Hard Choices

Summoning enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton the person is easier than it is for this long account of her four years as America’s Secretary of State. As a public servant, not least when the wife of a serving President, she has been brave, resilient, committed, intelligent and – after getting scorched by the early attempts at health-care reform in her husband’s presidency – pretty resourceful in mobilising consensus. She has already cracked the glass ceiling that has limited the political advancement of women, and bids fair to smash it to pieces in 2016. But she has not put a dent in my well-nigh blanket condemnation of self-serving political memoirs. “How I was right about almost everything” in 600 pages. Here we go again.

Clinton’s next “hard choice” is whether or not to run for the presidency again. No copy-books can be blotted while that decision is contemplated, and – we all assume – acted on in the affirmative. Having lost the last race for the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in a pretty spiky contest, Clinton  seems to have served the new President with conspicuous loyalty as his Secretary of State and there is hardly the shadow of a disagreement between them in these pages.

Clinton is nice about almost everyone (except maybe Putin and Gaddafi). Her “valued colleagues” are invariably “shrewd” with “steady hands”, “friendly ears” and “huge hearts”. Those to whom she “reaches out” overseas (why do Americans not just meet or talk to people?) monopolise the human virtues. Europeans may be surprised to discover how talented their own leaders have been. David Miliband, who clearly flattered her beyond the bounds of normal diplomatic decorum, is “young, energetic, smart, creative, and attractive, with a ready smile”. Gordon Brown is “an intelligent and dogged Scotsman” (no reference to a smile) who was “dealt a bad hand”. Angela Merkel is “decisive, astute, and straightforward”. Even Sarkozy gets the treatment – he is “dramatic – and fun”. He comes across as a bid of a card, with oodles of Gallic charm. “Cherchez la femme” and all that. Perhaps only men are bitchy these days; at times I rather hoped to turn a page and discover a duplicitous creep with unsteady hands, unfriendly ears and a teeny-weeny heart.

On the issues, Clinton is best when events help to illustrate the point she is making. My spirits nosedived when a discussion about the dilemmas faced by American foreign ­policymakers began with the Lonely Planet observation that Afghanistan is “a mountainous, landlocked country located between Pakistan to the east and Iran to the west”. But the pace soon picked up with the debate in Washington about how to balance the use of military force and diplomacy. Clinton comes across as pretty level-headed on this issue; she does not rule out boots on the ground (or drones in the air) but is cautious about the deployment of military assets and thoughtful about what she calls “smart diplomacy”. It would, however, have been interesting to read a more comprehensive account of her position on the use of drones, and their place in domestic and international law.

On both Russia and China, Clinton is a thoughtful advocate of the use of sticks and carrots. She has no illusions about Putin despite all the forced humour of the “re-set button” on the US-Russia relationship. He does not quite come across as Ivan the Terrible but his ambition to remake a facsimile of Russia’s Soviet empire has plainly not escaped her. There is an enthralling chapter about how she dealt with the case of the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, and an excellent summary of China’s growing preparedness to throw its weight around in its neighbourhood, a propensity that appears to have grown with the arrival in China’s top job of Xi Jinping.

While Clinton  – an admirable and active advocate of the rights of women and gays – writes a lot about human rights, she has not got anything particularly interesting to say about how a great power balances concern to stand up for its values with the pursuit of its national interest. In 2005, Condoleezza Rice, her predecessor, made a speech in Egypt admitting that for half a century the US had chosen to pursue “stability at the expense of democracy” in the region and had “achieved neither”. That remains the case, and just wait until the question arises in Saudi Arabia. In Syria Clinton makes no secret of her view that America should have been prepared to give limited assistance with training and equipment to the moderate opponents of the Assad regime.

As for the toxic Palestine-Israel issue, the would-be President’s views are exactly what you would expect from a former New York senator. While she wholly understands the demographic challenge for Israel if ­settlement-building makes a two-state solution impossible, she thinks Obama took too tough a line on this at the start of his presidency. She does not discuss the inevitable consequences nor the public humiliation by Natanyahu of his protector and ally, Obama.

Domestic problems would comprise much of the agenda for a second President Clinton, as they have for President Obama. They have a substantial bearing on the international standing of the United States. So too does an increase in the feeling that American exceptionalism embraces a dangerous dose of double standards. The fight for internet freedom and an end to cyberattacks contrasts pretty shamefully with the revelations of Edward Snowden.

If Hillary Clinton makes the “hard choice” to run for the presidency in 2016, she is surely likely to win a famous victory – and it would be deserved. As President, I am sure she would be fine, a cautious, smart grandmother in the White House. She would not be better than we hoped Barack Obama would be, but perhaps better than a dysfunctional political system allowed him to become. She would probably be more accomplished at managing Washington politics than he has been. But the speeches wouldn’t be as good.

CHRIS PATTEN