By Catherine Putz
HIllary Clinton is running for president in 2016. How would U.S. policy toward Asia look under her leadership?
Sunday, Hillary Clinton formally entered the 2016 presidential race with a video announcement and social media push. She’ll hit the campaign trail immediately. Traditionally, foreign policy plays a very small part in determining the outcome of American elections. But, ahead of President Obama’s 2015 state of the union address, the Pew Research Center released a poll saying that the share of Americans who rated foreign policy as more important than domestic policy for the president to cover in the speech, doubled from the previous year. Overall, however, that still only amounted to 20 percent of those polled and isn’t necessarily an indication of how Americans will make their decision on the country’s 45th president. Another poll from Pew, indicates that Americans trust Republicans more than Democrats when it comes to issues of terrorism and foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton, with her term as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, is nonetheless well-positioned to claim the most experience when it comes to foreign policy and especially when it comes to Asia. Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, said that “the rebalance is Clinton’s signal foreign policy achievement as Secretary of State, she’s invested in it.”
In a massive 2011 piece in Foreign Policy, Clinton outlined what was initially known as the American “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific (later rebranded as a “rebalance”). She’d used the term before and in fact she and the president had made multiple trips to the region in the previous two years, engaging in what she called in 2010 “‘forward-deployed’ diplomacy.” The title of the FP article–America’s Pacific Century–succinctly articulated the administrations larger strategic vision. The Asia-Pacific, Clinton wrote, “has become a key driver of global politics” and “U.S. commitment there is essential.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat