(Credit: Ben Sklar/Getty Images)
The New York Times is reporting that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has accepted President-elect Obama's offer to leave the Senate and join the administration as secretary of State. The appointment, if confirmed, would mark a surprising conclusion to the pair's epic primary contest, coming after a week of speculation over whether Clinton would take the post.
In February, National Journal reporters took stock (subscription) of just how much the two senators differed on foreign policy. Clinton had and has the more hawkish reputation of the two -- he opposed the war in Iraq, she voted to authorize it. "Most of their foreign-policy disagreements, though, are rhetorical, not substantive," the analysis concluded. On Iraq, both pledged to withdraw troops "swiftly; neither would do so completely."
On foreign-policy issues in general, "ultimately their goals are the same," said Moira Whelan, director of strategy and outreach at the National Security Network and an Obama supporter. "Their understanding of what the macro issues are is similar; their approaches to what comes first and how to address them is where you would see the differences."Perhaps because of their similar positions on so many issues, Obama and Clinton go to great lengths to differentiate themselves and appeal to primary voters by stressing whatever distinctions they can. Obama tees up his early opposition to military action in Iraq as evidence that he exercised better judgment than Clinton on the most important foreign-policy issue since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
The defining sound bite on how the two candidates might differ about America's role in the world came on July 23, 2007, during the fifth Democratic debate. The candidates were asked, "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?""I would," Obama responded. "And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."
Clinton, in contrast, answered: "I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year.... I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort, because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are."
Both campaigns swept into spin mode after the debate. Clinton called Obama's remarks "irresponsible and frankly naive," and her campaign circulated a memo that turned Obama's willingness to meet with the world's worst dictators during his first year in office into a commitment to meetings with those leaders, an assertion that Clinton pressed again in the run-up to Super Tuesday. Obama, for his part, said that Clinton's approach to diplomacy represented a "continuation of the Bush-Cheney diplomatic strategies" of not talking to leaders we don't like; the Bush-Cheney comparison has since become a standard part of his repertoire.
In reality, though, Obama didn't promise meetings with anyone, and Clinton didn't reject them. Both say they would pursue diplomacy more intensively than the Bush administration has done, although Obama emphasizes his personal engagement while Clinton stresses first pursuing lower-level talks.
Take Iran. The November National Intelligence Estimate aside, that country is still apparently working on enriching uranium as well as funding terrorist groups and rattling its neighbors. Both candidates say that they would launch aggressive diplomatic tracks, offering Iran both carrots and sticks to change its behavior. Obama says he would talk directly with Iran. Clinton, who has been forced to defend her September vote in favor of labeling the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a "terrorist organization," talks about "vigorous diplomacy." If Iran continues to pursue the bomb, neither one has said he or she would take the military option off the table.
Pakistan burst into the presidential campaign in August, when Obama said he was willing to pursue Qaeda figures inside that country. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President [Pervez] Musharraf won't act, we will," he said. Clinton criticized his remarks, saying that "you shouldn't always say everything you think if you're running for president, because it has consequences across the world." On the other hand, she has also said that, in the event of actionable intelligence on a high-value terrorist in Pakistan, she, too, would ensure that he was "killed or captured."
Both candidates say they would work in their first terms to end nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, as well as negotiate reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles, push ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty, and secure loose nuclear materials. Both say they endorse the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, although their campaign advisers disagree on whether the two are saying the same thing. Obama's advisers say that while he would not unilaterally disarm, the eventual global elimination of nuclear weapons would be a driving principle of his nuclear strategy and not hers; her advisers say that she, too, is committed to taking practical steps toward accomplishing that vision.
Most of their foreign-policy disagreements, though, are rhetorical, not substantive. "There's a certain degree of looking for atmospherics to articulate differences," said Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Neither candidate wants to enter the White House with his or her hands bound from the campaign. Iran, after all, doesn't have to respond to American overtures. It could, for example, instead decide to support a Hezbollah attack on American diplomats in Lebanon, in which case the president would want a full range of options on the table. "The reality is, anything they say now is hypothetical," Mead said.
