WASHINGTON - Surrounded by military leaders in a Cabinet-style setting, Hillary Clinton on Thursday said she has "crossed the threshold" of foreign policy experience to serve as commander in chief.
Supporters of rival Barack Obama fired back immediately, arguing that the former first lady's trips abroad hardly constituted a practice run for managing global crises.
"She was never asked to do the heavy lifting" when meeting with foreign leaders, said Susan Rice, who was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and is now advising Obama. "She wasn't asked to move the mountain or deliver a harsh message or a veiled threat. It was all gentle prodding or constructive reinforcement. And it would not have been appropriate for her to do the heavy lifting."
The debate over readiness for the global arena is emerging as the flash point in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, crystallized by a dramatic Clinton campaign commercial asking who is best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. phone call to the
White House during a crisis.
Clinton says she is the answer, arguing that Obama's major achievement was his early opposition to the Iraq war in 2002. Indeed, Obama doesn't have much in the way of experience managing foreign crises, nor does
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, for that matter. In fact, it is rare for any president to have that kind of experience before coming into office.
In Clinton's case, she may well have exercised influence on foreign policy that is hard to document because she had a unique opportunity to offer private counsel to her husband,
President Bill Clinton.
But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises.
Pressed in a CNN interview this week for specific examples of foreign policy experience that has prepared her for an international crisis, Clinton claimed that she "helped to bring peace" to Northern Ireland and negotiated with Macedonia to open up its border to refugees from Kosovo. She also cited "standing up" to the Chinese government on women's rights and a one-day visit she made to Bosnia following the Dayton peace accords.
Earlier in the campaign, she and her husband claimed that she had advocated on behalf of a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda to stop the genocide there.
'Ancillary' to process
But her involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was primarily to encourage activism among women's groups there, a contribution that the lead U.S. negotiator described as "helpful" but that an Irish historian who has written extensively about the conflict dismissed as "ancillary" to the peace process.
The Macedonian government opened its border to refugees the day before Clinton arrived to meet with government leaders. And her mission to Bosnia was a one-day visit in which she was accompanied by performers
Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, as well as her daughter, Chelsea, according to the commanding general who hosted her.
Whatever her private conversations with the president may have been, key foreign policy officials say that a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda was never considered in the Clinton administration's policy deliberations. Despite lengthy memoirs by both Clintons and former Secretary of State and UN Ambassador
Madeleine Albright, any advice she gave on Rwanda had not been mentioned until her presidential campaign.
"In my review of the records, I didn't find anything to suggest that military intervention was put on the table in NSC [National Security Council] deliberations," said Gail Smith, a Clinton NSC official who did a review for the White House of the administration's handling of the Rwandan genocide. Smith is an Obama supporter.
Prudence Bushnell, a retired State Department official who handled the Rwanda portfolio at the time and has not allied with a presidential candidate, confirmed that a U.S. military intervention was not considered in policy deliberations, as did several senior Clinton administration officials with first-hand knowledge who declined to be identified.
Clinton has previously described her role in the Northern Ireland peace process as meeting with women's groups to encourage them to build a political climate for peace.
Former Sen. George Mitchell, who was the lead U.S. negotiator, said Clinton's visits were "very helpful."
"She was especially involved in encouraging women to get involved in the peace process," which was a "significant factor" in the agreement, Mitchell said in an interview.
But Tim Pat Coogan, an Irish historian who has written extensively on the conflict in Northern Ireland, said the first lady's visits were not decisive in the negotiating breakthroughs in Northern Ireland.
"It was a nice thing to see her there, with the women's groups. It helped, I suppose," Coogan said. "But it was ancillary to the main thing. It was part of the stage effects, the optics.
"There were all kinds of peace movements, women's movements throughout the 'Troubles.' But it was more about the clout of Bill Clinton," added Coogan, who said Clinton administration decisions to grant visas to leaders of the Irish Republican Army's political wing and appoint a U.S. negotiator were the keys to changing the political climate.
Beijing speech
One of Clinton's most noteworthy forays onto the foreign stage came in 1995, when she delivered a speech at the
United Nations' women's conference in Beijing. That speech was widely noted and hailed as a bold call for women's rights, especially because Clinton explicitly spoke out against forced abortion and other practices of the host country.
"In the years since, I have met many women from many places who tell me they were at Beijing, or had friends who were, or who were inspired by the conference to launch initiatives," Albright wrote in her 2003 memoir.
The speech might never have happened if the first lady had not pressed for it, said one former Clinton administration official sympathetic to her candidacy who traveled with her and Albright to Beijing. The administration was conflicted about whether Hillary Clinton should go to Beijing at all because of the regime's record on human rights.
"Yet she was determined to go and was convinced that her going would send a very strong signal of support for human rights," said the official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named. "Everyone at the end of the process almost certainly would have said, 'How could we be so foolish to question the wisdom of the trip?'"
Still, Rice questioned whether that trip amounted to the kind of preparation for a global crisis that Clinton has claimed.
"How does going to Beijing and giving a speech show crisis management? There was no crisis. And there was nothing to manage," Rice said.
Macedonia visit
In 1999, Clinton visited Albanian refugee camps in Macedonia during the NATO bombing campaign to force Slobodan Milosevic's troops out of Kosovo. Macedonia had sealed its borders in an attempt to stop the arrival of refugees but, under Western pressure, reopened them the day before Clinton visited the camps.
A former Clinton administration official sympathetic to her candidacy said her presence "played a very important role in helping to shore up support for the Kosovars."
But Ivo Daalder, a former Clinton NSC official with responsibility for the Balkans and author of a history of the Kosovo conflict, said the border opening had nothing to do with her negotiating skills.
"It was her coming that helped. But she had absolutely no role in the dirty work of negotiations," said Daalder, an Obama supporter. "This had nothing to do with her competence."
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