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Hillary Outlines Foreign Policy Agenda Of Liberal Internationalism
Hillary Clinton has a new essay in Foreign Affairs, laying out her overall foreign policy vision and goals. Essentially, Hillary sets out to avoid a post-Bush pendulum effect — a switch from President Bush's brand of bellicose interventionism over to isolationism — and instead resurrect liberal internationalism in areas such as the War on Terror, Iran, North Korea, Africa and elsewhere, with a focus on humanitarianism, democracy and human rights. Key quote:
The Bush administration has presented the American people with a series of false choices: force versus diplomacy, unilateralism versus multilateralism, hard power versus soft. Seeing these choices as mutually exclusive reflects an ideologically blinkered vision of the world that denies the United States the tools and the flexibility it needs to lead and succeed. There is a time for force and a time for diplomacy; when properly deployed, the two can reinforce each other. U.S. foreign policy must be guided by a preference for multilateralism, with unilateralism as an option when absolutely necessary to protect our security or avert an avoidable tragedy.
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"Plus international corporations are getting bigger bites at the apple! Bites that trully belong to U.S. corporations . . ."
(Thought stolen from HRC's thought bubble)
October 15, 2007 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Translation: I was right to vote for the Iraq War, so get over it, you Dirty Fucking Hippies.
October 15, 2007 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary needs to do a better job explaining her insistence that hard power unilateralism can sometimes be called for. Does she have in mind her judgment to support Bush's blank check war authorization in mind? Or is this just some abstract out clause? I think everyone agrees that if Canada was massing tanks at our border we would reserve the right to act unilaterally. That's not the question. The question is how you apply your foreign policy views in concrete situations and Hillary still hasn't explained how she makes judgments.
What I find bizarre is how many voters buy into her abstract non-explanations over Obama's much more concrete approach, and how many in the insider press corps seem to think that Obama's specifics are "blunders" while Hillary's platitudes are how a campaign should be run. The press corps' uncritical driving of the foreign policy narrative is all to familiar to those of us that had the judgment to know that Iraq was a mistake before it was obvious.
October 15, 2007 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe she was right to support Goldwater.
She is wrong to adopt the essential lbj attitude relected in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
October 15, 2007 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why, in the world, would she need "to do a better job explaining" something that has been an implicit US policy forever! Every POTUS has made it clear that, if necessary, the US would act unilaterally to protect its national security and interests at home and abroad! The key to a successful FP is a balanced mix of multi-lateralism and unilateralism. Where we went wrong under Bush was that he threw the former out of the window, and adopted the latter exclusively in his "My Way or the Highway" foolishness!
October 15, 2007 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did the first three commenters read the article? It doesn't sound like it. Richard Adlof has a quote that didn't appear anywhere in the article nor was the substance of that quote anywhere near present in the article.
I realize its easier to make stuff up and repeat talking points, but at least take the five minutes to read the article. Interesting proposals:
Taking the substance of Hillary's arguments based off the one paragraph quoted here is intellectually lazy. Or intellectually dishonest. Neither are appropriate.
October 15, 2007 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, Hillary was a Goldwater Girl when she was a teenager. Isn't it time for people to grow up and get over that? Is this what substitutes for argument?
October 15, 2007 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am so sick of the common theme from mrs. bill flunkies, probably paid, which is the constant allegation of repeating talking points. Who's talking points??? It really is a pathetic allegation. Where on fox entertainment or which repuke congress person or administration official is saying anything remotely close to the first three posters. How about some quotes gqmartinez from the repukes??? Otherwise, go back to updating mrs. bill's bs website, modify her supporter's talking points, etc.
Incidentally, I am sure one of the talking points for mrs. bill flunkies is to allege that an attack on her overwhelming record of accomplishment, in her mind alone, is a repuke talking point.
October 15, 2007 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I DID read it. And you know what? It's the same old crap about "protecting America's vital interests" without explaining what exactly those might be.
She also thinks we should continually send the Army to any place that might harbor "terrorists."
Oh, and did I mention that she wants to bomb Iran?
October 15, 2007 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I read the article and I didn't find any concrete application of the principles that she lays out. Admittedly, gqmartinez, my reading was quick, but I simply did not find any explanation of how her principles or her experience apply to some of the concrete judgments she has made or will make. Your reply to me (and others) did not point to where she does this.
