dinner that "I’ve dispatched Hillary to the Middle East to talk about how these countries can transition to new leaders — though, I’ve got to be honest, she's gotten a little passionate about the subject. These past few weeks it's been tough falling asleep with Hillary out there on Pennsylvania Avenue shouting, throwing rocks at the window." In any case, Obama's reference to Clinton travelling a lot was true enough; by now she had logged 465000 miles (748,343.1 km) in her Boeing 757
, more than any other Secretary of State for a comparable period of time, and had visited 79 countries while in the office.
Clinton also saw the potential political changes in the Mideast as an opportunity for an even more fundamental change to take place, that being the empowerment of women (something Newsweek
magazine saw as Clinton's categorical imperative
). She made remarks to this effect in countries such as Egypt – "If a country doesn’t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible" – as well as in Yemen, where she spoke of the story of the present Nujood Ali
and her campaign against forced marriage at a young age. At home, Clinton was even more expansive, looking on a worldwide basis: "I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century. We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings." She also maintained that the well-being of women in other countries was a direct factor in American self-interest: "This is a big deal for American values and for American foreign policy and our interests, but it is also a big deal for our security. Because where women are disempowered and dehumanized, you are more likely to see not just antidemocratic forces, but extremism that leads to security challenges for us."
In the midst of this turmoil, which also included Clinton pledging government-level support to Japan in the wake of the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
, Clinton reiterated in a mid-March CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer
during her post-revolution visit to Cairo's Tahrir Square that she had no interest in becoming Secretary of Defense or vice president or of running for president again. She also explicitly said for the first time that she did not want to serve a second term as Secretary of State if President Obama is re-elected in 2012
. She stressed how much she regarded her current position: "Because I have the best job I could ever have. This is a moment in history where it is almost hard to catch your breath. There are both the tragedies and disasters that we have seen from Haiti to Japan and there are the extraordinary opportunities and challenges that we see right here in Egypt and in the rest of the region." But reportedly she was weary at times from constant travelling, still not part of Obama's inner circle, and looking forward to a time of less stress and the chances to write, teach, or work for international women's rights. She was not bound by her statements, and Blitzer for one suspected she would change her mind. In any case, she remained popular with the American public; her Gallup Poll favorability rating rose to 66 percent (against 31 percent unfavorable), her highest mark ever save for a period during the Lewinsky scandal
thirteen years earlier. Her favorability was 10 to 20 percentage points higher than those for Obama, Biden, or Gates, and reflected in part the high ratings that secretaries of state sometimes get.
Regarding whether the U.S. or some other ally would send arms to the anti-Gaddafi forces
, Clinton said that this would be permissible under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973
, but that that no decision had yet been made on doing so.
Following the successful May 1–2, 2011, U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden
at his hideout compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the resulting criticism from various Americans that Pakistan had not found, or had let, bin Laden hide in near plain sight
, Clinton made a point of praising Pakistan's past record of helping the U.S. hunt down terrorists: "Our counter-terrorism cooperation over a number of years now, with Pakistan, has contributed greatly to our efforts to dismantle al-Qaeda. And in fact, cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which we was hiding. Going forward, we are absolutely committed to continuing that cooperation." Clinton then played a key role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead bin Laden, reporting that U.S. allies in the Middle East did not favor the release and agreeing with Secretary Gates that such a release might cause an anti-U.S. backlash overseas.
A June 2011 trip to Africa found Clinton both consoling longtime aide Huma Abedin
after the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal
broke and emphatically denying published reports that she was interested in becoming the next president of the World Bank
. By July, Clinton was assuring China and other foreign governments that the ongoing U.S. debt ceiling crisis would not end with the U.S. going into sovereign default
(a prediction that turned true when the Budget Control Act of 2011
was passed and signed the day before default loomed). She spent much of that summer in an eventually unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Palestinian National Authority
not to attempt to gain membership in the United Nations at its September 2011 General Assembly meeting
.
Clinton continued to poll high, with a September 2011 Bloomberg News poll finding her with a 64 percent favorable rating, the highest of any political figure in the nation. A third of those polls said that Clinton would have been a better president than Obama, but when asked the likelihood she would stage a campaign against the president, she said, “It’s below zero. One of the great things about being secretary of state is I am out of politics. I am not interested in being drawn back into it by anybody.”
Following the October 2011 announcement by Obama that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
would complete by the close of that same year, Clinton forcefully defended the decision as emanating from an agreement originally signed with Iraq under the Bush administration and as evidence that Iraq's sovereignty was real, and said that despite the absence of military forces, the U.S. was still committed to strengthening Iraq's democracy with “robust” diplomatic measures. She also praised the effectiveness of Obama's foreign policy in general, pointing most recently to the death of Muammar Gaddafi
and thus conclusion of the Libyan intervention, and implicitly pushing back on criticism from those running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination
. (A video of her exclaiming "Wow" upon first reading on her BlackBerry of Gaddafi's capture achieved wide circulation.)
Secretary Clinton cancelled a planned trip to the United Kingdom and Turkey to be with her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who died in Washington on November 1, 2011.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...
is serving as United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
under President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, and is the head of the department conducting the foreign policy of the Obama administration
Foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration
The Foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration is the foreign policy of the United States from January 20, 2009 onward under the administration of President Barack Obama. Some of Obama's major foreign policy advisors include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, National Security...
. She was preceded in office by Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
and is the third woman to hold this position. She is also the only former First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States is the title of the hostess of the White House. Because this position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, the title is most often applied to the wife of a sitting president. The current first lady is Michelle Obama.-Current:The...
to become a member of the United States Cabinet
United States Cabinet
The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, which are generally the heads of the federal executive departments...
. As secretary of state she has traveled widely and initiated many diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Obama administration.
Nomination and confirmation
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
in his administration. Clinton later related, "He said I want you to be my secretary of state. And I said, 'Oh, no, you don’t.' I said, 'Oh, please, there's so many other people who could do this.'" Clinton initially turned Obama down, but he persisted. Some Democratic senators welcomed the idea of her leaving, having been allied with Obama during the campaign and believing that Clinton had risked party disunity by keeping her candidacy going for so long.
Obama and Clinton held a meeting on the subject on November 11. When the possibility became public on November 14, it came as a surprising and dramatic move, especially given the long, sometimes bitter battle the two had waged during the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries
Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008
The 2008 Democratic presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 U.S. presidential election...
. However, Obama had been thinking of the idea as far back as the 2008 Democratic National Convention
2008 Democratic National Convention
The United States 2008 Democratic National Convention was a quadrennial presidential nominating convention of the Democratic Party where it adopted its national platform and officially nominated its candidates for President and Vice President of the United States. The convention was held in Denver,...
. Despite the aggressiveness of the campaign and the still-lingering animosities between the two campaign staffs, as with many primary battles the political differences between the candidates were never that great and the two rivals had developed a respect for one another as well.
Consideration of Clinton was seen as Obama wanting to assemble a "team of rivals" in his administration, à la Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
. The notion of rivals successfully working together also found applicability in other fields, such as George Marshall
George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense...
and Dwight Eisenhower in relation to Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...
during World War II and Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi
Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi is an Indian-born American business executive. She is the current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo, the second largest food & beverage business in the world ....
keeping on her top rival for CEO at Pepsico
PepsiCo
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
. At the same time, the choice gave Obama an image of being self-assured.
Clinton was conflicted whether she wanted to take the position or remain in the Senate, and agonized over her decision. While the Senate leadership had discussed possible leadership positions or other promotions in rank with her even before the cabinet position became a possibility, nothing concrete had been offered. The prospect of her ever becoming Senate Majority Leader seemed dim. A different complication was Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
; she told Obama: "There's one last thing that's a problem, which is my husband. You've seen what this is like; it will be a circus if I take this job", making reference to the volatile effect Bill Clinton had had during the primaries. In addition, there was a specific concern whether the financial and other involvements of Bill Clinton's post-presidential activities
Post-presidency of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. After he left office, he continued to be active in the public sphere, touring the world, writing books, and campaigning for Democrats, including his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton....
would violate any conflict-of-interest rules for serving cabinet members. There was as well considerable media speculation about what effect taking the position would have on her political career and any possible future presidential aspirations. Clinton wavered over the offer, but as she later related, "But, you know, we kept talking. I finally began thinking, look, if I had won and I had called him, I would have wanted him to say yes. And, you know, I’m pretty old-fashioned, and it's just who I am. So at the end of the day, when your president asks you to serve, you say yes, if you can."