IraqDespite their bickering over the launching of the Iraq war -- he spoke against it, she voted for it, although she says if she knew then what she knows now she wouldn't have -- the two Democratic candidates hold similar positions on ending the war. Both would do so swiftly; neither would do so completely.
Obama says he would withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months. Clinton says she would start pulling the first brigades out within 60 days; in December, she told The New York Times that she thought "nearly everybody" could be home within a year.
Both candidates, however, say that some troops would remain in Iraq to protect American diplomatic and military personnel; to target Al Qaeda in Iraq; and, with caveats about Iraq's political circumstances, to continue training the Iraqi army and security forces.
In practice, accomplishing the candidates' more limited goals in Iraq would still mean leaving anywhere from 10,000 to 75,000 troops in Iraq, or more. It currently takes more than 100,000 military personnel, and an equal number of contractors, to fulfill those same three missions in Iraq, according to a rough count by Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Both candidates have indicated they would like to reduce America's footprint in the country and use air and special operations teams to carry out strikes on Al Qaeda in Iraq, but Cordesman says that that notion is virtually meaningless until the Iraqi army and security forces are ready to stand on their own. "We'd kill some cadres but have little or no overall impact, and we'd lose almost all of our [human intelligence] once we withdrew," he said.
Obama and Clinton have both shied away from questions about just how many troops would remain in Iraq under their plans. "They don't want to get pinned down," said an Obama adviser, describing the two candidates. Their deliberate vagueness could, if they reach the White House, leave voters with a bad taste in their mouths, similar to that expressed for the current Congress's failures to end the war. "There's a potential for backlash there," the adviser said.
CubaOn February 19, when Fidel Castro announced that he was stepping down as Cuba's president, Obama and Clinton issued similar statements that belied the differences in their Cuba policies. Both said that if the new Cuban government took serious steps toward democracy, the U.S. would be prepared to meet it.
In August 2007, Obama broke with the current policy on Cuba by saying that he would grant Cuban-Americans unrestricted rights to pay visits, and send money, to their families still in Cuba. A 2004 change by the Bush administration had limited Cuban-Americans to one 14-day island visit every three years to members of their direct family (defined as grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, children, and grandchildren), and $300 in quarterly remittances to the households of their direct family members. (The previous policy had allowed one visit every 12 months and up to $3,000 in remittances a year.) "Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island," Obama wrote in a Miami Herald op-ed.
In response to Obama's proposal, one of Clinton's campaign spokesmen told Herald reporters that Clinton "supports the embargo and our current policy toward Cuba."
Clinton's actual position is a little more nuanced than her support for "current policy" would indicate. She does in fact support a more flexible policy for families' humanitarian travel to the island. She has not, however, taken a formal position on the remittance restrictions. In general, Clinton argues that "wholesale or broad changes to our Cuba policy, including the embargo," should wait for "changes and fundamental reforms" in Cuba, as she wrote in a candidate questionnaire administered by the Cuban American National Foundation.
Easing the Bush restrictions is popular with those Cuban-Americans who have arrived recently. The older generation, though, which came to the U.S. immediately after the 1959 Cuban revolution, tends to support the stricter policies, according to a survey conducted last year by the Institute for Public Opinion Research and Florida International University.
"If whomever the next president is lifts the travel ban and restrictions on remittances for Cuban-Americans, the Spanish language radio stations in Miami would have a field day," said Marifeli Perez-Stable, the vice president for democratic governance at the Inter-American Dialogue. "But we have poll data that consistently shows Cuban-Americans, particularly those who arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, want to go see their families." The older generation, she said, generally doesn't have much family remaining in Cuba; on the other hand, that first wave of exiles tends to constitute the majority of Cuban-American voters.
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