Hillary Clinton played a critical role in America’s “pivot to Asia” strategy, which is considered one of her more lasting achievements as Secretary of State. As Martin Indyk wrote in Foreign Policy, “she laid the groundwork, built the relationships, and developed the complex architecture of the new strategy — and she turned up at that pivotal moment in Vietnam in July 2010 to declare the U.S. commitment to the region.” Scholarly praise for Hillary Clinton’s role in the “pivot to Asia” strategy continued with Thursday’s article by Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, titled Why Hillary Should Run. According to the article:
“It was Hillary’s consistent presence at ASEAN forums and other meetings throughout the region, combined with her steadfast and vocal commitment to the security of key allies and to international maritime norms, that captured the essence of the policy better than anything else. She countered Beijing’s new aggressiveness with firmness, but also with grace and without unnecessary provocativeness.
Moreover, whatever one thinks of the rebalance per se, the rise of China is an undeniable and seismic transformation in the international system. If the next American chief executive serves two terms, China’s GDP could quite likely reach that of the United States during his or her presidency, and its military budget could begin to approach America’s. In other words, China will arguably become a superpower on the next U.S. president’s watch. While we bog ourselves down debating Hillary’s role in Benghazi and other matters of second-tier importance, momentous things are happening on the world stage, and we need presidential candidates up to the challenge of wrestling with them.
Enter the former first lady, senator from New York, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and secretary of state. Hillary has the resume to address an issue of the magnitude of China’s rise. She also has the brain. She has the toughness to cope with the military side of China’s rise as well as the diplomatic credentials to address its enormous and ongoing issues of human rights, environmental policy, and economic fairness. She can do both hard and soft power… She has the savvy, the sense of history, and the personal memory of the rebalance’s early phases to ensure that China, and the Asia-Pacific more generally, will be a central part of the next presidential campaign… For that reason more than any other, I hope she runs” (emphasis added).