On November 21, reports indicated that Clinton had accepted the position. On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure". As part of the nomination, Bill Clinton agreed to accept a number of conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center
William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park
The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park is the presidential library of Bill Clinton. The center was established by Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, is located in Little Rock, Arkansas and includes the Clinton Presidential Library, the offices of the Clinton Foundation,...
and Clinton Global Initiative.
The appointment required a Saxbe fix
Saxbe fix
The Saxbe fix, or salary rollback, is a mechanism by which the President of the United States, in appointing a current or former member of the United States Congress whose elected term has not yet expired, can avoid the restriction of the United States Constitution's Ineligibility Clause...
, which was passed and signed into law in December 2008 before confirmation hearings began. Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It is charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. The Foreign Relations Committee is generally responsible for overseeing and funding foreign aid programs as...
began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration. Clinton stated during her confirmation hearings that she believed that "the best way to advance America's interests in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions" and "We must use what has been called 'smart power
Smart power
Smart power is a term in international relations defined by Joseph Nye as "the ability to combine hard and soft power into a winning strategy." According to Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela R...
', the full range of tools at our disposal — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural — picking the right tool or combination of tools for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy."
On January 15, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton. Republican Senator David Vitter
David Vitter
David Vitter is the junior United States Senator from Louisiana and a member of the Republican Party. Previously, he served in the United States House of Representatives, representing the suburban Louisiana's 1st congressional district. He served as a member of the Louisiana House of...
of Louisiana was the lone dissenting vote in the committee. By this time, Clinton's public favorable/unfavorable rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point in her public career since the Lewinsky scandal
Lewinsky scandal
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging in 1998 from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 25-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of...
during her time as First Lady, and 71 percent of the public approved of the nomination to the cabinet.
Even before taking office, Clinton was working together with Bush administration officials in assessing national security issues. The night before the inauguration of the new president
Inauguration of Barack Obama
The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The inauguration, which set a record attendance for any event held in Washington, D.C., marked the commencement of the four-year term of Barack Obama as President and Joe...
, contingency plans against a purported plot by Somali
Somali people
Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family...
extremists against Obama and the inauguration was being discussed. Clinton argued that typical security responses were not tenable: "Is the Secret Service going to whisk him off the podium so the American people see their incoming president disappear in the middle of the inaugural address? I don’t think so." (The threat turned out to not exist.)
On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2. Vitter and Republican Senator Jim DeMint
Jim DeMint
James Warren "Jim" DeMint is the junior U.S. Senator from South Carolina, serving since 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party and a leader in the Tea Party movement. He previously served as the U.S. Representative for from 1999 to 2005.-Early life and education:DeMint was born in...
of South Carolina voted against the confirmation.
Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day. She became the first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet
United States Cabinet
The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, which are generally the heads of the federal executive departments...
. She also became the first Secretary of State to have previously been an elected official since Edmund Muskie
Edmund Muskie
Edmund Sixtus "Ed" Muskie was an American politician from Rumford, Maine. He served as Governor of Maine from 1955 to 1959, as a member of the United States Senate from 1959 to 1980, and as Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter from 1980 to 1981...
's less-than-a-year stint in 1980, with Christian Herter
Christian Herter
Christian Archibald Herter was an American politician and statesman; 59th governor of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957, and United States Secretary of State from 1959 to 1961.-Early life:...
during the Eisenhower administration being the last one before that. In being selected by her formal rival Obama, she became only the fourth person in the preceding hundred years to join the cabinet of someone they had run against for their party's presidential nomination that election year (Jack Kemp
Jack Kemp
Jack French Kemp was an American politician and a collegiate and professional football player. A Republican, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, having previously served nine terms as a congressman for Western New York's 31st...
ran against and was later chosen by George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
to be Secretary of HUD
United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
The United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is the head of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, a member of the President's Cabinet, and thirteenth in the Presidential line of succession. The post was created with the formation of the Department of Housing...
in 1988, George W. Romney
George W. Romney
George Wilcken Romney was an American businessman and Republican Party politician. He was chairman and CEO of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973...
by Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
for Secretary of HUD in 1968, and Philander Knox by William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...
for Secretary of State in 1908 preceded her; Obama's pick of Tom Vilsack
Tom Vilsack
Thomas James "Tom" Vilsack is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and presently the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. He served as the 40th Governor of the state of Iowa. He was first elected in 1998 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2002...
for Secretary of Agriculture
United States Secretary of Agriculture
The United States Secretary of Agriculture is the head of the United States Department of Agriculture. The current secretary is Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on 20 January 2009. The position carries similar responsibilities to those of agriculture ministers in other...
followed her a couple of weeks later to be the next such person).
(On January 29, 2009, the constitutionality of her Saxbe fix was challenged in court by Judicial Watch
Judicial Watch
Judicial Watch is an organization that describes itself as "a conservative, non-partisan American educational foundation that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law." According to its mission statement, Judicial Watch "advocates high standards of...
; on October 30, 2009, the courts dismissed the case.)
Staff
During the Obama presidential transitionPresidential transition of Barack Obama
The presidential transition of Barack Obama began when he won the United States presidential election on November 4, 2008, and became the President-Elect. He was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 15, 2008...
, Clinton found her own transition "difficult ... in some respects, because I never even dreamed of it." Then, and in the early days of her tenure, there was considerable jockeying for jobs within the department among those in "Hillaryland
Hillaryland
Hillaryland was the self-designated name of a group of core advisors to Hillary Rodham Clinton, when she was First Lady of the United States and again when, as United States Senator, she was one of the Democratic Party candidates for President in the 2008 election.The group included Huma Abedin,...
", her longtime circle of advisors and staff aides, as well as others who had worked with her in the past, with not as many jobs as those desiring of them. Obama gave Clinton more freedom to choose her staff than he did to any other cabinet member.
Clinton's former campaign manager, Maggie Williams
Maggie Williams
Margaret "Maggie" Ann Williams is a partner in Griffin Williams, a management-consulting firm. She was the campaign manager for Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Following Clinton's win in the New Hampshire primary in January 2008, Williams was brought onto the Clinton...
, handled the staff hiring process. Longtime counsel to both Clintons Cheryl Mills
Cheryl Mills
Cheryl D. Mills is an American lawyer, administrator, and corporate executive. She is most known for being deputy White House Counsel for President Bill Clinton, whom she defended during his 1999 impeachment trial. She worked for New York University as Senior Vice President...
serves as the secretary's Counselor and Chief of Staff. Jacob Lew
Jacob Lew
Jacob "Jack" J. Lew is the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget a position he previously held from 1998 to 2001.-Early life and education:...
was named Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, an unusual step designed to push to the forefront the emphasis on getting higher budget allocations from Congress and overlooking internal workings. Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter was the Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department from January 2009 until February 2011. She is the Bert G...
was appointed Director of Policy Planning
Director of Policy Planning
The Director of Policy Planning is the United States Department of State official in charge of the Department's internal think tank, the Policy Planning Staff. The position of Director of Policy Planning has traditionally been held by many members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment...
with a view towards long-term policy towards Asia. Huma Abedin
Huma Abedin
Huma Mahmood Abedin is a deputy chief of staff and aide to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She served as traveling chief of staff and "body woman" for Clinton during Clinton's campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.-Early life:Abedin was born in...
, Clinton's longtime personal assistant, is Deputy Chief of Staff for the secretary and remains a key member of Clinton's operation.
Much like she did at the beginning of her Senate career, Clinton kept a lowish profile during her early months and worked hard to familiarize herself with the culture and institutional history of the department. She met or spoke with all of the living former secretaries, and especially relied upon her close friendship with Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Korbelová Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0...
.
At the start of her tenure, Obama and Clinton announced several high-profile special envoys to trouble spots in the world, including former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell
George J. Mitchell
George John Mitchell, Jr., is the former U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under the Obama administration. A Democrat, Mitchell was a United States Senator who served as the Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995...
as Mideast envoy and Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker....
as envoy to South Asia and Afghanistan.
On January 27, 2009, Secretary of State Clinton appointed Todd Stern
Todd Stern
Todd D. Stern is the United States Special Envoy for Climate Change, leading talks at the United Nations climate change conferences and smaller sessions, appointed by U.S...
as the department's Special Envoy for Climate Change.
