So do you think she's been a good SoS or do you agree with everything in the article and rate her subpar?
I wouldn't take it as far as Bret Stephens does, but let me put it this way. The Obama administration has no coherent strategy for dealing with the Middle East. The Arab Spring caught them completely with their pants down, and they had no idea how to react. At first they stuck with the tried and true strategy of supporting the Arab nationalist dictators. Once they started falling, they went with the momentum and they supported those revolting. But they were rightly horrified by the idea of Islamists coming to power again, so they tempered their support and largely stood by the sidelines. Going with popular opinion doesn't take any foresight or skill. The result of their Middle East "policy" has been that all sides have been alienated. Our allies in countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain look at us with supreme distrust, seeing how their counterparts were treated. Mubarak was a key U.S. ally. He was instrumental in negotiations in Gaza, and he stuck by us in 1990 by leading a coalition of Arab countries against Iraq. That was not by any means a popular decision in his country. The Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II administrations worked tirelessly to build a relationship with him, and we threw it away at a whim. Bush senior had his family over for dinner regularly and took him to baseball games at Yankee Stadium. Was the decision not to back him wrong? Not necessarily, but the manner in which they played it was horrific. Half-measures all around. If you are going to shift U.S. policy in the Middle East, you actually have to do it. You will burn some bridges along the way, but that's the price you pay. The Obama administration was not willing to pay the price, and now we have alienated all sides. The evidence of this failure is clear cut. We are just as disliked in the Middle East as we were under the Bush administration, and now we've lost the trust of the leaders as well. So yes, Obama and Clinton's Middle East policy has been a disaster. On the other hand, there have been promising developments in Burma, Africa, and elsewhere. Small steps, but important steps. And the overall pivot of our geostrategic focus to the Far East has been encouraging, although the foreign policy community has been calling for that for years now.
I don't know how much power Obama has actually given Clinton, but on the whole, looking at the results, yes, she has been sub-par. I don't loathe her like Bret Stephens does, but I certainly don't think she has done a good job.
