Hillary the Hawk: A History
From Haiti to Syria, the Democratic candidate’s long record suggests she’s looking forward to being a war president on day one.
BY MICAH ZENKO JULY 27, 2016
Whoever is elected on Nov. 8 will be a war president on day one, with
the power and autonomy to undertake destabilizing shows of force, drone
strikes, special operations raids and ever-deepening military
interventions. Today, combat troop deployments are routinely made by
executive branch spokespeople, decisions to back open-ended air wars in
places like Yemen by “partners” like Saudi Arabia are announced via
press release, and congressional oversight hearings largely boil down to
legislators pleading with commanders to ask for more troops and looser
rules of engagement.And much of this probably suits Hillary Clinton just
fine.
Unlike Donald Trump, who has wildly shifting positions and alleged “secret” plans to defeat the Islamic State,
Clinton has an extensive track record upon which one can evaluate her likely positions. By
any reasonable measure, Clinton qualifies as a hawk, if a nuanced one.
Though she has opposed uses of force that she believed were a bad idea,
she has consistently endorsed starting new wars and expanding
others.Consider seven prominent situations in which she has had to
decide whether to support the use of American military force:Haiti: In
1994, Clinton opposed intervening in Haiti to reinstate the
Jean-Bertrand Aristide government. As historian Taylor Branch recounted
in his diary of interviews with Bill Clinton: “I asked him what Hillary
thought. He said the pell-mell rush to invade was crazy to her. Reacting
against the pressure, the lack of options, and his sense of being
trapped, she said he was badly served by his foreign policy staff.” This
was an astute judgment by the then-first lady, as the options developed
by the U.S. Southern Command and Joint Chiefs were poorly conceived and
often logistically impossible to carry out. Fortunately, a 25,000 U.S.
troop invasion was avoided after Jimmy Carter brokered a last-minute
agreement with Raoul Cédras that assured he would step down from power.
Iraq: In 2002, as a senator for New York,
Clinton voted for the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq. In her accompanying floor statement,
she
claimed it was to ensure President George W. Bush was “in the strongest
possible position to lead our country in the United Nations or in war”
and to show Saddam Hussein that the country was united. After initially
defending the vote, she later adjusted, variously declaring she
“thought it was a vote to put inspectors back in,” it was “based on the
facts and assurances that I had at the time,” and ultimately “it was a
mistake to trust Bush.” Clinton also justified the 2002 vote as simply
one for compelling compliance, proclaiming, “I believe in coercive
diplomacy,” in a January 2008 presidential debate. Regardless of the
reasons or excuses behind her vote, the Iraq War was a foreign-policy
and geopolitical disaster.Pakistan: In 2007 and 2008, Clinton strongly
disagreed with then-Sen. Barack Obama about striking al Qaeda targets
inside of Pakistan. Obama called such attacks “just common sense” if
there were “actionable intelligence.” Clinton referred to the 1998
cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan that failed to kill Osama bin
Laden and warned that “we have to be very conscious of all the
consequences,” particularly anything that would destabilize Pakistan’s
nuclear arsenal.
Obama would go on to authorize 407 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing 3,089 people.
Nearly 300 of these occurred while Clinton was secretary of state,
during which time U.S. diplomats opposed only one or two of the strikes.
Whatever hesitation Clinton once had in attacking militants in Pakistan
vanished upon being confirmed as secretary of state.
Afghanistan: In
2009, Clinton supported three-quarters of the Afghanistan surge.
When Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in
Afghanistan, requested four brigades of additional U.S. troops in the
summer of 2009, Clinton endorsed deploying three of them (equaling
roughly 30,000 troops). Reportedly, “
Clinton usually favored sending even more [troops] than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates did.”
Obama eventually deployed 33,000 extra troops. It is hard to identify
any enduring political or security gains in Afghanistan that have
resulted from the surge. Moreover, more than
Libya: In
2011, Clinton
was a strong proponent of regime change in Libya (as was Trump). It is
forgotten today that a primary justification she offered for the U.S.
military role in Libya was to pay back allies for Afghanistan. As
she stated in late March 2011: “We asked our allies, our NATO allies, to
go into Afghanistan with us 10 years ago. They have been there, and a
lot of them have been there despite the fact they were not attacked.…
When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the U.K., France, Italy,
other of our NATO allies. This was in their vital national interest.”
