HILLARY CLINTON’S MIDDLE EAST POLICY
>From Pierre Tristam
About – News & Issues, NY
Nov 13 2007
In General: Hillary Rodham Clinton has the reputation of a foreign
policy hawk. That’s true regarding the Middle East. She originally
and unquestioningly supported the Bush administration’s wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and every supplemental military appropriation
for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan even though she called on
Congress, in 2007, to repeal the 2002 Iraq War authorization. She
would support attacking Iran if Iran developed nuclear weapons. She
is staunchly pro-Israel. Nevertheless, Clinton’s foreign policy would
favor diplomacy, multilateralism and working through international
institutions like the United Nations.
On Iraq: Clinton supported the Iraq War authorization in 2002, only
to regret it five years later as her campaign for the presidency got
under way. If elected, she would "convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council and
direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home,
starting within the first 60 days of my administration." She would
negotiate with all countries bordering Iraq, including Syria and Iran,
to explore peaceful solutions for the region. She would fund Iraqi
forces "only to the extent that such training is actually working."
On Iran: In some regards, Clinton is more of a hawk on Iran than the
Bush administration. She voted with 75 senators to declare the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard (a segment of the Iranian military) a terrorist
organization–further than even Bush went. She would oppose a nuclear
Iran and criticized Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear
weapons in a confrontation with Iran. "If Iran does not comply with
its own commitments and the will of the international community,"
Clinton wrote in Foreign Affairs, referring to Iran’s obligations
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, "all options must remain
on the table."
On Israel and Palestine: Clinton is taking an almost exclusively
pro-Israel stance. She favored Israel’s war on Lebanon and Hezbollah
in July-August 2006, she supports the separation wall Israel is
building in the West Bank, and she has not spoken against Israel’s
expanding settlements in the Occupied Territories. She does favor a
two-state solution and an independent Palestine and considers the
Bush administration’s disengagement from the Palestinian-Israeli
peace process a mistake. But she offers no specifics about bringing
Israelis and Palestinians to a new understanding.
On Terrorism: Clinton states that "[w]e cannot negotiate with
individual terrorists; they must be hunted down and captured or
killed." Note, however, the distinction. She refers to individual
terrorists, not state sponsors of terrorism, like Iran, whom she
considers, in her words, "the country that most practices terrorism,"
but with whom she would negotiate. She would leave special forces
in Iraq to combat terrorism. She considers Afghanistan, not Iraq,
the central front in the campaign against terror. She would continue
to consider Pakistan an ally in the campaign, and even "redouble"
financial and military ties with that country.
On Turkey: Clinton is pro-Turkey. What that means is that while she
would favor keeping American forces in Iraq’s Kurdish region to protect
its stability, she would not put Kurdish independence there ahead of
Turkish interests. Turkey opposes Kurdish independence. But Clinton
co-sponsored a measure in the Senate that calls on the president to
use the word genocide when discussing "the systematic and deliberate
annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians" by Ottoman Turks around
1915. Turkey vehemently opposes references to the killing of Armenians
as genocide, and threatened retaliations should such a resolution pass.
On Foreign Oil: Clinton wants to reduce American dependence on foreign
oil by investing $150 billion over 10 years in "a new energy future,"
through a so-called Strategic Energy Fund paid for in part by American
oil companies. She favors increasing fuel efficiency standards to
55 miles per gallon by 2030. She wants renewable energy to generate
25 percent of America’s electricity by 2025 (although most of the
country’s electricity generation is produced by coal, natural gas and
nuclear energy, not oil). She wants 60 billion gallons of home-grown
biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030.
In Sum: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s foreign policy attempts to play
both sides of many issues. When she was elected to the Senate from
New York in 2000, she was perceived as a liberal. She’s worked hard
to counter that perception-so hard that she’s now regarded as one of
the Senate’s most hawkish Democrats. Clinton, however, does not want
to appear too hawkish. Only tough. She mixes iron-fisted rhetoric on
the campaign on terror and against Iranian nuclear armament with a
commitment to multilateral, multinational diplomacy and respect for
international institutions such as the United Nations, and allies
such as the European Union.
And she speaks unashamedly of making human rights part of her foreign
policy platform-a stance most commonly associated with Jimmy Carter.
For example, she wants to focus on the plight of 4 million Iraqi
refuges. In her words: "We have undercut international support for
fighting terrorism by suggesting that the job cannot be done without
humiliation, infringements on basic rights to privacy and free speech,
and even torture. We must once again make human rights a centerpiece of
U.S. foreign policy and a core element of our conception of democracy."
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