October 15, 2007 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
A few comments into a new post, and the harshness begins. Whatever the chicken/egg etiology, Hillary does spark tiresome divisiveness. That phenomenon in itself is sobering.....and this is the primary, not even the general.
I did read the essay. The points made are good, but I noticed a strawman in the dichotomy phased as 'unilateralism vs isolationism' within the context of pendulum swinging. That is a strawman a lot easier to knock over than the dichotomy of 'good judgment in foreign policy vs. poor judgment in foreign policy.
Another point I will make about language and framing which has bothered me awhile coming from any source. I would like to see diplomacy be called something other than 'soft power' as I believe it is the more difficult of processes.
October 15, 2007 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Michael, I think I know what talking points he's referring to: Obama's. Obama is making concrete arguments about how his experience has informed his judgment and yielded concrete legislative accomplishments. Therefor, if you ask how Hillary's experience has informed her most important judgments or what actual accomplishments it has yielded, you are not to be answered with an actual evidence-based case but rather are to be treated like you are invisible, desperately lashing out, etc.
It's really quite childish. You make a point in an argument and it's supposed to be dismissable just by saying "oh yeah, well that's just the argument her opponents are making". Errrrm. Yeah, that's the point.
October 15, 2007 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Michael wrote on October 15, 2007 12:35 PM:
I am so sick of the common theme"
Good. Go. Away.
That'd get rid of at least half the brain dead comments on this site.
Brilliant essay. If every repub under the sun put their heads together they could not come up with anything remotely as intelligent. Unfortunately I haven’t read or heard anything as thoughtful from any of other dem candidates either.
October 15, 2007 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
"DonnaG wrote on October 15, 2007 12:52 PM:
A few comments into a new post, and the harshness begins. Whatever the chicken/egg etiology, Hillary does spark tiresome divisiveness."
Really? It looks to me like a handful of obamavangelists will say or type anything. Now maybe you think its OK that a few mouth breathers type in lies that aren’t worthy of response about a possible dem candidate for president and want to decide who you can vote for but for me not so much.
And perhaps you might want to broaden your world view. As important as the comments are on TPM they should not be yours or anybodys deciding factor in who they vote for or which pols should be allowed to run for president.
October 15, 2007 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jeremy, I'd buy that if I wasn't constantly attacked on this site by the mrs. bill flunkies for allegedly repeating REPUKE talking points, not generic talking points or obama talking points. Incidentally, repuke talking points I am sure include that mrs. bill is brilliant (see hadenough), is unbeatable, is the dem nominee, etc. Repuke talking points at this time aren't attacking mrs. bill at all, because they want her to be the nominee. Obviously, she is the only dem that they have a shot of beating, so they play her up.
October 15, 2007 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes it's tempting to decide that Hillary is good enough, since she seems so far ahead in the primary and probably will win the fall too.
But she'll just give AIPAC everything it wants, so I'm just not optimistic that she'll be able to do much to radically change the world's perception of America.
October 15, 2007 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where do people come up with such notions from? Just getting rid of GWB, the current Village Idiot, would "radically change the world's perception of America"!!! Bill Clinton, too, was accused of "giving AIPAC everything, and, yet, the whole region considered him an honest broker...
If you evidence (by which I mean factual data and not the usual urban legends) that HRC would be beholden to AIPAC, please provide it...
October 15, 2007 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did Hillary Clinton even write this?
Seriously. When was the last time you ever heard Clinton talking about "an ideologically blinkered vision of the world that denies the United States the tools and the flexibility it needs to lead and succeed"? [emphasis mine] This simply isn't the way Clinton expresses herself.
I decided to check this out, and -- with only a couple of quick Google clicks -- here's what I found:
Wes Clark, in his op-ed in yesterday's Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader -- next to last paragraph -- wrote of Clinton that
And in Clark's 4 October HuffPost entry -- last paragraph -- the phrase itself, almost verbatim:
How much of the rest of this article was actually written by Wes Clark?
At least Obama writes most of his own material.
October 15, 2007 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
>>>If you evidence (by which I mean factual data and not the usual urban legends) that HRC would be beholden to AIPAC, please provide it...
I don't believe the Palestinians considered the Clinton administration "an honest broker."
As for the evidence, I just look at where she's receiving her support, and the assurances that need to be offered to secure that support.
October 15, 2007 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush-Lite is soft on the Saudis.
October 15, 2007 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary's essay's a disaster!
October 17, 2007 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink