HILLARY’S BULL IN A CHINA SHOP DIPLOMACY
Diplomacy: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is often described as sidelined from the big jobs in foreign policy, given her political rivalry with the president. But to look at the areas where she is active shows a lot of messes.
As if it were not bad enough that the Obama administration is failing mightily to lead the Free World on security as Iran goes nuclear, the record of his secretary of state is one of misfires and small blunders in areas where she has a free hand.
The latest was annoying Canada last Wednesday by horning in on a maternal and child health program it’s creating for the Group of Eight’s June summit in Huntsville, Ontario.
Clinton demanded that abortion be included in Canada’s initiative and it didn’t go over well. Canada had taken the lead in creating this program for the G-8 in a good example of the “strategic multilateralism” the Obama administration claims to favor.
Clinton’s demand was disruptive, because the Canadians had already spent time and resources identifying priorities and found that abortion would not work well abroad. So Clinton’s unsolicited advice was “pok(ing) her nose in areas that are not her business,” as a Conservative Canadian member of parliament put it.
“Canada can make up its own mind on what its policy is on maternal health and how we define it,” the MP told LifeNews.com.
Given that Clinton has been making a lot of soggy remarks lately about women being the center of foreign policy, it’s likely that her own personal views were driving her statement — even to the detriment of Obama’s “strategic multilateralism.”
Or perhaps she was just appealing to United Nations bureaucrats and nongovernmental organizations for support.
Either way, Clinton’s Canadian blunder is not an isolated case.
Just last month, she helped trigger the U.S. rift with Israel over building homes in East Jerusalem, announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden.
It shouldn’t have been an issue, because the housing had already been planned and wasn’t even an issue in talks with the Palestinians. But out of the blue, Clinton ripped the scab off and blasted Israel in an unexpected verbal attack, blasting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a 43-minute lecture and calling the planned housing “deeply negative.”
How this helped anything is unclear. Clinton may again have been doing it for personal reasons — she had, after all, kissed Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian terror kingpin Yasser Arafat, before she became a politician. Or she may have been looking to win support from Arab states that want their hatred of Israel legitimized.
But it came at the cost of the big picture and at a critical time when the West must project a united front against Iran’s dangerous nuclear program.
Then there was a rare and unusual meeting with Cuba at the United Nations on Wednesday. At a time when Cuban political prisoners such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo are dying of hunger strikes, and the brave Ladies in White dissident wives are facing down Cuban goons for the cause of freedom, it would seem logical to talk about freeing Cuban political prisoners.
Didn’t happen. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, sat down with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez at the international donor conference on Haiti and announced a new deal with the Castro dictatorship to send Cuban doctors to Haiti.
Amid evidence that Castro’s medical program is little more than a physician slavery ring, and given that Castro has sought from Day One to discredit the U.S. aid effort, is there any doubt that the deal with Castro will boost his influence and deflect attention from his horrific human rights record?
It looks like another misplaced effort toward “strategic multilateralism.” And it comes at the very time when the U.S. shouldn’t be propping up this dictatorship, which is on its last legs.
The real “multilateralism” is the world’s response to the Cuban dissidents — such as the nonpartisan rallies that were held over the weekend in Los Angeles, Madrid, New York and Miami.
Is Clinton suffering more 1960s nostalgia to legitimize Castro? Is she trying to gain Organization of American States goodwill, or Brazil’s, by playing nice with the regime?
If so, she misses the more authentic opportunity for multilateralism — in the anti-totalitarianism that’s gaining strength in the streets across the region.
It all amounts to missed opportunities to engage in real multilateralism for the sake of hostile irrelevant groups and hostile states. It doesn’t serve America’s interests at all.
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