Hillary Clinton just spoke on the new U.S. National Security Strategy at Brookings. Having been in the audience, the bits that stick in my mind are:
- Clinton defined the tensions inherent in globalization as creating a “race between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration”, which is snappy;
- She spoke convincingly about the paradox that while the U.S. needs “strategic patience and persistence” in applying “indirect power” in cases like Iran, these virtues are hard to maintain in the high-speed information age;
- We want to shift from a “multi-polar world to a multi-partner world”.
Clinton spoke a lot about China. That’s not surprising as she’s just back from Asia. She also highlighted America’s commitments to Japan and South Korea – again, a sine qua non given current events in that part of the world.
She didn’t mention Brazil in her main speech, which one questioner assumed was a rebuke over Lula’s efforts to befriend the Iranians. But, rather gracefully, Clinton admitted that Brazil has a “theory of the case” when it comes to dealing with Iran – she even gave a fair summary of this theory, before saying she disagrees.
What was missing? Europe, big-time. NATO got two mentions in the main speech, and was raised in a follow-up question. Answering, the Secretary of State complained about the Alliance’s “sprawling” committees. The EU hardly featured at all.
UPDATE: read far better-informed commentaries on HC’s speech here.
FURTHER UPDATE: the speech transcript is here.
