The Presidential Candidates’ Foreign Policy Statements: Hillary Clinton

by CKR

Continuing my series on foreign policy statements by the presidential candidates, here’s my short version of Hillary Clinton’s statement in Foreign Affairs. Same ground rules. Read Clinton's essay. Links to previous posts in this series can be found here, along with links to other information on the candidates that I find useful.

Power and Principle
• Avoid false choices driven by ideology. Seeing 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. Power usually depends on blending policies.
• U.S. foreign policy must be guided by a preference for multilateralism, with unilateralism as an option only when absolutely necessary.
• Use our military as one element in a comprehensive strategy. Diplomacy and force must be balanced against each other.
• Make international institutions work, and work through them when possible. Although the United States must be prepared to act on its own to defend its vital interests, effective international institutions make it much less likely that we will have to do so.
• Ensure that democracy delivers on its promises. Calls for expanding civil and political rights in countries plagued by mass poverty and ruled by tiny wealthy elites will fall on deaf ears unless democracy actually delivers enough material benefits to improve people's lives.
• Stand for and live up to our values. As we counsel liberty and justice for all, we cannot support torture and the indefinite detention of individuals we have declared to be beyond the law.

A Stronger America
• End the war in Iraq.
• Rebuild our armed services and restore them body and soul.
• Withdraw from Iraq in a way that brings our troops home safely, begins to restore stability to the region, and replaces military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in securing Iraq's future.
• Focus U.S. aid on helping Iraqis, not propping up the Iraqi government. Financial resources will go only where they will be used properly.
• Replace our military force with an intensive diplomatic initiative in the region. Convene a regional stabilization group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all the states bordering Iraq. The group will be charged with developing and implementing a strategy for achieving a stable Iraq that provides incentives for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey to stay out of the civil war.
• Engage the world in a global humanitarian effort to confront the human costs of this war. A multibillion-dollar international effort under the direction of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees will address the plight of the two million Iraqis who have fled their country and the two million more who have been displaced internally. The United States, along with governments in Europe and the Middle East, must agree to accept asylum seekers and help them return to Iraq when it is safe for them to do so.
• Engage in targeted operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and other terrorist organizations in the region. Provide security for U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability in the country, but only to the extent that such training is actually working.
• Play a constructive role in a renewed Middle East peace process. In addition to facilitating negotiations, we must engage in regional diplomacy to gain Arab support for a Palestinian leadership that is committed to peace and willing to engage in a dialogue with the Israelis.
• Expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home.
• Soldiers are wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq must receive health care, benefits, training, and support. Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to enable their families to provide the support they need. Develop a modern GI Bill of Rights.

Winning the Real War on Terror
• Be unrelenting in the prosecution of the war on al Qaeda and a growing number of like-minded extremist organizations.
• Understand not only their methods but their motives: a rejection of modernity, women's rights, and democracy, as well as nostalgia for a mythical past.
• Develop a comprehensive strategy focusing on education, intelligence, and law enforcement to counter the terrorists and the forces fueling support for extremism.
• The Taliban cannot be allowed to regain power in Afghanistan. Engage in counternarcotics efforts, fund crop-substitution programs, a large-scale road-building initiative, institutions that train and prepare Afghans for effective governance, and programs to enable women to play a larger role in society.
• Strengthen the national and local governments and resolve the problems along Afghanistan's border. Redouble our efforts with Pakistan. Design a strategy that treats the entire region as an interconnected whole.
• Get the clandestine service out on the street. Restore morale in our intelligence community, increase the number of agents and analysts proficient in Arabic and other key languages, and raise the profile and status of intelligence analysis.
• Rebuild our alliances. Help strengthen police, prosecutorial, and judicial systems abroad; improve intelligence; and implement more stringent border controls, especially in developing countries.
• Invest in first responders and prot our critical infrastructure. Help the most vulnerable cities prepare for an attack. Improve health-care delivery systems in order to manage the consequences of attacks. Improve the security of chemical plants and safeguard the transportation of hazardous materials so that terrorists do not have easy targets.

Security Through Statesmanship
• Engage with our adversaries, not for the sake of talking but because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims.
• Iran must conform to its nonproliferation obligations and must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table. On the other hand, if Iran is in fact willing to end its nuclear weapons program, renounce sponsorship of terrorism, support Middle East peace, and play a constructive role in stabilizing Iraq, the United States should be prepared to offer Iran a carefully calibrated package of incentives.
• Take dramatic steps to reduce our nuclear arsenal. Negotiate “an accord that substantially and verifiably reduces the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.”
• Seek Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by 2009.
• Support efforts to supplement the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
• Establish an international fuel bank that guarantees secure access to nuclear fuel at reasonable prices.
• Remove all nuclear material from the world's most vulnerable nuclear sites and effectively secure the remainder.
• Engage Russia selectively on issues of high national importance, such as thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions, securing loose nuclear weapons in Russia and the former Soviet republics, and reaching a diplomatic solution in Kosovo. Make clear that our ability to view Russia as a genuine partner depends on whether Russia chooses to strengthen democracy or return to authoritarianism and regional interference.
• Build on China’s participation in the North Korean negotiations to establish a Northeast Asian security regime. Undertake a joint program with China and Japan to develop new clean-energy sources, promote greater energy efficiency, and combat climate change. Persuade China to join global institutions and support international rules.

Strengthening Alliances
• Reestablish our traditional relationship of confidence and trust with Europe.
• Find additional ways for Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to cooperate on issues of mutual concern, including combating terrorism, cooperating on global climate control, protecting global energy supplies, and deepening global economic development.
• Return to a policy of vigorous engagement with Latin America. Support the largest developing democracies in the region, Brazil and Mexico, and deepen economic and strategic cooperation with Argentina and Chile. Continue to cooperate with our allies in Colombia, Central America, and the Caribbean to combat drug trafficking, crime, and insurgency.
• Target democracies in Africa for aid and other forms of support and work with them to strengthen regional institutions such as the African Union.

Building the World We Want
• The Education for All Act would provide $10 billion over a five-year period to train teachers and build schools in the developing world.
• Set specific targets in areas such as expanding access to primary education, providing clean water, reducing child and maternal mortality, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Strengthen the International Labor Organization in order to enforce labor standards.
• Reengage in international climate change negotiations and reach a binding global climate agreement. Demonstrate a serious commitment to reducing US carbon emissions through a market-based cap-and-trade approach.
• Help developing nations build efficient and environmentally sustainable domestic energy infrastructures.
• Create formal links between the International Energy Agency and China and India and create an "E-8" international forum on ecological and resource issues modeled on the G-8.
• Make human rights a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy and a core element of our conception of democracy.

Comments

[Jay Janson]

"Early CIA Involvement in Darfur Has Gone Unreported" HistoryNewsNetwork

I once worked on a documentary for an anniversary of the African Development Bank and although never was in Darfur, I was close enough to the Sudan border in Ethiopian and Kenya and have a spot in my heart for the magnificent people of this region. I just knocked out this article when I remembered, (I'm well into my 70s) of U.S. backing the rebels was never being factored in.
By the way, I wonder and ask you as someone more conversant on the Sudan than I, whether or not the U.S. is still actively supporting the rebellion{s}, either materially or diplomatically, either openly or secretly. sentimentally, morally and/or spiritually.?
Appreciativly in advance should you have time to read my article below and comment,
Jay Janson

While there is great sorrow and indignation over the suffering and loss of life in the Sudan, early U.S. involvement in the war goes unmentioned. Instead, the U.S. leads an effort to condemn China for buying Sudan's oil. For years the U.S. had paid for war in hopes to arrange for some eventual control of the oil discovered in Darfur, (all well once well reported in the New York Times). The human crises receives modest financial aid from a U.S. government, silently protected from any embarrassment of acknowledging a prime complicity in fomenting war in Darfur.

