The only consolation from reading this deathly-dull memoir is that some executives will lose their jobs at Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, because sales have not been enough to recoup the $14 million that was advanced to Hillary to recount her four years as US President Barack Obama’s first secretary of state.
Someone naughtily tweeted that her book tour would end on November 8, 2016, which is also the date that Americans will either vote for Hillary or against her as their next President (it’s a safe bet she will be the Democratic nominee). That immediately discloses the raison d’etre for this book. It also means that Hard Choices will not be an exercise in hard self-examination, and indeed this 596-page tome is far from an honest record. (They spend $14 million and all they come up with is a bland title like Hard Choices! What a comedown from the memorably-titled It Takes A Village.)
The Indian reader has another reason to not shell out Rs 999: the absence of India from this account, further evidencing the low priority Mr Obama has given India during his presidency. While the book is organised as foreign policy issues — the first part is Asia, mainly China, while the second part is AfPak, etc — India does not get a chapter to itself and is mentioned essentially as a footnote. (India appears most in the chapter on Pakistan, telling us that the hyphenation our foreign policy geeks thought was dead is still very much alive.) It is obvious that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in September will be more for show than anything else, perhaps intended to smoothen the ruffled feathers from the denial of visa to him before he became Prime Minister or from the still inexplicable Devyani Khobragade episode. But substantively, it appears India will have to wait till
Mr Obama retires.
There was only one LOL moment in Hard Choices: when WikiLeaks published stolen US diplomatic cables in November 2010, Hillary had the unenviable job of calling up world leaders and apologising in advance. (The secret US government cables were, um, candid in their assessment of host country leaders.) She writes: “One leader even joked, ‘You should see what we say about you.’” Otherwise this joyless book is pretty much a justification of Clinton’s stint as secretary of state (the way she writes it, you’d think Mr Obama was asleep at the White House while she piled on the thousands of flying-miles she became famous for, occasionally checking with him to win an inter-agency turf battle, or asking him to weigh in with a particularly obstinate Prime Minister or President during negotiations).
Page 382 reveals the critical reason for this memoir: the chapter on the attack on the US mission’s premises in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. Clinton came under fire from her political opponents — who are undoubtedly among the more churlish politicians in the world — and so, to make things crystal clear to even the most Kim Kardashian of American voters, she painstakingly sets out the complete record and investigation to show that no, she did not blunder when four lives, including that of the US ambassador to Libya, were lost. I guess this is intended to pre-empt Benghazi from ever becoming a controversy when she runs to be President.
The memoir had great potential. Clinton had a bird’s eye view of events during turbulent times: the US had decided on a pivot to Asia and was focusing on managing relations with China; Mr Obama decided to withdraw from Afghanistan; the Arab Spring happened; and Israel and Hamas nearly went to war (as is looking likely again these days). She also devotes considerable space to her meetings with Aung San Suu Kyi as Burma went through political change; the attempt to “reset” relations with Russia; and to topics close to the American liberal heart: climate change, Haiti, energy security, digital diplomacy and human rights.
Despite her great energy and dedication, though, all this globe-trotting just confirms what critics said when she decided to decline Mr Obama’s offer of a second term and step down (presumably to catch her breath before beginning her presidential campaign next year): that there was no great idea governing her tenure as secretary of state. She may claim that her “pivot to Asia” was a policy initiative, but it sounds more like a course correction. And “American exceptionalism” is not an idea, but an expectation of anyone aspiring to lead America. All she did was clock a lot of frequent-flyer miles, burnishing her “muscular” credentials as a presidential candidate. It’s clear, however, that she was no Thomas Jefferson (the US first secretary of state, and third President).
Clinton mentions her deep friendship with the late Benazir Bhutto, the late Nelson Mandela, and the late Richard Holbrooke. I suppose none of them can now deny being great pals of hers. I wonder how anyone who is constantly travelling and holding highly choreographed meetings in highly formalised settings can ever claim to forge “deep” friendships with world leaders. As for Richard Holbrooke, the brilliant but abrasive diplomat who might have been secretary of state but ended up as Mr Obama’s special envoy for AfPak, a term he coined: his untimely death, in Hillary’s office, was an event not unfavourable to India, given his view that India need to sort Kashmir out with Pakistan in order that US sort Afghanistan out with Pakistan. Had he lived, there might have been a separate chapter on India in Clinton’s memoir after all.
Aditya Sinha is a senior journalist
