Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton served as Secretary of State under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013 after careers as an attorney, First Lady, and United States senator from New York. A graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School, she worked on legal services, children’s welfare, education, and health policy before entering elected office. Her 1995 speech at the United Nations women’s conference in Beijing helped establish women’s rights as a recurring theme of her international work. ^{1, 2}

Clinton promoted “smart power”: the coordinated use of diplomacy, military strength, development, economic ties, and new communications technologies. She helped articulate the administration’s rebalance toward Asia, linking the deployment of Marines to Darwin with trade agreements and regional engagement. She also pursued a reset of relations with Russia. These initiatives sought cooperation on particular problems while preserving American influence among countries with competing interests. ²

Her support for diplomatic engagement coexisted with a willingness to use force. She backed the 2009 reinforcement of American troops in Afghanistan and the 2011 intervention in Libya, and favored assistance to Syrian rebels earlier than Obama accepted. The 2012 attack on the American mission in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, brought sustained scrutiny of diplomatic security and her department’s management. These disputes became part of the public assessment of a tenure that combined global advocacy, alliance diplomacy, and contested responses to the Arab uprisings. ²