{"id":36011,"date":"2011-06-18T18:17:19","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T15:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=36011"},"modified":"2014-01-06T09:49:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T07:49:45","slug":"the-hillary-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/06\/18\/the-hillary-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hillary Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a time of momentous change in the world, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sets out on her most heartfelt mission: to put women and girls at the forefront of the new world order.<\/em><\/h2>\n

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Stephanie Sinclair for Newsweek - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Abu Dhabi in January.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hillary Clinton seemed to be in a rare moment of repose while the Middle East erupted. She\u2019d just returned from a surprise trip to Yemen and now sat for 30 minutes against a blue backdrop in the State Department\u2019s Washington broadcast studio as reports streamed in of Libya\u2019s violent crackdown on its own people.<\/p>\n

But Clinton was far from a passive observer. She was in energetic discussion on the Egyptian news site Masrawy.com, where her presence excited a stream of questions\u2014more than 6,500 in three days\u2014from young people across Egypt. \u201cWe hope,\u201d she said, \u201cthat as Egypt looks at its own future, it takes advantage of all of the people\u2019s talents\u201d\u2014Clinton shorthand for including women. She had an immediate answer when a number of questioners suggested that her persistent references to women\u2019s rights constituted American meddling in Egyptian affairs: \u201cIf a country doesn\u2019t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women\u2019s rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Web chat was only one of dozens of personal exchanges Clinton has committed to during the three months since Tunisia\u2019s unrest set off a political explosion whose end is not yet in sight. At every step, she has worked to connect the Middle East\u2019s hunger for a new way forward with her categorical imperative: the empowerment of women. Her campaign has begun to resonate in unlikely places. In the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, where women cannot travel without male permission or drive a car, a grandson of the Kingdom\u2019s founding monarch (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud) last month denounced the way women are \u201ceconomically and socially marginalized\u201d in Arab countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century,\u201d Clinton recently told NEWSWEEK during another rare moment relaxing on a couch in the comfortable sitting room of her offices on the State Department\u2019s seventh floor, her legs propped up in front of her. \u201cWe see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clinton is paying particular attention to whether women\u2019s voices are heard within the local groups calling for and leading change in the Middle East. \u201cYou don\u2019t see women in pictures coming from the demonstrations and the opposition in Libya,\u201d she told NEWSWEEK late last week, adding that \u201cthe role and safety of women will remain one of our highest priorities.\u201d As for Egypt, she said she was heartened by indications that women would be included in the formation of the new government. \u201cWe believe that women were in Tahrir Square, and they should be part of the decision-making process. If [the Egyptians] are truly going to have a democracy, they can\u2019t leave out half the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have had quite an experience over the last three months,\u201d is how Clinton characterizes the stamina requirements of an amped-up shuttle diplomacy. Two years into her tenure as America\u2019s 67th secretary of state, she has out-traveled every one of her predecessors, with 465,000 air miles and 79 countries already behind her. Her Boeing 757\u2019s cabin, stocked with a roll-out bed, newspapers, and a corner humidifier, now serves as another home as she flies between diplomatic hot spots, tackling the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tensions with Iran and North Korea, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and, now, the serial Middle East upheavals. She is, it seems, everywhere at once, crossing time zones and defying jet lag, though signs of exhaustion\u2014a hoarse voice, bleary eyes\u2014slip through. (A recent 19-hour \u201cday trip\u201d to Mexico landed her at Maryland\u2019s Andrews Air Force Base well after 2 a.m., which left approximately six hours to get home, sleep, and make her first meeting of the day that would culminate in President Obama\u2019s State of the Union address.)<\/p>\n

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It is hardly the life the former first lady and senator from New York envisioned. Indeed, she can fairly be described as the surprise secretary of state, the country\u2019s first formidable female presidential candidate who had made clear her desire to shed the supporting roles of her past. When Barack Obama approached her about assuming the post, it was clear what he got out of the deal: an opportunity to reinforce his \u201cchange the tone\u201d pledge by offering a choice role to his one-time competitor, and the credibility, gravitas\u2014and gender balance\u2014her appointment conferred. Less obvious at the time was what she might hope to accomplish. A sense of duty and a want of appealing alternatives may have led her to Foggy Bottom, but Clinton has turned the job into what may well be the role of her lifetime: advocate in chief for women worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Amid the current unrest and pervasive uncertainty, Clinton\u2019s mission has only gained in urgency. As she noted in Qatar in January, two weeks before Egypt\u2019s first \u201cday of rage,\u201d the Middle East\u2019s old foundations were \u201csinking into the sand.\u201d But there has been a hard core of realism to her recognition of a new opening for women. \u201cWe are watching and waiting,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople jockey for power, and often the most conservative elements once again use the opportunity to crack down on women and women\u2019s roles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