HistoryNewNetwork, George Mason University republished the folloing from:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jay_jans_070121_darfur___hand_ringin.htm

"Early CIA Involvement in Darfur Has Gone Unreported"

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/34473.html HNN Darfur

republished as well by Global Research, Operation Sudan of SaveDafur, UK IndyMedia, Ethiopian News, FreeThoughtManifesto, Islamic Forum, Countercurrents, Nicholas D. Kristof, Schema-Root news, jcturner23's reviews, NewsTrust,News Search Tracker, alfatomega, Newsvine, Digg, Netscape, Boreal Access, Newswire, Tailrank, Congo Music News, Zaire, mideastyouth.com, Darfur News from Google, ibrattleboro.com and sundry other sites from the original in OpEdNews, January 23, 2007

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jay_jans_070121_darfur___hand_ringin.htm

There has been a glaring omission in the U.S. media presentation of the Darfur tragedy. The compassion demonstrated, mostly in words, until recently, has not been accompanied by a recognition of U.S. complicity, or at least involvement, in the war which has led to the enormous suffering and loss of life that has been taking place in Darfur for many years.

In 1978 oil was discovered in Southern Sudan. Rebellious war began five years later and was led by John Garang, who had taken military training at infamous Fort Benning, Georgia. "The US government decided, in 1996, to send nearly $20 million of military equipment through the 'front-line' states of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to help the Sudanese opposition overthrow the Khartoum regime." [Federation of American Scientists fas.org]

Between 1983 and the peace agreement signed in January 2005, Sudan's civil war took nearly two million lives and left millions more displaced. Garang became a First Vice President of Sudan as part of the peace agreement in 2005. From 1983, "war and famine-related effects resulted in more than 4 million people displaced and, according to rebel estimates, more than 2 million deaths over a period of two decades."
[CIA Fact Book -entry Sudan]

The BBC obituary of John Garang, who died in a plane crash shortly afterward, describes him as having "varied from Marxism to drawing support from Christian fundamentalists in the US." "There was always confusion on central issues such as whether the Sudan People's Liberation Army was fighting for independence for southern Sudan or merely more autonomy. Friends and foes alike found the SPLA's human rights record in southern Sudan and Mr Garang's style of governance disturbing." Gill Lusk - deputy editor of Africa Confidential and a Sudan specialist who interviewed the ex-guerrilla leader several times over the years was quoted by BBC, "John Garang did not tolerate dissent and anyone who disagreed with him was either imprisoned or killed."

CIA use of tough guys like Garang in Sudan, Savimbi in Angola, Mobutu in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), had been reported, even in mass media, though certainly not featured or criticized, but presently, this is of course buried away from public awareness and meant to be forgotten, as commercial media focuses on presenting the U.S. wars of today in a heroic light. It has traditionally been the chore of progressive, alternate and independent journalism to see that their deathly deeds supported by U.S. citizens tax dollars are not forgotten, ultimately not accepted and past Congresses and Presidents held responsible, even in retrospect, when not in real time.

Oil and business interests remain paramount and although Sudan is on the U.S. Government's state sponsors of terrorism list, the United States alternately praises its cooperation in tracking suspect individuals or scolds about the Janjaweed in Darfur. National Public Radio on May 2, 2005 had Los Angeles Times writer Ken Silverstein talk about his article "highlighting strong ties between the U.S. and Sudanese intelligence services, despite the Bush administration's criticism of human-rights violation in the Sudan." Title was "Sudan, CIA Forge Close Ties, Despite Rights Abuses." Nicholas Kristof, of The New York Times, won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for "his having alerted this nation and the world to these massive crimes against humanity. He made six dangerous trips to Darfur to report names and faces of victims of the genocide for which President Bush had long before indicted the government of Sudan to the world's indifference." [Reuters] But last November saw the opening of a new U.S. consulate in Juba the capital of the Southern region. (Maybe consider this an example of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" especially where oil is involved.)