By May 2009, Clinton and the Obama administration intended to nominate Paul Farmer
Paul Farmer
Dr. Paul Edward Farmer is an American anthropologist and physician. He is currently the Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University, formerly the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an attending physician and Chief...
, co-founder of Partners in Health
Partners In Health
Partners In Health is a Boston, Massachusetts-based non-profit health care organization dedicated to providing a "preferential option for the poor". It was founded in 1987 by Dr. Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Thomas J. White, Todd McCormack, and Dr...
, as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development is the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 by executive order to implement development assistance programs in the areas...
(USAID)., but by August 2009 his nomination was reportedly scotched by the White House for reasons unknown. This caused Clinton, while visiting USAID, to publicly criticize the long vetting process for administration appointments calling it a "nightmare" and "frustrating beyond words." In November 2009, an unconventional choice was nominated instead, Rajiv Shah
Rajiv Shah
Rajiv “Raj” Shah is the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development . He was confirmed by the Senate on December 24, 2009, replacing acting chief Alonzo Fulgham, making him the highest-ranking Indian American in any presidential administration...
, a young Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics
Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics
The Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics is a high-ranking official within the United States Department of Agriculture that provides leadership and oversight for the Agricultural Research Service, Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, Economic Research...
. Clinton said, "He has a record of delivering results in both the private and public sectors, forging partnerships around the world, especially in Africa and Asia, and developing innovative solutions in global health, agriculture, and financial services for the poor."
Despite some early press predictions, in general Clinton's departmental staff has avoided the kind of leaks and infighting that troubled her 2008 presidential campaign
Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008
New York junior Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had expressed interest in the 2008 United States presidential election since at least October 2002, drawing media speculation on whether she would become a candidate. No woman has ever won the nomination of a major party in the...
. One possibly lingering line of internal tension was resolved in earlyu 2011 when State Department spokesperson P. J. Crowley resigned after making personal comments about in-captivity leaker Bradley Manning and his treatment by the Department of Defense.
Early themes and structural initiatives
During the transition period, Clinton sought to build a more powerful State Department. She began a push for a larger international affairs budget and an expanded role in global economic issues. She cited the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq where the U.S. Defense Department had conducted diplomatic missions. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert GatesRobert Gates
Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....
agreed with her, and also advocated larger State Department budgets. In the Obama administration's proposed 2010 United States federal budget
2010 United States federal budget
The United States Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2010, titled A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise, is a spending request by President Barack Obama to fund government operations for October 2009–September 2010...
of February 2009, there was a proposed 9.5 percent budget increase for the State Department and other international programs, from $47.2 billion in fiscal year 2009 to $51.7 billion in fiscal year 2010. By the time of Clinton's May 2009 testimony before the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs is one of twelve subcommittees of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations.-Jurisdiction:...
, numbers had been restated following rounds of general federal budget cuts, and the proposed fiscal year 2010 budget request for the State Department and USAID was $48.6 billion, a 7 percent increase.
Clinton also brought a message of departmental reform to the position, especially in regarding foreign aid programs as something that deserves the same status and level of scrutiny as diplomatic initiatives.
Six-party talks
The six-party talks aim to find a peaceful resolution to the security concerns as a result of the North Korean nuclear weapons program.There has been a series of meetings with six participating states:* The Democratic People's Republic of Korea ;...
over the North Korean nuclear weapons program
North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
North Korea has declared that it has nuclear weapons and is believed by many to have nuclear weapons. The CIA assesses that North Korea also has a substantial arsenal of chemical weapons...
continue. Clinton re-emphasized her views during her first speech to State Department employees when she said, "There are three legs to the stool of American foreign policy: defense, diplomacy, and development. And we are responsible for two of the three legs. And we will make clear, as we go forward, that diplomacy and development are essential tools in achieving the long-term objectives of the United States. And I will do all that I can, working with you, to make it abundantly clear that robust diplomacy and effective development are the best long-term tools for securing America's future." Clinton also soon visited the United States Agency for International Development
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development is the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 by executive order to implement development assistance programs in the areas...
, where she met employees and said they would be getting extra funds and attention during the new administration.
She kept a low profile when diplomatic necessity or Obama's involvement required it, but maintained an influential relationship with the president and in foreign policy decisions. Her first 100 days found her travelling over 70000 miles (112,653.8 km), having no trouble adapting to being a team player subordinate to Obama, and gaining skills as an executive. Nevertheless, she remained an international celebrity with a much higher profile than most Secretaries of State. Her background as an elected official gave her insight into the needs and fears of elected officials of other countries.
By the summer of 2009, there was considerable analysis and speculation in the media of what kind of role and level of influence Clinton had within the Obama administration, with a variety of assessments being produced. A prominent mid-July speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
reasserted her role; she said, "We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage. Our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal."
In July 2009, Clinton announced a new State Department initiative, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review
Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review
The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review is a study by the United States Department of State, first started in 2009 and intended to be done every four years, that analyzes the short-, medium-, and long-term blueprint for the United States' diplomatic and development efforts abroad...
, to establish specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions abroad. The most ambitious of Clinton's departmental reforms, it is modeled after the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review
Quadrennial Defense Review
The Quadrennial Defense Review is a study by the United States Department of Defense that analyzes strategic objectives and potential military threats. The Quadrennial Defense Review Report is the main public document describing the United States's military doctrine.As stipulated in the 1997...
, which Clinton was familiar with from her days on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The first such Review came out in December 2010. Entitled Leading Through Civilian Power, its 220 pages centered around the notion of elevating "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises. It also sought the elevation of U.S. ambassadors in coordinating work of all abroad-tasked U.S. agencies. Clinton said of the underlying message, "Leading with civilians saves lives and money." She also resolved to get Congress to approve the QDDR as a required part of the State Department planning process, saying, "I am determined that this report will not merely gather dust, like so many others." Another theme of the report was the goal of empowering the female population in developing countries around the world; the QDDR mentioned women and girls some 133 times. By attempting to institutionalize her goals in this area, Clinton – along with Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter was the Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department from January 2009 until February 2011. She is the Bert G...
and Melanne Verveer
Melanne Verveer
Melanne S. Verveer is, since April 6, 2009, United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues. She is the former Chief of Staff to First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton and co-founder and chairman of the board of the Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international...
, who also worked heavily in these efforts – were hoping that her initiatives and concerns towards the empowerment of women would persist past her time in office as well as break a past pattern of chauvinism in the department.
In September, Clinton unveiled the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative at the annual meeting of her husband's Clinton Global Initiative. The goal of the new initiative is to battle hunger worldwide on a strategic basis as a key part of U.S. foreign policy, rather than just react to food shortage emergencies as they occur. The secretary said that "Food security is not just about food. But it is all about security: economic security, environmental security, even national security. Massive hunger poses a threat to the stability of governments, societies and borders." The initiative seeks to develop agricultural economies, counter malnourishment, increase productivity, expand trade, and spur innovation in developing nations. Clinton said that women would be placed at the center of the effort, as they constitute a majority of the world's farmers. The next month, to mark World Food Day
World Food Day
World Food Day is celebrated every year around the world on 16 October in honor of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945...
, Clinton said, "Fighting hunger and poverty through sustainable agricultural development, making sure that enough food is available and that people have the resources to purchase it, is a key foreign policy objective of the Obama administration."
During October 2009, Clinton said, "this is a great job. It is a 24/7 job" and "this job is incredibly all-encompassing." She said she never thought about if she were making the same foreign policy decisions as president, and had no intention of ever running for that office again. While some friends and former advisers thought she was primarily saying that to focus attention on her current role and that she might change her mind about running for president in the future, others felt that she was genuinely content with the direction her career and life had taken and no longer had presidential ambitions.
By the close of 2009 there were 25 female ambassadors posted by other nations to Washington; this was the highest number ever.
This was dubbed the "Hillary effect" by some observers: "Hillary Clinton is so visible" as secretary of state, said Amelia Matos Sumbana, the Mozambique Ambassador to the United States, "she makes it easier for presidents to pick a woman for Washington." An added fact, of course, was that two other recent U.S. Secretaries of State were women, but Clinton's international fame from her days as First Lady of the United States made her impact in this respect the greatest of the group.
