Hillary Clinton: Weight of the world on her shoulders

When Hillary Clinton touches down in New Zealand next Friday she will have been United States Secretary of State for a little less than a year. That she is visiting so soon in her term speaks volumes of the United States' new emphasis on diplomatic engagement under Barack Obama's presidency, especially in the Asia-Pacific area where it rivals China for influence.

Condoleezza Rice was in New Zealand in July 2008, but the visit was in the dying months of George W Bush's eight-year Administration; it had been 10 years since the previous visit by a Secretary of State and 12 years since the one before that.

New Zealand is used to being down the queue. The last time a Secretary of State gave New Zealand urgency was July 15, 1984, when George Shultz hurtled over from Sydney the day after Labour was elected on a policy promise to ban nuclear powered or armed ships. The nuclear promise was kept and it led to formal reprisals and a diplomatic ice age that was more or less maintained by the US until 2006.

The thaw formally began in 2006 and now the melt is having a blowtorch applied by the United States.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully has been to Washington twice and last time, in October, Clinton announced that intelligence sharing co-operation between New Zealand and the US has been restored. She is expected to announce further measures in her visit next week.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have outlined the new American approach globally as "a new era of engagement". That means inviting countries like Iran to the table to talk about its nuclear programme before working on sanctions - and wearing the risk of looking weak if Iran ignores the invitation, as it has.

Unilateralism is out; partnerships are in - to tackle the same global threats that most nations worry about such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and disease. They are partnerships the American way, though - to be led by America.

"The question is not whether our nation can or should lead," Clinton said in a major Washington speech in July, "but how it will lead in the 21st century."

In this new bid to engage more fully, Obama and Clinton are careful to counter any notion that the US has gone soft, that it no longer sees itself as the superpower that could use its might in a flash.

"We will not hesitate to defend our friends, our interests and above all our people vigorously and when necessary with the world's strongest military," Clinton said - and that was a promise, not a threat.

"Our willingness to talk is not a sign of weakness to be exploited. President Obama has led us to think outside the usual boundaries."

Hillary Clinton began campaigning for Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate in June 2008 rather than against him and has displayed loyalty to him since. But clearly he had not prepared her for his job offer once he had won. The extent of her reluctance to take the job was only recently revealed in an interview with Jonathan Van Meter in December's Vogue, conducted over lunch in her offices at the State Department.

"I was stunned after the election when President Obama asked me to consider this," she told him. "I really was very unconvinced. I did not think it was the right thing to do. I really just had a lot of doubts and I kept suggesting other people ... but then a friend of mine called me and basically said 'How would you have felt if you had been elected and you'd called him and asked him to do this?' And that really made a big impression on me. And so ... I said yes. And here I am."

Foreign policy is not an intellectual armchair exercise for Clinton.

She visited 80 countries as President Clinton's wife and saw as she puts it "the bellies of starving children, girls sold into human trafficking, men dying of treatable disease, women denied the right to own property or vote and young people without schooling or jobs, gripped by a sense of futility about their future."

As First Lady she set the goal of entering politics herself, first as a Senator with ambitions of going for president.

Now at the age of 62, and within 10 years, she has become arguably the most powerful woman in the world, with the ability to make a difference to people's lives and change the way the world sees the US.

After a year in the job, the promise has yet to translate to reality but most are more generous about her potential than her fiercest of critics, Dick Morris, a former top adviser to President Clinton and who was forced to resign over a prostitute scandal. As he sees it, the former Democratic contender for the presidency now finds herself trapped in Obama's web, constrained by the role and "shrinking by the day".

"Once Obama's equal - and before that his superior - she now looks tiny compared to the President," Morris wrote on TheHill.com website.

Morris, a professional Clinton critic for years, made those criticisms back in May when Clinton had barely got going. And while exaggerated and premature, he has not been alone in questioning the impact Clinton has had after a year in the job.

Others questioned Obama's appointment of special envoys to the Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan and Pakistan, as diluting Clinton's power as Secretary of State.

The fact that US decisions around Afghanistan took so long to make and that the Copenhagen climate change summit was not a roaring success have reflected more poorly on Obama himself than Clinton.

But there is little doubt she started her new job with a whimper rather than any sense of wow.

One of the biggest news impacts she made in her first year was an unfortunate incident on a trip to Africa where she tore strips off a male student in the Congo Republic who supposedly had asked her what Mr Clinton thought about China and trade in Africa.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she said with incredulity. "My husband is not Secretary of State. I am. If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channelling my husband."

Apparently the translator made an error and should have said Mr Obama, not Mr Clinton.

The incident is notable for something besides showing the bluntness for which she is renowned.

It happened in Kinshasa at a town hall meeting of the type she is making a signature part of her engagement with citizens. Obama also directs some of his speeches directly to the people in what he calls bottom-up diplomacy, as he did in Cairo to the Muslims of the Middle East.

Clinton will hold a town hall meeting during her two days here, too, though details are still being worked through.

A veteran observer of the Clintons, writer Joe Klein, wrote about his recent trip with Clinton to Pakistan in Time (Nov 5) and the effect that similar meetings and interviews about sensitive issues had had. Klein says that while the news coverage centred on her being "hammered with hostile questions" the real point was that her willingness to listen and her candour had helped undermine the prevailing Pakistani image of the US as arrogant and bossy.

Klein is more measured than Morris in his assessment of Clinton, suggesting that she might take to the job and become one of the more memorable and powerful Secretaries of State for some time.

He cites:

her commitment to elevate development as a core pillar of American diplomacy

the fact that as an elected politician herself she could better understand the mostly elected politicians she deals with in real problem areasand her international celebrity and profile could help change negative attitudes to the US. Clinton has been promised a hostile reception by the same Auckland demonstrators who weathered a literal storm to protest against Condoleezza Rice in 2008.

Clinton acknowledges that what she calls perceptions that the US is "condescending and imperialists, seeking only to expand our power at the expense of others" had fuelled anti-Americanism.

"But they do not reflect who we are. No doubt we lost some ground in recent years, but the damage is temporary."

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

* Born Hillary Diane Rodham, October 26 1947, in Chicago.
* Graduated Yale law school 1973.
* Served as First Lady in husband Bill Clinton's presidency, 1993-2001.
* Subpoenaed but cleared of criminal wrongdoing over the Whitewater investment controversy.
* Endured the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving her husband.
* Elected Senator for New York 2001-2009.
* Opposed Barack Obama for Democratic nomination 2007/08.
* Appointed by President Obama as Secretary of State, January 2009.