Hillary Clinton: ‘Congress Has Abdicated Its Responsibility’ |
For the latest episode of FP Live, I sat down with former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Doha Forum in Qatar in front of a live audience. We discussed the Trump administration’s just-released national security strategy, the impacts of U.S. foreign policy around the world, women’s rights, how Democrats can revive their fortunes, and a controversy over remarks that Clinton recently made about why young Americans are shifting their views on Israel.
The full discussion can be watched on the video box atop this page or on the FP Live podcast this week. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.
For the latest episode of FP Live, I sat down with former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Doha Forum in Qatar in front of a live audience. We discussed the Trump administration’s just-released national security strategy, the impacts of U.S. foreign policy around the world, women’s rights, how Democrats can revive their fortunes, and a controversy over remarks that Clinton recently made about why young Americans are shifting their views on Israel.
The full discussion can be watched on the video box atop this page or on the FP Live podcast this week. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: The Trump administration just dropped its national security strategy. What do you make of it?
Hillary Rodham Clinton: There is a very clear message from the strategy that the United States is taking a big turn away from the hallmark alliances of our foreign policy and our strength in influencing global events. There’s a very strong indictment of Europe—in particular, its openness and population composition. That is an unnecessary division between us and countries with whom we have a lot in common and are necessary to our security.
Updating President James Monroe’s Monroe Doctrine, which is about dominating the Western Hemisphere, is going to be very difficult to pull off. We’re watching the administration build up and use military power in the region, which raises more questions than answers about what actually will be done to implement the strategy’s broad statements.
RA: What impact has [President Donald] Trump’s second term had on countries around the world?
HRC: I am concerned about the impact because there has been a heavy emphasis on moving away from core American values, though that’s not to say that there haven’t been some successes. For example, the United States has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by rarely criticizing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin for the brutal war he has waged on the Ukrainian people and by attempting to coerce the Ukrainians into accepting a peace deal that would leave them vulnerable to further Russian activity. Russia has been in Ukraine since 2014; this didn’t start in 2022. These issues need to be reviewed from a long-term consequence perspective.
It’s unclear what the administration’s objectives are, but it seems to be to cause disruption and hope it will lead to a better outcome. We’re not yet seeing the actual effects. I supported the 20-point Gaza peace plan and gave the president and his people credit for getting that terrible war to finally end. But it’s a plan that takes an enormous amount of effort, diplomacy, and negotiation—and carrots and sticks—to make sure all the parties are present at the table, and that’s where we’ll find out if this is really going to stick.
The United States is in a terrible position in Ukraine. Thirty-five years ago, another dictator invaded a neighbor—when Saddam Hussein crossed the border to seize parts of Kuwait. The world rightly reacted, because you cannot reward that kind of aggression. Putin is intent on taking as much of Ukraine as he can. We could have played a much more assertive role, both in the Biden administration and now in the Trump administration, in helping Ukraine defend itself, as it so heroically continues to do.
There are also important points in the national security strategy about economic and strategic competition with China. The buildup of Chinese military assets poses a direct threat to our allies in the region and to us. Diplomacy of any kind requires follow-up, and there is an aversion within the administration to the front-line work of officials trying to fulfill these national security objectives—there’s a very small group around the president that he trusts to do this. That is not adequate for the complexity of the problems we........