Academic research shows that great powers enjoy freedom of action to
avoid becoming dragged into wars involving allies, but the Libya regime
change intervention was, unfortunately,
one
that the Obama administration chose to fully support, despite
misleading the American people at the time that it was not the goal. Obama correctly labeled not planning for the postwar scenario his “worst mistake” and correctly described Libya as a “mess.”
Osama bin Laden:
In 2011,
she endorsed the Navy SEAL raid into Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed
Osama bin Laden, even while recognizing that it would likely poison
diplomatic relations with Pakistan for a short time. According to
Vice President Joe Biden — who opposed it — every other official
(including Clinton) was “51-49” in supporting the raid. Before the news
broke, Obama called Bill Clinton (who, as president, signed three covert
findings authorizing bin Laden’s killing) to let him know the al Qaeda
leader was finally dead. “I assume Hillary’s already told you,” Obama
said to an unaware Clinton. As Hillary Clinton later wrote in her
memoir: “They told me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t tell anyone. Bill
later joked with me, ‘No one will ever doubt you can keep a secret!’”
Syria:
In 2012, she
reportedly proposed to the White House — along with CIA Director David
Petraeus — a covert program (apparently larger than the one later
authorized) to provide arms to vetted Syrian rebel groups fighting
Bashar al-Assad’s government. Obama opposed this proposal on the
grounds that there could be no guarantees of where the weapons would
ultimately end up and that CIA analysts determined they would not have
“materially” hastened the removal of Assad from power. It is difficult
to assess the CIA-led train-and-equip program’s effectiveness, compared
to larger Defense Department-led efforts, but there remains no
collection of U.S.-backed rebel groups that has threatened the existence
of the Assad government, which is now backed by indiscriminate Russian
air power.Outside of specific interventions,
Clinton also supported muscular shows of force as secretary of state.
New York Times reporter Mark Landler describes a July 2010 White House
debate about rerouting the USS George Washington aircraft carrier from
its normal cruise into the Yellow Sea. Adm. Robert Willard, the head of
U.S. Pacific Command; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs; and Secretary of Defense Gates all agreed on this aggressive
maneuver. “Clinton strongly seconded it. ‘We’ve got to run it up the
gut!’ she had said to her aides a few days earlier,” Landler writes. But
Obama refused the request, declaring, “I don’t call audibles with
aircraft carriers.” It bears noting that determining the aggressiveness
by which the United States conducts freedom of navigation operations in
maritime waters claimed by China will be a consequential call for the
next president.Finally, Clinton has had an unusual exposure to the
military from multiple civilian positions, which may make her far better
prepared to serve as commander in chief than her husband was in 1993,
when he had a notoriously difficult start leading the military.
As first lady, Clinton was routinely exposed to military intervention
debates among senior officials, including over Haiti, Bosnia, and
Afghanistan, and later served six years on the Senate Armed Services
Committee and four as secretary of state. She also has developed close
relations with retired military officers like Gen. Jack Keane, who has
rarely seen a country that cannot be improved with U.S. ground troops
and airstrikes. As Bob Woodward wrote of a 2009 meeting between the two
to discuss the Afghan surge: “Clinton greeted Keane with a bear hug,
astonishing [U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard] Holbrooke
because—and he should know—Hillary rarely bear-hugged anyone.”I have
spoken about Clinton with a handful of military officers, then stationed
in Islamabad and Kabul, who were routinely involved in video
teleconferences with her as secretary of state. They all described her
as being, by far, the best-prepared senior participant in meetings and
having read all the memos or briefing books that were sent as
preparatory material. They relayed that Clinton has an intimate
understanding of military doctrine, Pentagon acronyms, and military
planning principles and was not afraid to press senior commanders to
clarify the “courses of action” and the intended “end state” of any
given military intervention.
Should Hillary Clinton win the White House, the United States,
already at war for 15 years, would be led by a president deeply aware
and comfortable with the military. It’s impossible to know which
national security crises she would be forced to confront, of course. But
those who vote for her should know that she will approach such crises
with a
long track record of being generally supportive of initiating U.S. military interventions and expanding them.Photo credit: JILL M. DOUGHERTY/Getty Images
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