Clinton also included in the State Department budget for the first time a breakdown of programs that specifically concerned themselves with the well-being of women and girls around the world. By fiscal 2012, the department's budget request for such work was $1.2 billion, of which $832 million was for global health programs.
In February 2010 testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs is one of twelve subcommittees of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations.-Jurisdiction:...
, Secretary Clinton complained about the slow pace of Senate confirmations of Obama's nominations to diplomatic positions, a number of which were delayed for political reasons and had been subject to holds
Secret hold
In the United States Senate, a hold is a parliamentary procedure permitted by the Standing Rules of the United States Senate which allows one or more Senators to prevent a motion from reaching a vote on the Senate floor....
by individual Republican senators. Clinton said the problem damaged America's image abroad: "It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with."
In 2009, and again in 2010 and 2011, Clinton stated that she was committed to serving out her full term as secretary, but would not commit to serving a second term should Obama be re-elected.
Regional issues and travels: 2009
In March 2009, Clinton made her first trip as secretary to Israel. During this time, Clinton announced that the US government will dispatch two officials to the Syrian capital to explore Washington's relationship with Damascus.
On March 5, 2008, Clinton attended the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. At this meeting, Clinton proposed including Iran at a conference on Afghanistan. Clinton said the proposed conference could be held on March 31 in the Netherlands.
In March 2009, Clinton prevailed over Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Joe Biden
Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...
on an internal debate to send an additional 20,000 troops to Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
.
In June 2009, Clinton had surgery to repair a right elbow fracture caused by a fall in the State Department basement. The painful injury and recuperation caused her to miss two foreign trips. Nevertheless, during President Obama's trip without her to Russia, Clinton was named as co-coordinator, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
Sergey Lavrov
Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is the Foreign Minister of Russia. Prior to that, Lavrov was a Soviet diplomat and Russia's ambassador to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004. Lavrov speaks Russian, English, French and Sinhala....
, of a newly-created U.S.-Russian Presidential Commission to discuss nuclear, economic, and energy and environmental policies relating to the two countries.
Clinton returned to the diplomatic scene sitting down with ousted Honduran President
President of Honduras
This page lists the Presidents of Honduras.Colonial Honduras declared its independence from Spain on 15 September 1821. From 5 January 1822 to 1 July 1823, Honduras was part of the First Mexican Empire of Agustín de Iturbide....
Manuel Zelaya
Manuel Zelaya
José Manuel Zelaya Rosales is a politician who was President of Honduras from January 27, 2006 until June 28, 2009. The eldest son of a wealthy businessman, he inherited his father's nickname "Mel," and, before entering politics, was involved in his family's logging and timber businesses.Elected...
, who agreed on a U.S.-backed proposal to begin talks with the Micheletti government
Roberto Micheletti
Roberto Micheletti Baín is a former de facto president of Honduras who served as a result of the 2009 coup d'état. The Honduran military was ordered by the Supreme Court to forcefully detain President Manuel Zelaya once the Court stated he was violating the Honduran constitution; Zelaya was exiled...
.
Clinton will co-chair the high-level U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, D.C. on July 27–28, 2009 and will lead the Strategic Track for the United States.
In August 2009, Clinton embarked on her longest trip yet, to a number of stops in Africa. On August 13, 2009, Clinton reacted with fury when a Congolese student asked her what her husband, "Mr Clinton", thought of a Chinese trade deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Clinton looked bemused at the question and replied, "My husband is not secretary of state, I am...If you want my opinion I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband". The incident was played in newsrooms around the world. It later turned out the question was mistranslated and the student had intended to ask what Mr Obama thought.
In October 2009, Clinton's intervention – including juggling conversations on two mobile phones while sitting in a limousine – overcame last-minute snags and saved the signing of an historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations.
In late October 2009, Clinton travelled to Pakistan, where she had staged a memorable visit in 1995 while First Lady. Her arrival was followed within hours by the 28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing
28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing
The 28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing occurred in Peshawar, Pakistan, when a car bomb was detonated in a Mina Bazar of the city. The bomb killed 137 people and injured more than 200 others, making it the deadliest attack in Peshawar's history...
; in response, Clinton said of those responsible, "They know they are on the losing side of history but they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort that it is." In addition to meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani
Yousaf Raza Gillani
Yousuf Raza Gilani is the current prime minister of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He was nominated as Prime Minister by the PPP, with the support of its coalition partners, Pakistan Muslim League , Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Muttahida Qaumi Movement, on 22 March 2008...
, she also staged numerous public appearances. In those, she let students, talk show hosts, and tribal elders repeatedly complain about and criticize American foreign policy and American actions. Occasionally, she pushed back in a more blunt fashion than usual for diplomats, explicitly wondering why Pakistan had not been more successful in combating al Qaeda "if they wanted to." Member of Parliament and government spokesperson Farahnaz Ispahani
Farahnaz Ispahani
Farahnaz Ispahani is currently serving as a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan and as a spokesperson for the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari. She is married to Husain Haqqani, the current Pakistan Ambassador to the United States, and is the granddaughter of Pakistan's first...
said, "In the past, when the Americans came, they would talk to the generals and go home. Clinton's willingness to meet with everyone, hostile or not, has made a big impression – and because she's Hillary Clinton, with a real history of affinity for this country, it means so much more."
On the same trip, Clinton visited the Middle East, in an effort to restart the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.
In November 2009, Secretary Clinton led the U.S. delegation at the 20th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
. There, she said: "Our history did not end the night the wall came down, it began anew. ... To expand freedom to more people, we cannot accept that freedom does not belong to all people. We cannot allow oppression defined and justified by religion or tribe to replace that of ideology."
In December 2009, Clinton attended the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, where she pushed forward a last-minute proposal of significant new amounts of foreign aid to help developing countries deal with the effects of global warming, in an attempt to unstick stuck negotiations and salvage some sort of agreement at the conference. The secretary said, "We're running out of time. Without the accord, the opportunity to mobilize significant resources to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation will be lost." The amount of aid she proposed, $100 billion, was in the modest terms of the Copenhagen Accord
Copenhagen Accord
The Copenhagen Accord is a document that delegates at the 15th session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to "take note of" at the final plenary on 18 December 2009....
that was agreed to by the summit.
Secretary Clinton finished the year with very high approval ratings. She also narrowly edged out former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
in being America's most-admired woman, per a Gallup finding
Gallup's most admired man and woman poll
Gallup’s most admired man and woman poll is an annual poll that Gallup has conducted at the end of virtually every single year since 1948. Americans are asked, without prompting, to say what man and woman "living today in any part of the world, do [they] admire most?" The result is published as a...
.
Regional issues and travels: 2010
In January 2010, Secretary Clinton cut short a trip to the Asia-Pacific region
Asia-Pacific region
Asia-Pacific region may refer to:*Asia-Pacific, a geographic designation*Asia-Pacific Scout Region *Pacific Rim, countries and cities located around the edge of the Pacific Ocean...
in order to see firsthand the destructive effects of the 2010 Haiti earthquake
2010 Haiti earthquake
The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake, with an epicentre near the town of Léogâne, approximately west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.By 24 January, at least 52 aftershocks...
and to meet with President of Haiti
President of Haiti
The President of the Republic of Haiti is the head of state of Haiti. Executive power in Haiti is divided between the president and the government headed by the Prime Minister of Haiti...
René Préval
René Préval
René Garcia Préval is a Haitian politician and agronomist who was the President of the Republic of Haiti from 14 May 2006 to 14 May 2011. He previously served as President from February 7, 1996, to February 7, 2001, and as Prime Minister from February 1991 to October 11, 1991.-Early life and...
. Clinton said she would also evaluate the relief effort and help evacuate some Americans. She stressed that her visit was designed not to interfere with ongoing efforts: "It's a race against time. Everybody is pushing as hard as they can."
The Clintons had a special interest in Haiti going back decades, to their delayed honeymoon there
up to Bill Clinton being the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti at the time of the earthquake.
In a major speech on January 21, 2010, Clinton, speaking on behalf of the U.S., declared that "We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas", while highlighting how "even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable." She also drew analogies between the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
and the free and unfree Internet. Her speech, which followed a controversy surrounding Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's changed policy toward China and censorship
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...