The point is there is human suffering at mammoth level proportions. Humanitarian activists are trying to pry open the purse strings of an administration and congress willing to spend billions upon billions to get people killed and keep them in their place, namely, at our feet. Reminding Congress of what needs to be atoned for because of past policies of supporting war and human destruction could eventually make present policies of war intolerable. Americans are presently not exactly conscious stricken about dead and maimed Iraqis and Afghans, for commercial media always keeps of most of the human particulars of war crimes modestly out of sight, dramatizing much lesser losses and suffering of American military personal abroad.

Darfur made the headlines again because a governor of presidential timber was building up his foreign policy credentials. Meanwhile we are going to continue to see newsreels of our mass media depressing us with scenes of starving children, basically as testimony of how evil another Islamic nation's government is, so we can feel good - and want to purchase the products needing the advertising - which pays for the entertainment/news programs - which keep viewers in the dark about THEIR contribution to the suffering brought upon those people all the way over there in Africa.

Just try to put 4 and 2 million of anything into perspective. We are talking about an equivalent to the sets of eyes of half the population of Manhattan. Imagine one of us, whether a precious child ,a handsome man, a beautiful women, - to the tune of, (dirge of), one times four million, half of us dead. Sorry! It has no impact right? We realize that, remembering the words of Joseph Stalin (of all people), "One man's death is a tragedy, a thousand, is a statistic." There is absolutely no way we can whip up enough anguish to match a total of four million displaced and two million dead Sudanese, unless we could be of a mind and heart with Martin Luther King dealing with three million dead Vietnamese, also as in this case, over on the other side of the world, far from our living rooms - "So it is that those of us who are yet determined that "America will be" are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land." (MLK, 1967, "Beyond Vietnam")

This writer remembers reading newspapers articles about the U.S. backing the Southern Sudan rebellion way back then. If we had supported a side that wound up winning, we would be bragging about our having supported 'freedom fighters'. But we just threw a lot of money and outdated weapons at a John Garang in the Sudan, as we did with Jonas Savimbi in Angola, to the ultimate destruction of millions of people, and they LOST! Like we did in Vietnam, and half-way lost in Korea, and now are mid-way losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jesus! Calculating the chances of an investment in human life and money coming to a fruition of sorts - that is certainly the job of any intelligence gathering agency! What we have had is an Agency using its gathered intelligence to do unintelligent things because, as our Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote more than a hundred and twenty-five years ago, "Things are in the saddle and ride herd over men" (trampling others under foot, we might add)

The European Union is under pressure from inside to assure that a United Nations force of 20,000 men will be sent to Darfur as required by Security Council resolution 1706, and to threaten sanctions in order to halt a war the U.S. was originally interested to see begun.

The U.N. Security Council will receive a list from the International Criminal Court of those Sudanese officials who could be charged with war crimes. The list is expected include some members of rebel organizations among Sudanese government officials and Janjaweed militias. There assuredly will be no names on the list of non-Sudanese officials of nations which were known to have involved themselves in this Sudanese civil war contrary to accepted provisions and obligations of U.N. membership. But we can know that the responsibility for war, slaughter, rape and theft in Sudan extends beyond the leaders of those murderously wielding guns and swords.

It will be good if outside influence will now be focused on peace, but citizens best be vigilant of their nation's foreign policy intentions. The world has heard many protestations that oil is not a reason for war, but blood and oil has been known to mix.
-------------------------- end of article-------------------

That now the U.S. use its economic power humanely, to promote peace in the Sudan and give generously to help war victims.
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Published on 5 Jul 2004 by Zaman Daily. Archived on 5 Jul 2004.
Oil Underlies Darfur Tragedy
by Cumali Onal

The fighting in Sudan's Darfur region, which is being reported in the world press as 'ethnic cleansing' and a 'humanitarian crisis', reportedly stems from attempts to gain control over the oil resources in the region, claim Arab sources.

These Arab sources find it interesting that such skirmishes occurred when a peace agreement that would have brought an end to 21 years of north-south conflict was about to be signed. The sources point out that oil fields have recently been discovered in Darfur.

[CKR]

Jay, I'm not all that knowledgeable about Darfur. Would that I were.

Thanks for all the links. I'm not sure about the relevance to Hillary Clinton in particular, though.