Hillary Clinton’s legacy as secretary of state

>>> speechwriter in the george w. bush administration and now at the texas public policy foundation and ambassador swanee hunt who served as u.s. ambassador to austria, now a lecturer at harvard's kennedy school of government . we have just been talking as you saw in a very heated fashion about the situation in north africa and i think that's one core part of the legacy of the first administration's foreign policy and hillary clinton 's tenure at state and i think the defining external event to the administration of foreign policy has been the arab spring, obviously, and all that uncorked and how to manage that. but before we get to that, we still have robin on satellite. i want to talk about the relationship between the president and hillary clinton and the degree to which the legacy of foreign policy in the first term has been hillary clinton 's legacy and the degree to which it really has been -- the shots have been called from the white house because a lot of reporting on this has been very interesting. tonight there's going to be an interview on "60 minutes" that's a joint interview between the president and hillary clinton , a joint exit interview , and this is what the president had to say about hillary clinton 's legacy.

>> hillary will go down as one of the finest secretary of states we've had. it has been a great collaboration over the last four years. i'm going to miss her. i wish she was sticking around. but she has logged in so many miles i can't begrudge her to want to take igt eat easy for a little bit. but i want the country to appreciate just what an extraordinary role she's played during the course of my administration and a lot of the successes we've had internationally have been because of her hard work.

>> robin, as someone who's covered this administration, one of the things you hear from reporters who cover it is that the biggest strategic foreign policy calls have been very tightly held in the white house and not made in state. and that state's portfolio and hillary clinton 's portfolio has been somewhat removed from the biggest foreign policy calls. is that your sense from your reporting?

>> well, hillary clinton has faced two major challenges, and one is the fact that the white house has usurped a lot of the traditional roles of the state department making the big calls. it also comes at a time where the u.s. foreign policy is so defined by military intervention that the pentagon has a disproportion nat role. but the other challenge is that worldwide the united states has less influence than it did a decade ago or particularly 20 years ago during the cold war , the immediate aftermath. and so the ability of the united states to influence what's happening is also limited. you see this redrawing of power so that you have a rising china . four years ago hillary clinton 's major challenge was not the emerging china/ united states relationship. you also have under vladimir putin a truculent russia who has blocked u.s. initiatives, whether it's dealing with syria or trying to deal with iran's controversial nuclear program and again blocking the kind of diplomatic or economic initiatives that would tighten the squeeze on iran. so there are lots of different challenges she's faced. i think her legacy is likely to be centered around the fact that she changed america's image around the world, given what happened, the kind of hostility there was or negative perceptions among so many countries because of iraq, because of afghanistan, and also the role she played in putting women on the international agenda. it's often dismissed as a social issue but this accounts for half of the world's population and she has kind of institutionalized the u.s. policy on women and their role in society in developing, in politics, and that's a major contribution.

>> swanee, you wanted to talk about that.

>> yeah. robin, you're right on the money. this fits in what they were saying about after the military we have to come in with soft power . this has been the major piece in my opinion of her legacy. and i would put hillary clinton with george marshall . she redefined security. he came in, he was dealing with all of the things that a secretary of state deals with, but he redefined it and said this is not about revenge on the vanquished. we are going to rebuild the vanquished. i was in europe and i saw the effect of the marshall plan , which goes on for decades and decades. and hillary clinton in redefining security and calling it inclusive security has changed the nature.

>> right. but i think with the marshall plan the key distinction was there was a conceptual -- a reconceptualization that was married to a real policy and money. the question with hillary clinton are the reconceptualization that she's articulated been married to a change in u.s. policy.

>> one of the big developments of the bush administration vis-a-vis foreign policy was whether the department of defense took such a leading role. what's been interesting in the obama cabinet is the institutions have pretty much continued that relationship, which is -- so if you like george w. bush 's running of foreign policy , there's a lot to like in the obama administration.

>> you're saying in terms of the center of gravity institutionally on foreign policy .

>> absolutely. and you saw it with kind of the calling of the counterinsurgency theorists which treads on a lot of tear toe state treads on. hillary has continued that relationship with the defense department and i don't think it's going to change under secretary kerry.

>> that's an interesting point.

>> it's also true if you look at the george marshall example, that was which the wars were over. these wars are still being fought. the wars of the bush administration are being fought throughout the obama administration. i think just one point. i think it was the election of the first african- american president in this country, a country grounded in the legacies of slavery and genocide, that was what transformed the view for a brief moment at least of the united states around the world. it wasn't hillary clinton . it was the election of the first african- american president . but i think that this question of the mill itarization of foreign policy is very much at play right now. it has been for four years. it's that and the combination of special envoys, if you will, as sort of the institutional way that it happened that hillary clinton was not in charge of policy in pakistan, in afghanistan, in iraq, in israel/palestine, it was completely abandoned, that was all run through the white house . i would say those policies have all failed and i don't hold hillary clinton --

>> so that's to hillary 's credit, right?

>> she certainly didn't make them succeed.

>> no, but listen --

>> she was wrong.

>> i want you to respond