, appears to mark a split between authoritarian capitalism and the Western model of free capitalism and Internet access. Chinese officials responded strongly, saying Clinton's remarks were "harmful to Sino-American relations" and demanded that U.S. officials "respect the truth", and some foreign policy observers thought that Clinton had been too provocative. But the White House stood behind Clinton, and demanded that China provide better answers regarding the recent Chinese cyberattack against Google
Operation Aurora
Operation Aurora was a cyber attack which began in mid-2009 and continued through December 2009. The attack was first publicly disclosed by Google on January 12, 2010, in a blog post. In the blog post, Google said the attack originated in China...
. Clinton's speech garnered marked attention among diplomats, as it was the first time a senior American official had clearly put forth a vision in which the Internet was a key element of American foreign policy.
In February 2010, Clinton made her first visit to Latin America as secretary. The tour would take her to Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica and Guatemala and Argentina. She first visited Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
and talked to Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner , commonly known as Cristina Fernández or Cristina Kirchner is the 55th and current President of Argentina and the widow of former President Néstor Kirchner. She is Argentina's first elected female president, and the second female president ever to serve...
. They discussed Falkland Islands sovereignty and the issue of oil in the Falklands. Clinton said that "We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the table in a peaceful, productive way." Clinton offered to help facilitate such discussions, but did not agree to an Argentinian request that she mediate such talks. Within 12 hours of Clinton's remarks, Downing Street
Downing Street
Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an...
categorically rejected a U.S. role: "We welcome the support of the secretary of state in terms of ensuring that we continue to keep diplomatic channels open but there is no need for [direct involvement]." Clinton then went on to Santiago, Chile
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
to witness the aftereffects of the 2010 Chile earthquake
2010 Chile earthquake
The 2010 Chile earthquake occurred off the coast of central Chile on Saturday, 27 February 2010, at 03:34 local time , having a magnitude of 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale, with intense shaking lasting for about three minutes. It ranks as the sixth largest earthquake ever to be recorded by a...
and to bring some telecommunications equipment to aid in the rescue and recovery efforts.
In April 2010, there was a flurry of speculation that Clinton would be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by Justice John Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from December 19, 1975 until his retirement on June 29, 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving justice in the Court's history...
' retirement, including a plug from ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch
Orrin Hatch
Orrin Grant Hatch is the senior United States Senator for Utah and is a member of the Republican Party. Hatch served as the chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1993 to 2005...
. The notion was quickly quashed by the White House, which said, "The president thinks Secretary Clinton is doing an excellent job as secretary of state and wants her to remain in that position." A State Department spokesperson said that Clinton "loves her present job and is not looking for another one."
By mid-2010, Clinton and Obama had clearly forged a good working relationship; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside, and was careful to make sure that neither she nor her husband would upstage him. He in turn was accommodating to her viewpoints and in some cases adopted some of her more hawkish approaches. She met with him weekly, but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents, such as Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
with George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, James A. Baker with George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
, or Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
with Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
.
During an early June 2010 visit to Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, and Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, Clinton dealt with questions at every stop about the recently passed and widely controversial Arizona SB 1070 anti-illegal immigration law, which had damaged the image of the U.S. in Latin America. When answering a question from local television reporters in Quito
Quito
San Francisco de Quito, most often called Quito , is the capital city of Ecuador in northwestern South America. It is located in north-central Ecuador in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes mountains...
about it, she said that President Obama was opposed to it and that "The Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act." The was the first public confirmation that the Justice Department would act against the law; a month later, it became official as the lawsuit United States of America v. Arizona
United States of America v. Arizona
The United States of America v. The State of Arizona is a federal lawsuit filed by the United States Justice Department in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona on July 6, 2010, challenging Arizona's Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act as usurping the...
. While at a hotel bar in Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, she completed an agreement with a representative of China over which companies could be specified in a UN resolution sanctioning the nuclear program of Iran
Nuclear program of Iran
The nuclear program of Iran was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The support, encouragement and participation of the United States and Western European governments in Iran's nuclear program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution...
. Returning to SB 1070, in August 2010 she included the dispute over it in a report to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is a United Nations agency that works to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948...
, as an example to other countries of how fractious issues can be resolved under the rule of law.
In July 2010, Clinton visited Pakistan for the second time as secretary, announcing a large new U.S. economic assistance package to that country as well as a U.S.-led bilateral trade agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan. She then travelled to Afghanistan for the Kabul Conference on the situation there, during which President Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...
vowed to implement much-promised legal, political, and economic reforms in exchanged for a continued Western commitment there. Clinton said that despite the scheduled U.S. drawdown there in 2011, the U.S. has "no intention of abandoning our long-term mission of achieving a stable, secure, peaceful Afghanistan. Too many nations – especially Afghanistan – have suffered too many losses to see this country slide backward." She then went on to Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
and the Korean Demilitarized Zone
Korean Demilitarized Zone
The Korean Demilitarized Zone is a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula that serves as a buffer zone between North and South Korea. The DMZ cuts the Korean Peninsula roughly in half, crossing the 38th parallel on an angle, with the west end of the DMZ lying south of the parallel and...
where she and Defense Secretary Robert Gates
Robert Gates
Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....
met with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan
Yu Myung-hwan
Yu Myung-hwan is a South Korean diplomat, he was Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade from February 2008 to September.4 2010. His resignation was caused when his daughter was given a job in his department . He has previously held posts including Ambassador to Israel, Japan and the Philippines...
and Minister of National Defense Kim Tae-young
Kim Tae-Young (R.O.K. Army general)
General Kim Tae-young, ROKA, was the 34th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces and 42nd Republic of Korea Minister of National Defense.General Kim graduated from the Republic of Korea Military Academy in 1972...
in a '2+2 meeting' to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. There she said that the U.S. experience in staying in Korea for decades had led to a successful result, which might also be applicable to Afghanistan. Finally, she went to Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
for the ASEAN Regional Forum, wrapping up what The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
termed "a grueling trip that amounted to a tour of American wars, past and present". There she injected the U.S. into the long-running disputes over the sovereignty of the Paracel Islands
Paracel Islands
The Paracel Islands, also called Xisha Islands in Chinese and Hoàng Sa Islands in Vietnamese, is a group of islands under the administration of Hainan Province, The People's Republic of China. Vietnam and the Republic of China also claim sovereignty of these islands...
and Spratly Islands
Spratly Islands
The Spratly Islands are a group of more than 750 reefs, islets, atolls, cays and islands in the South China Sea. The archipelago lies off the coasts of the Philippines and Malaysia , about one third of the way from there to southern Vietnam. They comprise less than four square kilometers of land...
, much to the displeasure of the Chinese who view the South China Sea
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around...
as part of their core interests, by saying "The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea."
By this time, Secretary Clinton was quite busy with another role of a kind, "M.O.T.B." as she wrote in State Department memos, making reference to her being the mother of the bride in daughter Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Victoria Clinton is a television journalist, currently serving as Special Correspondent for NBC News, and philanthropist, working through the Clinton Global Initiative. She is the only child of former U.S...
's July 31, 2010, wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. She confessed in an interview in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
less than two weeks before the wedding that she and her husband were both nervous wrecks, and that "You should assume that if he makes it down the aisle in one piece it's going to be a major accomplishment. He is going to be so emotional, as am I." The event itself gained a large amount of media attention.
In a prominent September 2010 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, Clinton emphasized the continuing primacy of American power and involvement in the world, declaring a "new American moment". Making reference to actions from reviving the Middle East talks to U.S. aid following the 2010 Pakistan floods
2010 Pakistan floods
The 2010 Pakistan floods began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affected the Indus River basin. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was underwater, approximately...
, Clinton said that "The world is counting on us" and that "After years of war and uncertainty, people are wondering what the future holds, at home and abroad. So let me say it clearly: The United States can, must, and will lead in this new century."
With Democrats facing possible large losses in the 2010 midterm elections
United States elections, 2010
The 2010 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. During this midterm election year, all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 37 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate were contested in this election along with 38 state and territorial...
and President Obama struggling in opinion polls, idle speculation in Washington media circles concerning Obama's chances in the 2012 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2012
The United States presidential election of 2012 is the next United States presidential election, to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. It will be the 57th quadrennial presidential election in which presidential electors, who will actually elect the President and the Vice President of the United...
led to the notion that Clinton would take over as Obama's vice-presidential running mate in 2012 to add to his electoral appeal. Some versions of this idea had Vice President Biden replacing her as Secretary of State if Obama won. That it would ever happen was quite unlikely, but did not stop the chatter; when the job swap idea was mentioned in public to Clinton, she smiled and shook her head. A couple of months later, Obama shot down the idea, saying the notion was "completely unfounded" and that "they are both doing outstanding jobs where they are."
