I was a political appointee in President Bill Clinton’s first term. I worked on national security issues involving nuclear weapons. My own professional approach towards arms control is that it is NEVER an end in of itself; but inextricably intertwined with defense planning and modernization. Arms control is useful when is supports defense credibility; it is not a substitute.
I wrote a back with Dale Herspring, then of the Department of State which argued in detail how strategic arms control with the Soviets made sense as long as it helped ensure the credibility of deterrence; it was never a separate priesthood, which arms control has now become.
The Iran “deal” is the culmination of the arms control priesthood focusing on negotiation to meet their objectives; not viable defense.
In fact, in my view the Iran “deal” is more a negotiate and surrender strategy than it is about pressuring Iran and reinforcing ours and our allied defense.
There has never been a deal more likely to drive allies towards the possession of nuclear weapons than this one.
Where are the US nuclear weapons USEABLE against Iran that allies can count on?
Yet this is what Hillary Rodham (Clinton) cites as the way ahead for US national security policy.
Let us go back to Bill Clinton and his initial reaction. Bill Clinton was part of the Democratic Leadership Council, a political effort which was a key contributor to his possibility of even being the President.
The DLC was a group of prominent CONSERVATIVE Democrats who focused on national defense and law and order.
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was a non-profit 501(c)(4) corporation[1] founded in 1985 that, upon its formation, argued the United States Democratic Party should shift away from the leftward turn it took in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The DLC hailed President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of Third Way politicians and as a DLC success story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/04/magazine/sam-nunn-s-rising-star.html
Hillary Rodham (Clinton) shows little of the DLC thinking and in fact the migration of the DLC to “Rodhamism” demonstrates the shift from a conservative security agenda to what liberals call a “progressive” policy agenda.
As for decision-making style, there could not be a sharper break from Bill Clinton to Hillary Rodham (Clinton). Whatever Bill Clinton’s problems, he always reached out to the broader body politic.
He was a master of the policy seminar and a man who clearly could listen.
When then “First Lady” Clinton entered the policy arenas she took on health care reform and worked the policy in an authoritarian manner hardly reminiscent of the President.
‘HillaryCare’
Jan. 22, 1993: President Clinton chooses wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to lead health reform effort.
Even before President Clinton selected his wife to head up the health reform effort, there was overwhelming public skepticism of her role in the administration. Soon after her selection, an ABC News poll found that 44% of respondents thought that there were more qualified candidates to head up the effort. An editorial in the Boston Globe captured the sentiment of the times: “Here we go! Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ira Magaziner have elbowed aside some of the most experienced health care economists in the world to form a little task force at the pinnacle of the administration to fix the American health care system themselves.”
April 5, 1993: ‘Sketch’y reform plans
In a speech at a Families USA forum, White House adviser Ira Magaziner “sketch[ed] an early blueprint of the overall plan” the White House health reform health task force was developing. Magaziner “[told the group] that the … plan probably will mandate a minimum benefits package and care guidelines for all Americans, but will leave it to the states to decide how to meet those national standards.” The speech was indicative of the secrecy in which the elements of the overhaul plan came together.
May 3, 1993: Telling it to Republicans Hillary Clinton hosts a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with about 52 senators from both parties, hoping to convey that the administration was willing to consult with Republicans on a reform plan. However, during the meeting, Clinton and White House advisers Magaziner and Judy Feder again “sketched out” the administration’s proposals, compromising both transparency and their efforts to include the GOP. Almost a month after Magaziner offered few details on the administration’s plan, Clinton and Magaziner could offer no more details.
June 11, 1993: A spoonful of sugar
Hillary Clinton attends the centennial celebration of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, during which she discusses the administration’s health reform plans with nearly 600 doctors. Many observers say that the speech was a smart move by President Clinton, in that the situation needed a softer hand.
Sept. 21, 1993: Prof. Hillary Teaches at Health Care U.
Hillary Clinton holds an “unusual” bipartisan briefing to discuss reform, inviting more than 300 lawmakers from both chambers. It is an early misstep for Hillary Clinton — who was seen by many as having little to no experience with health policy — because in attendance are many lawmakers who have spent their entire careers attempting to reform the health care system.
Oct. 14, 1993: ‘Harry & Louise’ versus Hillary
The now famous television advertisements featuring a man and a woman discussing the Clintons’ health reform plan are widely credited with doing major damage to the administration’s health reform efforts.
Sept. 27, 1994: Failure to coalesce
Many observers noted that instead of coming together around the plan developed by Hillary Clinton and White House staffers, Democrats instead offered up a number of alternative proposals. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) declared the last of such plans dead — and along with it, the Clintons’ reform efforts — in September 1994.
One can expect more from President Hillary (Rodham) Clinton across the board.
Get ready for the Professor.
Then there is the question of whether he demonstrated day-to-day approach to policy will in any way deal with the significant strategic discontinuities facing the US in the world today.
One of the most famous lines of Gone With the Wind spoken by Scarlett O’Hara is a good statement of what President Hillary (Rodham) Clinton is likely to do with regard to strategic planning:
“I can’t think about that right now.
If I do, I’ll go crazy.
I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
Her tenure at the Department of State showed that approach in spades. Take the Libyan adventure and her leading the President into a situation which he later referred to as a “turd sandwich.” There is a direct line from the incomplete and incompetent Libyan intervention to Bengahazi (which happens to be in Libya) to the emplacement by terrorists of bases in Libya.
Yet intervening to create a power vacuum and then go on to more important and pressing global events is hardly the hallmark of Bill Clinton, who clearly led a concerted effort to deal with the Bosnian War and the serbs.
Just let me be clear: If you vote for Hillary (Rodham) Clinton, she is NOT Bill Clinton and this will be strikingly clear when she acts as Commander in Chief.
There certainly are the hangers on from the political class who will serve in both Administrations, but it is about the strategic direction of the Administration I am focused upon.
Aides always delude themselves with how important they are; but no aide, no consultant is the real decision maker.
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