April 13, 2015
On Sunday, Hillary Clinton took to Twitter to announce that she’s in the race to become president of the United States in 2016. In her time as Secretary of State from 2008 to 2013, Clinton amassed a heft of international experience and focused a sizable chunk of her efforts on the Asia–Pacific.
Indeed, her long-read for Foreign Policy in 2011 set out a vision for the United States in the region that has come to be known as the rebalance (née pivot).
But that was then and this is now. Should Clinton succeed in wrangling the Democratic Party nomination and blaze a trail to the Oval Office, she’ll face an international environment that’s familiar in thematic terms only. The international stage will come with a set of strategic challenges more acute than they are both today and when she left the Obama administration just over two years ago.
2016 isn’t that far away; the strategic rivalry between the United States and China will be a defining feature of the Asia–Pacific just as much then as it is now. Some in the Asia–Pacific claim that the rebalance ran out of steam as both Clinton and Kurt Campbell finished up at State and Middle East policy took center stage under John Kerry. Indeed, the rebalance has struggled to keep the attention of many in Washington, DC as the United States has juggled a host of issues including Russian chauvinism, instability in the Middle East, the Iran nuclear agreement, the Ebola virus, and prioritizing the needs of a war-weary populace still feeling the effects of a global economic downturn.
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