While Clinton views the subjugation of the world\u2019s women as a moral question, she plants her argument firmly on the grounds of national security, terrain she knows is far less likely to be attacked as \u201ctoo soft\u201d to be relevant to U.S. interests. \u201cThis is a big deal for American values and for American foreign policy and our interests, but it is also a big deal for our security,\u201d she told NEWSWEEK. \u201cBecause where women are disempowered and dehumanized, you are more likely to see not just antidemocratic forces, but extremism that leads to security challenges for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Championing opportunity and equality for women is the fulfillment of her life\u2019s work, but for a time, it looked as if that trajectory might be derailed. In 1974, the blazing young intellect who won national attention with an unscripted response to Sen. Edward Brooke, boldly arguing for the end of the Vietnam War in her Wellesley commencement speech (a speech that landed her on the cover of\u00a0Life<\/em> magazine), disappointed her feminist friends by spurning New York and Washington in favor of Fayetteville, Ark., to become the young Bill Clinton\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For two decades, Clinton put her own ambitions second to and in the service of her husband\u2019s political rise, enduring personal struggles and eating political crow when her high-profile effort to reform health care at the start of Bill Clinton\u2019s first term ended in a rout. A return to first-lady purdah soon followed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

And then came Beijing. <\/strong>The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, organized by the United Nations to advance and promote women\u2019s opportunity and equality, stirred Hillary to reassert her own credo as a woman, on behalf of women. She would gather America\u2019s delegation and serve as its honorary chair, lending her imprimatur as first lady to put women\u2019s rights in the global spotlight at the largest such assembly of its kind.<\/p>\n

\n

When word reached the West Wing of Hillary\u2019s interest in attending the conference, her husband\u2019s aides saw only the political downside for the president and feared the first lady would derail already-fragile bilateral relations. \u201cI did get a call from someone on the National Security Council who said to me, \u2018My job is to make sure Hillary Clinton doesn\u2019t go to China,\u2019?\u201d says Theresa Loar, who helped Clinton organize the Beijing delegation. \u201cI am thinking, my job is to make sure it\u2019s a rip-roaring success\u2014and guess who is going to succeed?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Clinton herself says she paid little heed to the political tug-of-war within her husband\u2019s administration. \u201cI always intended to go,\u201d she says, stressing the word \u201calways.\u201d \u201cThe real question was, what would I do when I got there \u2026 It became more and more important to me that we really lay down a declaration of American values when it comes to women.\u201d And so, clad in a striking pink suit, she ascended the Beijing stage and delivered what\u00a0The New York Times<\/em> called \u201can unflinching speech that may have been her finest moment in public life.\u201d Thousands of delegates\u2014women and men\u2014from 180 countries had gathered to hear Clinton, and some of the women cheered and pounded the tables in front of them while she spoke.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cIf there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women\u2019s rights and women\u2019s rights are human rights once and for all,\u201d Clinton declared. \u201cAs long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes\u2014the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Those who have worked closely with Clinton on women\u2019s issues view that speech as a turning point for an embattled first lady. \u201cWhat Mrs. Clinton so clearly realized in Beijing was that she had a voice and she had power,\u201d says Alyse Nelson, president of the women\u2019s leadership group Vital Voices Global Partnership, who paid her own way to the conference as a college student. \u201cAnd she could use that voice to help those who had no power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Mu Sochua met Clinton in Beijing and credits Clinton\u2019s speech with changing her career path. \u201cThat was the day I decided to enter politics,\u201d says Sochua, now a prominent Cambodian opposition leader. \u201cWatching her I had the sense that I could do it, that other women could do it, if we really spoke from the bottom of our hearts and reflected the voices of women.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Significantly, at the age of 63, Hillary Clinton is once again focusing on the issues that first inspired her to seek a life of public service more than four decades ago, a time when America\u2019s schools remained segregated and no woman had ever served on the Supreme Court, been elected mayor of a major city, or entered the country\u2019s military academies.<\/p>\n