Over the summer of 2010, the stalled peace process in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was potentially revived when the various parties involved agreed to direct talks for the first time in a while. While President Obama was the orchestrator of the movement, Secretary Clinton had gone through months of cajoling just to get the parties to the table, and helped convince the reluctant Palestinians by getting support for direct talks from Egypt and Jordan. She then assumed a prominent role in the talks; Speaking at a September 2 meeting at the State Department between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel.Netanyahu is the first and, to...
of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas , also known by the kunya Abu Mazen , has been the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation since 11 November 2004 and became President of the Palestinian National Authority on 15 January 2005 on the Fatah ticket.Elected to serve until 9 January 2009, he unilaterally...
of the Palestinian Authority, she acknowledged that, "We’ve been here before, and we know how difficult the road ahead will be." Her role in the ongoing talks would be to take over from U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George J. Mitchell
George J. Mitchell
George John Mitchell, Jr., is the former U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under the Obama administration. A Democrat, Mitchell was a United States Senator who served as the Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995...
when discussions threatened to break down. The talks were generally given little chance to succeed, and Clinton faced the history of many such past failures, including the near miss of her husband at the 2000 Camp David Summit. Nevertheless, her prominent role in them thrust her further into the international spotlight and had the potential to affect her legacy as secretary.
In October, Clinton embarked on a seven-nation tour of Asia and Oceania. In New Zealand she signed the "Wellington Declaration", which normalized the diplomatic and military relationship between it and the United States. The signing marked twenty-five years after the United States suspended ANZUS
ANZUS
The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty is the military alliance which binds Australia and New Zealand and, separately, Australia and the United States to cooperate on defence matters in the Pacific Ocean area, though today the treaty is understood to relate to attacks...
treaty obligations with New Zealand in the wake of the USS Buchanan
USS Buchanan (DDG-14)
USS Buchanan , named for Admiral Franklin Buchanan, was a Charles F. Adams class guided missile armed destroyer in the United States Navy....
incident.
Clinton maintained her high approval ratings during 2010. Indeed, an aggregation of polls taken during the late portion or all of 2010 showed that Clinton (and her husband as well) had by far the best favorable-unfavorable ratings of any key contemporary American political figure.
In late November, WikiLeaks released confidential State Department cables
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
, selections of which were then published by several major newspapers around the world. The leak of the cables led to a crisis atmosphere in the State Department, as blunt statements and assessments by U.S. and foreign diplomats became public. Clinton led the damage control effort for the U.S. abroad, and also sought to bolster the morale of shocked Foreign Service officers. In the days leading up to the publication of the cables, Clinton called officials in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France, Afghanistan, Canada, and China to alert them to the pending disclosures. She did note that some foreign leaders were accepting of the frank language of the cables, with one telling her, "Don't worry about it. You should see what we say about you." She harshly criticized WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
, saying: "Let's be clear: This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community – the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity." The State Department went into immediate "war room" mode in order to deal with the effects of the disclosures, and began implementing measures to try to prevent another such leak from happening in the future.
A few of the cables released by WikiLeaks concerned Clinton directly
Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats
Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats refers to a 2009 confidential directive from the United States Department of State instructing US diplomats to spy on top officials of the United Nations. The intelligence information to be gathered included biometric information and...
: they revealed that directions to members of the foreign service had gone out in 2009 under Clinton's name to gather biometric details on foreign diplomats, including officials of the United Nations and U.S. allies. These included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, work schedules, and other targeted biographical information in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley
Philip J. Crowley
Philip J. “P.J.” Crowley is the former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, having been sworn into office on May 26, 2009. He resigned on March 13, 2011, following comments he made about the treatment of Bradley Manning. Crowley was named the 2011-2012 recipient of the...
said that Clinton had not drafted the directive and that the Secretary of State's name is systematically attached to the bottom of cables originating from Washington; it was unclear whether Clinton had actually seen them. The guidance in the cables was actually written by the CIA before being sent out under Clinton's name, as the CIA cannot directly instruct State Department personnel. The disclosed cables on the more aggressive intelligence gathering went back to 2008 when they went out under Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
's name during her tenure as Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's tenure as Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice served as United States Secretary of State under George W. Bush. She was preceded by Colin Powell and followed by Hillary Rodham Clinton. As secretary of state she traveled widely and initiated many diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Bush administration.-Confirmation hearings:On...
. The practice of the U.S. and the State Department gathering intelligence on the U.N. or on friendly nations was not new, but the surprise in this case was that it was done by other diplomats rather than intelligence agencies, and that the specific types of information being asked for went beyond past practice and was not the kind of information diplomats would normally be expected to gather. In any case, the instructions given in these cables may have been largely ignored by American diplomats as ill-advised. Responding to calls from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
and a few others that Clinton possibly step down from her post due to the revelation, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
Robert Gibbs
Robert Lane Gibbs was the 28th White House Press Secretary. Gibbs was the communications director for then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Obama's 2008 presidential campaign...
said, "I think that is absurd and ridiculous. I think Secretary of State Clinton is doing a wonderful job."
On December 1, Clinton flew to a summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...
in Astana
Astana
Astana , formerly known as Akmola , Tselinograd and Akmolinsk , is the capital and second largest city of Kazakhstan, with an officially estimated population of 708,794 as of 1 August 2010...
, Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
. There she would encounter some fifty leaders who were subjects of embarrassing comments in the leaks, including President of Kazakhstan
President of Kazakhstan
President of Kazakhstan is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Kazakhstan. The authorities of this position are described in special section of Constitution of Kazakhstan....
Nursultan Nazarbayev
Nursultan Nazarbayev
Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the nation received its independence in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union...
. A Kazakh official said that during such encounters, Clinton "kept her face. She didn't run away from difficult questions." During the encounters she emphasized that the leaked cables did not reflect official U.S. policy but rather were just instances of individual diplomats giving unfiltered feedback to Washington about what they saw happening in other countries. The situation led to some leaders turning her strong remarks about Internet freedom earlier in the year back against her. The OSCE summit also featured a meeting between Secretary Clinton
and Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, after succeeding Kofi Annan in 2007. Before going on to be Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he...
, Secretary-General of the United Nations. In an attempt to repair the strain caused by the Humint spying relevations, Clinton expressed regret to Ban for the disclosures, but did not make an apology per se. A U.N. statement relayed that Ban thanked Clinton "for clarifying the matter and for expressing her concern about the difficulties created."
Upon the December 13 death of veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker....
(who had initially fallen ill during a meeting with her), Clinton presided over a spontaneous gathering of some forty senior State Department personnel and Holbrooke aides at George Washington University Hospital
George Washington University Hospital
The George Washington University Hospital is a hospital in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It opened on On August 23, 2002, with 371 beds in a 400,000 sq. ft. building, housing than $45 million of medical equipment and cost more than $96 million to construct...
, reminiscing about him. At a memorial service for him days later, both Clinton and her husband praised Holbrooke's work, and she said, "Everything that we have accomplished that is working in Afghanistan and Pakistan is largely because of Richard."
On December 22, 2010, Secretary Clinton returned to the floor of the Senate during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress to witness the ratification, by a 71–26 margin, of the New START treaty. Clinton had spent the several days beforehand repeatedly calling wavering senators and seeking to gain their support.
As the year closed, Clinton was again named by Americans in Gallup's most admired man and woman poll
Gallup's most admired man and woman poll
Gallup’s most admired man and woman poll is an annual poll that Gallup has conducted at the end of virtually every single year since 1948. Americans are asked, without prompting, to say what man and woman "living today in any part of the world, do [they] admire most?" The result is published as a...
as the woman around the world they most admired; it was her ninth win in a row and fifteenth overall.
Regional issues and travels: 2011
Secretary Clinton began the year 2011 aboard, attending the Inauguration of Dilma RousseffInauguration of Dilma Rousseff
The inauguration of Dilma Rousseff as the 36th President of Brazil took place on Saturday, January 1, 2011. This inauguration marked the commencement of the four-year term of Dilma Rousseff as President and Michel Temer as Vice President. The event had been awaited with some expectation, since...
in Brazil, having been sent by President Obama to represent the U.S. Rousseff was the first woman to rule that country. While there, she ran into Venezuelan ruler and U.S. antagonist Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
, but the two had a pleasant exchange; Chávez said "She had a very spontaneous smile and I greeted her with the same effusiveness."
