“Hard Choices” is a richly detailed and compelling chronicle of Clinton’s role in the foreign initiatives and crises that defined the first term of the Obama administration - the pivot to Asia, the Afghanistan surge of 2009, the “reset” with Russia, the Arab Spring, the “wicked problem” of Syria - told from the point of view of a policy wonk.Ĭlinton is well aware of her place in history, and her potential place, as well. Other regrets: Her inability to persuade President Obama to arm the Syrian rebels early on in that country’s devastating civil war, failing to act more forcefully to support Iran’s pro-democracy demonstrators during the Green Revolution in 2009, and wrongly believing that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who resigned after weeks of convulsive protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, was “stable.” Bush carte blanche to wage war against Iraq (deeply and eternally). But if Hillary Rodham Clinton does run for president in 2016, her new book “Hard Choices,” a chronicle of her four years as secretary of State, leaves no room for doubt about how she might conduct foreign policy (pragmatically), how she will defend herself against charges that she mishandled the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya (robustly) and about how much she regrets giving President George W.
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