\n

Despite her punishing schedule, Clinton appears far more at ease with her own role and in her own skin than ever before. Even her oft-commented style\u2014the coiffed hair, a wardrobe of tailored pantsuits\u2014now shows a settled sureness. Clinton\u2019s political instincts may have served others\u2014principally her husband\u2014to great effect, but over the years they have often done her a disservice. Today, she exudes not just the confidence that her White House\u2013era trials are behind her but the conviction that they are beside the point. In crafting her role as secretary of state, she has shown remarkable political dexterity and a marked absence of inner conflict, crystallized by the moral clarity of addressing injustices faced by young girls sold into slavery or mothers raped in front of their children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In January, Clinton became the first secretary of state in two decades to visit Yemen. It\u2019s a country infiltrated by Al Qaeda, and so she talked security and development issues in three hours cloistered with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh at his sprawling presidential compound. It\u2019s also a country where a man may marry a girl of 9, and so Clinton sought out the kind of people who rarely meet American secretaries of state\u2014the students, community activists, and, most obviously, the women. She toured the narrow streets of the capital\u2019s old city to the great dismay of her security detail; through the windows of her heavily armored SUV she caught sight of men in traditional clothes, knives dangling from their belts, and children yelling \u201cwelcome\u201d in Arabic. Missing from the scene: virtually any sign of the country\u2019s women.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Arriving at a packed conference center in a luxury hotel complex perched above the old city, Clinton found young men and women packed into a raucous town-hall meeting. When she finished speaking, a cluster of Yemeni women\u2019s activists approached. A petite young woman wearing a glitter-fringed black head scarf and a denim jacket with BEAUTY embroidered on its sleeve told the secretary the women needed advice about how to stop child marriage. During her remarks, Clinton had cited the story of Nujood Ali, a Yemeni girl in the audience that day whose very public fight for a divorce at age 11 has become a global cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre\u2014one that Clinton herself follows closely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cToday, Nujood is back in school where she belongs, learning English along with her studies,\u201d Clinton told the crowd. \u201cAnd I really see her as an inspiration and representative of so many other young girls who can contribute positively to their families and their country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By Clinton\u2019s side as she spoke was Melanne Verveer, ambassador-at-large for global women\u2019s issues, a post Clinton encouraged President Obama to create when she became secretary. In 1995, while serving as Clinton\u2019s chief of staff, Verveer helped the first lady create the President\u2019s Interagency Council on Women. With Verveer as her trusted deputy, Clinton pushes for recognition of women\u2019s contributions in traditional areas such as health and education, along with newer and, in her view, equally critical arenas such as diplomacy and peacekeeping. \u201cPolitics is seen in most societies, including our own, I would add, as a largely male sport\u2014unarmed combat\u2014and women are very often ignored or pushed aside in an effort to gain or consolidate power,\u201d she says. Her work aims to change that.<\/p>\n

\n

During Clinton\u2019s daylong stop in Papua New Guinea last November, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare sought to dismiss concerns about domestic violence. \u201cSometimes there are fights, arguments do take place, but it\u2019s nothing very brutal,\u201d Somare said, before asserting that \u201ca person \u2026 cannot control [himself] when he\u2019s under the influence of liquor.\u201d Clinton noted pointedly that one of her highest priorities was \u201cenabling more women to have access to their rights, to take their position in society\u201d and she added\u2014evidently to the surprise of those traveling with her\u2014that Verveer would be returning to Papua New Guinea to \u201cfigure out what else the United States can do, so that we have even more women playing leadership roles in every aspect of your society.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cLet\u2019s stay true to our values\u201d is, Clinton says, her message to the American public. \u201cLet\u2019s continue to stand up for those who are vulnerable to being left out or marginalized.\u201d It\u2019s a pledge in sync with a growing national awareness of the unappreciated potential of women and girls around the world. Children now study the young readers\u2019 edition of\u00a0Three Cups of Tea<\/em> as part of their classroom curriculum, while an increasing number of college-age students are committing time to NGOs involved with women\u2019s issues. And though Washington is proving slower to embrace Clinton\u2019s cause, her own popularity is soaring: she is the second-most-admired woman in America (after Oprah Winfrey), according to a NEWSWEEK poll of women in late February.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, the State Department\u2019s 2012 fiscal-year request includes $1.2 billion in programs specifically targeting women, $832 million of which will go toward global health initiatives. Tellingly, comparisons with past years can\u2019t be made, since the department only started tracking women-focused dollars in 2010. Once a month, Verveer meets by videoconference with the Afghanistan Gender Task Force, which packs into a narrow room in the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan\u2019s capital. During a 2009 visit, she unveiled what is now the $36 million Ambassador\u2019s Small Grants Program to Support Gender Equality, which has awarded 523 grants totaling $8 million via the USAID contractor Creative Associates. Most awards last less than four months, but two dozen have gone to organizations working on long-term change, such as a domestic violence law that went into effect last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Afghan grant recipient Suraya Pakzad\u2019s Voice of Women offers refuge to women who suffer beatings and mental abuse at the hands of husbands and in-laws. Thuraya Dammaj, a Yemeni human-rights activist, plans to use a Middle East\u2013focused $25,000 State Department grant to push for quotas to get more women into Parliament and to repeal a law allowing the marriage of young girls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During Clinton\u2019s last Middle East visit, former Iraqi minister Bakhtiar Amin told her he worried about the increasing invisibility of women in Iraq\u2019s government. Once there were six female ministers, Amin noted, and now there was only one. Clinton pledged to follow up. \u201cThe secretary remembers things, she takes notes, she asks questions weeks or months\u201d after the fact, according to Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary for management at the State Department. \u201cShe checks on the issues she cares about, deeply and specifically,\u201d keeping track of it all with her famous to-do lists.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI honestly think Hillary Clinton wakes up every day thinking about how to improve the lives of women and girls,\u201d says Theresa Loar. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know another world leader who is doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clinton\u2019s knack for personalizing foreign policy was evident last month, when she convened the annual gathering of the President\u2019s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. It\u2019s another issue she began working on in the mid-1990s, and in a borderless world with instant communication, sexual slavery has exploded into an epidemic; the State Department estimates there are now 12.3 million adults and children worldwide in \u201cforced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Squeezed in elbow to elbow around a long wooden table in the State Department\u2019s Jefferson Room was a virtual cabinet gathering, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. As host of the meeting, which began so promptly that several attendees sheepishly slid in late, Clinton asked each of the officials to share their team\u2019s progress. She moved briskly around the table, then stopped to make a frank appeal. \u201cOne thing I would urge, if you do get a chance, is to visit a shelter, a site where trafficking victims have been rescued and are being rehabilitated,\u201d she said to a room that had suddenly gone silent. \u201cI recently was in Cambodia, and it is just so overwhelmingly heartbreaking and inspiring to see these young girls. One girl lost her eyes\u2014to punish her, the owner of the brothel had stabbed her in the eye with a nail,\u201d Clinton continued. \u201cShe was the most optimistic, cheerful young woman, just a tremendous spirit. What she wants to do when she grows up is help other victims of trafficking, so there is just an enormous amount of work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The shelter Clinton referred to is run by the Cambodian activist Somaly Mam, who herself was forced into a brothel as a little girl. Mam credits Clinton\u2019s visit with making her work rescuing young victims respectable in the eyes of her government. \u201cShe protects our lives,\u201d Mam says simply, noting that during her visit Clinton took the time to talk with the girls and that many of the shelter\u2019s children now keep photos of her on their walls. \u201cOur people never paid attention. Hillary has opened their eyes, so now they have no choice; by her work she has saved many lives in Cambodia\u2014our government is changing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For her part, Clinton says that her ambition now is to move the discussion beyond a reliance on her own celebrity. She must, she says, take her work on women\u2019s behalf \u201cout of the interpersonal and turn it into the international.\u201d At the State Department, that goal is reflected in a new and sweeping strategic blueprint known as the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which establishes priorities over a four-year horizon. Women and girls are mentioned 133 times across the 220 pages of the final QDDR document.<\/p>\n

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By institutionalizing a process that recognizes the importance of women\u2019s involvement, Clinton hopes her successors will continue what she has started. Many of those on the front lines of implementing Clinton\u2019s changes say they believe her message will stick. \u201cOnce you have built this track record, it is much harder to ignore it,\u201d says Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served as a chief architect of the QDDR process. But some women\u2019s-rights advocates who applaud Clinton\u2019s leadership aren\u2019t so sure. \u201cWhen I go to Iraq or Afghanistan and I meet State Department officials, I don\u2019t see women\u2019s issues at the core of the discussion,\u201d says Zainab Salbi, who heads Women for Women International. (See My Turn, page 40.) Salbi notes that on a recent trip to the southern Iraqi province of Diwaniya, she had to fight to convince her State interlocutors that spending precious program dollars on women was a worthwhile investment. \u201cTheir patriarchy and chauvinism,\u201d she says, \u201cwas harder on Iraqi culture than Iraqis themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere is a culture at State, and you have to break through that culture,\u201d admits one former ambassador. \u201cThe guys who work on country-to-country relationships don\u2019t think these issues are central.\u201d Clinton\u2019s efforts could easily stall or be reversed when she and Verveer leave, he adds, in part because each is so good at what she does. \u201cI think the combination of those two personalities is crucial, and that\u2019s why I can\u2019t be at all sure it will last beyond this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speculation continues that Clinton would stay on in a second Obama term, and a few pundits go as far as to suggest she might even make another White House run in 2016, though Bill Clinton joked recently that his wife now covets the title of grandmother far more than that of commander in chief. For now, Hillary Clinton is sticking to her story that she is getting ready to take a break from public life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Asked whether she worries her eventual departure from the State Department will endanger the future of her mission, Clinton admits to feeling a great weight of responsibility for all the women and girls she has met and the many millions of others like them. \u201cIt is why there are 133 references to women and girls in the QDDR,\u201d she says, turning reflexively to the hard evidence. \u201cIt is why I mention the issue in every setting I am in, and why I mention it with every foreign leader I meet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt is like any challenge,\u201d she goes on, her tone brightening. \u201cYou just keep at it, take it piece by piece, seize the ground you can, hang onto it, and then move forward a little bit more.\u201d She pauses. \u201cAnd we are heading for higher ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Lemmon, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of<\/em> The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, published this month.<\/em><\/p>\n

www.newsweek.com<\/span>,\u00a0March 06, 2011<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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