In mid-January, Clinton made a four-country trip to the Middle East, visiting Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, Oman
Oman
Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...
, The United Arab Emirates, and Qatar
Qatar
Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
. Speaking at a conference in Doha
Doha
Doha is the capital city of the state of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf, it had a population of 998,651 in 2008, and is also one of the municipalities of Qatar...
, she criticized Arab governments' failure to move more rapidly vis à vis reform in unusually blunt language, saying, "In too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand. The new and dynamic Middle East that I have seen needs firmer ground if it is to take root and grow everywhere." Her visit to Yemen, the first such visit by a Secretary of State in 20 years, found her focusing on the dangers of terrorism emanating from that country. An impromptu tour around the walled old city of Sana'a
Sana'a
-Districts:*Al Wahdah District*As Sabain District*Assafi'yah District*At Tahrir District*Ath'thaorah District*Az'zal District*Bani Al Harith District*Ma'ain District*Old City District*Shu'aub District-Old City:...
found Clinton being cheered by onlooking schoolchildren. A trip and fall while boarding the departing airplane left Clinton unhurt but news services making predictable witticisms.
When the 2011 Egyptian protests began, Clinton was in the forefront of the administration's response. Her initial public assessment on January 25 that the government of President Hosni Mubarak
Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011....
was "stable" and "looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people" soon came under criticism for being tepid and behind the curve of developing events, although others agreed that the U.S. could not be out front in undermining the government of a long-term ally. By the next day, Clinton was criticizing the Egyptian government's blocking of social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
sites. By January 29, Obama had put Clinton in charge of sorting out the administration's so-far confused response to developments. During the frenetic day of January 30, she combined appearances on all five Sunday morning talk shows – where sheo stated publicly for the first time the U.S.'s view that there needed to be an "orderly transition" to a "democratic participatory government" and a "peaceful transition to real democracy", not Mubarak's "faux democracy" – with a flight to Haiti and back to mark the anniversary of its terrible earthquake, all the while engaging in conference calls again regarding Egypt.
The Egyptian protests became the most critical foreign policy crisis so far for the Obama administration, and Obama came to increasingly rely upon Clinton for advice and connections. Clinton had known Mubarak for some twenty years, and had formed a close relationship with Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak
Suzanne Mubarak
Suzanne Mubarak is married to the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and was First Lady of Egypt until his ouster on 11 February 2011.-Early life and education:...
by supporting the latter's human rights work. Clinton originated the idea of sending Frank G. Wisner
Frank G. Wisner
Frank George Wisner II is an American businessman and former diplomat. He is the son of Frank Wisner . On 31 January 2011, he was sent to Egypt by President Barack Obama to negotiate a resolution to the popular protests against the regime that have swept the country...
as an emissary to Cairo, to tell Mubarak not to seek another term as the country's leader. As Mubarak's response to the protests became violent in early February, Clinton strongly condemned the actions taking place, especially those against journalists covering the events, and urged new Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman
Omar Suleiman
Omar Suleiman is a former Egyptian army general, politician, diplomat, and intelligence officer. A leading figure in Egypt's intelligence system beginning in 1986, Suleiman was appointed to the long-vacant Vice Presidency by then-President Hosni Mubarak on 29 January 2011...
to conduct an official investigation to hold those responsible for the violence accountable. When Wisner baldly stated that Mubarak's departure should be delayed to accommodate an orderly transition to another government, Clinton rebuked him, but shared a bit of the same sentiment. Mubarak did finally step down on February 11 as the protests became the 2011 Egyptian revolution
2011 Egyptian revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution took place following a popular uprising that began on Tuesday, 25 January 2011 and is still continuing as of November 2011. The uprising was mainly a campaign of non-violent civil resistance, which featured a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil...
. Clinton said that the U.S. realized that Egypt still had much work and some difficult times ahead of it.
President Obama was reportedly unhappy with U.S. intelligence agencies following their failure to foresee the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is a Tunisian political figure who was the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. Ben Ali was appointed Prime Minister in October 1987, and he assumed the Presidency on 7 November 1987 in a bloodless coup d'état that ousted President Habib Bourguiba, who was...
as well as the Egyptian protests. Responding to criticism that the State Department had failed to see the developments in Egypt coming, Clinton defended the U.S. in an interview on Al-Arabiya, saying "I don’t think anybody could have predicted we’d be sitting here talking about the end of the Mubarak presidency at the time that this all started."
Reflecting on not just the situation in Tunisia and Egypt but also on the, the 2011 Yemeni protests, and the 2011 Jordanian protests
2011 Jordanian protests
The 2011 Jordanian protests are a series of protests occurring in Jordan in 2011, which resulted in the firing of the cabinet ministers of the government.Food inflation and salaries were a cause for resentment in the country....
, Clinton said at a February 5 meeting of the Quartet on the Middle East
Quartet on the Middle East
The Quartet on the Middle East, sometimes called the Diplomatic Quartet or Madrid Quartet or simply the Quartet, is a foursome of nations and international and supranational entities involved in mediating the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Quartet are the United Nations, the...
, "The region is being battered by a perfect storm of powerful trends. ... This is what has driven demonstrators into the streets of ... cities throughout the region. The status quo is simply not sustainable." She said that while transition to democracy could be chaotic – and free elections had to be accompanied by free speech, a free judiciary, and the rule of law in order to be effective – in the end "free people govern themselves best". The transformations highlighted that traditional U.S. foreign policy in the region had sided with rulers who suppressed internal dissent but provided stability and generally supported U.S. goals in the region. When the monarchy's response to the 2011 Bahraini protests turned violent, Clinton urged a return to the path of reform, saying that violence against the protesters "is absolutely unacceptable ... We very much want to see the human rights of the people protected, including right to assemble, right to express themselves, and we want to see reform." At the same time, she said that the U.S. "cannot tell countries what they are going to do [and] cannot dictate the outcomes." As the situation in Bahrain lingered on and continued to have episodes of violence against protesters, Clinton said in mid-March, "Our goal is a credible political process that can address the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain ... Violence is not and cannot be the answer. A political process is. We have raised our concerns about the current measures directly with Bahraini officials and will continue to do so."
When the 2011 Libyan uprising began in mid-February and intensified into armed conflict with rebel successes in early March 2011, Clinton stated the administration's position that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
"must go now, without further violence or delay". As Gaddafi conducted counterattacks against the rebels, Clinton was initially reluctant, as was Obama, to back calls being made in various quarters for imposition of a Libyan no-fly zone. However, as the prospects of a Gaddafi victory and possible subsequent bloodbath that would kill many thousands emerged, and as Clinton travelled Europe and North Africa and found support for military intervention increasing among European and Arab leaders, she had a change of view. Together with Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and National Security Council figure Samantha Power
Samantha Power
Samantha Power is an Irish American academic, governmental official and writer. She is currently a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights as Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the Staff of the National Security Council...
, who were already supporting military intervention, Clinton overcame opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates
Robert Gates
Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....
, security advisor Thomas Donilon, and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan
John O. Brennan
John O. Brennan is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President...
, and the administration backed U.N. action to impose the no-fly zone and authorize other military actions as necessary. Rice and Clinton played major roles in getting the United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...
to approve the resolution and Clinton had earlier helped gained the financial and political support of several Arab countries.
While Clinton recognized some of the contradictions of U.S. policy towards turmoil in the Mideast countries, which involving backing some regimes while supporting protesters against others, she was nevertheless passionate on the subject, enough so that Obama joked at the annual Gridiron Dinner that "I’ve dispatched Hillary to the Middle East to talk about how these countries can transition to new leaders — though, I’ve got to be honest, she's gotten a little passionate about the subject. These past few weeks it's been tough falling asleep with Hillary out there on Pennsylvania Avenue shouting, throwing rocks at the window." In any case, Obama's reference to Clinton travelling a lot was true enough; by now she had logged 465000 miles (748,343.1 km) in her Boeing 757
Boeing 757
The Boeing 757 is a mid-size, narrow-body twin-engine jet airliner manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Passenger versions of the twinjet have a capacity of 186 to 289 persons and a maximum range of , depending on variant and cabin configuration...
, more than any other Secretary of State for a comparable period of time, and had visited 79 countries while in the office.
Clinton also saw the potential political changes in the Mideast as an opportunity for an even more fundamental change to take place, that being the empowerment of women (something Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine saw as Clinton's categorical imperative
Categorical imperative
The Categorical Imperative is the central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as modern deontological ethics...
). She made remarks to this effect in countries such as Egypt – "If a country doesn’t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible" – as well as in Yemen, where she spoke of the story of the present Nujood Ali
Nujood Ali
Nujood Ali is a figure of Yemen's fight against forced marriage. At the age of ten, she obtained a divorce, breaking with the tribal tradition. In November 2008, U.S. women's magazine Glamour designated Nujood Ali and her lawyer Shada Nasser as Women of the Year...
and her campaign against forced marriage at a young age. At home, Clinton was even more expansive, looking on a worldwide basis: "I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century. We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings." She also maintained that the well-being of women in other countries was a direct factor in American self-interest: "This is a big deal for American values and for American foreign policy and our interests, but it is also a big deal for our security. Because where women are disempowered and dehumanized, you are more likely to see not just antidemocratic forces, but extremism that leads to security challenges for us."
In the midst of this turmoil, which also included Clinton pledging government-level support to Japan in the wake of the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, also known as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, or the Great East Japan Earthquake, was a magnitude 9.0 undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST on Friday, 11 March 2011, with the epicenter approximately east...
, Clinton reiterated in a mid-March CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer
Wolf Blitzer
Wolf Isaac Blitzer is an American journalist who has been a CNN reporter since 1990. Blitzer is currently the host of the newscast The Situation Room and was the host of the Sunday talk show Late Edition until it was discontinued on January 11, 2009...
during her post-revolution visit to Cairo's Tahrir Square that she had no interest in becoming Secretary of Defense or vice president or of running for president again. She also explicitly said for the first time that she did not want to serve a second term as Secretary of State if President Obama is re-elected in 2012
United States presidential election, 2012
The United States presidential election of 2012 is the next United States presidential election, to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. It will be the 57th quadrennial presidential election in which presidential electors, who will actually elect the President and the Vice President of the United...
. She stressed how much she regarded her current position: "Because I have the best job I could ever have. This is a moment in history where it is almost hard to catch your breath. There are both the tragedies and disasters that we have seen from Haiti to Japan and there are the extraordinary opportunities and challenges that we see right here in Egypt and in the rest of the region." But reportedly she was weary at times from constant travelling, still not part of Obama's inner circle, and looking forward to a time of less stress and the chances to write, teach, or work for international women's rights. She was not bound by her statements, and Blitzer for one suspected she would change her mind. In any case, she remained popular with the American public; her Gallup Poll favorability rating rose to 66 percent (against 31 percent unfavorable), her highest mark ever save for a period during the Lewinsky scandal
Lewinsky scandal
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging in 1998 from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 25-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of...
thirteen years earlier. Her favorability was 10 to 20 percentage points higher than those for Obama, Biden, or Gates, and reflected in part the high ratings that secretaries of state sometimes get.
Regarding whether the U.S. or some other ally would send arms to the anti-Gaddafi forces
Anti-Gaddafi forces
The anti-Gaddafi forces were Libyan groups that opposed and militarily defeated the government of Muammar Gaddafi, killing him in the process. These opposition forces included organised and armed militia groups, participants in the 2011 Libyan civil war, Libyan diplomats who switched their...
, Clinton said that this would be permissible under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, on the situation in Libya, is a measure that was adopted on 17 March 2011. The Security Council resolution was proposed by France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom....
, but that that no decision had yet been made on doing so.
Following the successful May 1–2, 2011, U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden
Death of Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, then head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by a United States special forces military unit....
at his hideout compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the resulting criticism from various Americans that Pakistan had not found, or had let, bin Laden hide in near plain sight
Allegations of support system in Pakistan for Osama bin Laden
Allegations of a support system in Pakistan for Osama bin Laden were made been before Osama bin Laden was found living in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and was killed by a team of United States Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011....
, Clinton made a point of praising Pakistan's past record of helping the U.S. hunt down terrorists: "Our counter-terrorism cooperation over a number of years now, with Pakistan, has contributed greatly to our efforts to dismantle al-Qaeda. And in fact, cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which we was hiding. Going forward, we are absolutely committed to continuing that cooperation." Clinton then played a key role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead bin Laden, reporting that U.S. allies in the Middle East did not favor the release and agreeing with Secretary Gates that such a release might cause an anti-U.S. backlash overseas.
A June 2011 trip to Africa found Clinton both consoling longtime aide Huma Abedin
Huma Abedin
Huma Mahmood Abedin is a deputy chief of staff and aide to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She served as traveling chief of staff and "body woman" for Clinton during Clinton's campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.-Early life:Abedin was born in...
after the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal
Anthony Weiner sexting scandal
The Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, also dubbed Weinergate, began when Democratic U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner used the social media website Twitter to send a link to a sexually suggestive picture to a 21-year-old Washington State woman...
broke and emphatically denying published reports that she was interested in becoming the next president of the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
. By July, Clinton was assuring China and other foreign governments that the ongoing U.S. debt ceiling crisis would not end with the U.S. going into sovereign default
Sovereign default
A sovereign default is the failure or refusal of the government of a sovereign state to pay back its debt in full. It may be accompanied by a formal declaration of a government not to pay or only partially pay its debts , or the de facto cessation of due payments...
(a prediction that turned true when the Budget Control Act of 2011
Budget Control Act of 2011
The Budget Control Act of 2011 was passed by the 112th United States Congress signed into law by President Barack Obama. It brought conclusion to the 2011 United States debt ceiling crisis, which had threatened to lead the United States into sovereign default on or about August 3, 2011.The law...
was passed and signed the day before default loomed). She spent much of that summer in an eventually unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Palestinian National Authority
Palestinian National Authority
The Palestinian Authority is the administrative organization established to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...
not to attempt to gain membership in the United Nations at its September 2011 General Assembly meeting
Palestine 194
Palestine 194 is the name given to a diplomatic campaign by the Palestinian National Authority to gain membership for the State of Palestine in the United Nations at its 66th Session in September 2011. It seeks to effectively gain collective recognition for a Palestinian state based on the borders...
.
Clinton continued to poll high, with a September 2011 Bloomberg News poll finding her with a 64 percent favorable rating, the highest of any political figure in the nation. A third of those polls said that Clinton would have been a better president than Obama, but when asked the likelihood she would stage a campaign against the president, she said, “It’s below zero. One of the great things about being secretary of state is I am out of politics. I am not interested in being drawn back into it by anybody.”
Following the October 2011 announcement by Obama that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
The withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq has been a contentious issue within the United States since the beginning of the Iraq War. As the war has progressed from its initial 2003 invasion phase to a multi-year occupation, U.S. public opinion has turned in favor of troop withdrawal...
would complete by the close of that same year, Clinton forcefully defended the decision as emanating from an agreement originally signed with Iraq under the Bush administration and as evidence that Iraq's sovereignty was real, and said that despite the absence of military forces, the U.S. was still committed to strengthening Iraq's democracy with “robust” diplomatic measures. She also praised the effectiveness of Obama's foreign policy in general, pointing most recently to the death of Muammar Gaddafi
Death of Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, died on 20 October 2011 during the 2011 Libyan civil war. Gaddafi was captured alive after his convoy was attacked by NATO warplanes as Sirte fell on 20 October 2011. He was then beaten and killed by NTC forces...
and thus conclusion of the Libyan intervention, and implicitly pushing back on criticism from those running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination
Republican Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2012
The 2012 Republican presidential primaries are the selection processes in which voters of the Republican Party will choose their nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. The primary contest began with a fairly wide field, and is the first presidential primary...
. (A video of her exclaiming "Wow" upon first reading on her BlackBerry of Gaddafi's capture achieved wide circulation.)
Secretary Clinton cancelled a planned trip to the United Kingdom and Turkey to be with her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who died in Washington on November 1, 2011.
External links
- Department of State – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Department of State – Daily appointments schedule for Secretary Clinton
- Department of State – Travels with the Secretary
- Madam Secretary blog at Foreign PolicyForeign PolicyForeign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
magazine