http://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11504272/hillary-clinton-hawk
Late on Thursday, the New York Times magazine published a lengthy profile of Hillary Clinton under an illustration of her as a toy soldier and the headline "How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk."
The profile, by Mark Landler, traces her evolution on foreign policy, explores her legacy as secretary of state, and seeks to deduce a Clinton worldview. It's fascinating, deeply reported, and well worth reading. It also reiterates what is perhaps the defining piece of conventional wisdom about Hillary Clinton and foreign policy: she is a super-hawk.
"For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has," Landler writes.
"Unexpectedly, in the bombastic, testosterone-fueled presidential election of 2016, Hillary Clinton is the last true hawk left in the race," he adds.
A few hours after the piece went online, something else was published comparing the presidential candidates on foreign policy. And the story it told could not have been more different.
It was a simple scorecard, assembled by a non-partisan nuclear nonproliferation group called Global Zero, comparing the five remaining candidates on a battery of eight foreign policy issues.
On every issue that Global Zero measured, Clinton is indicated as far less hawkish than all three of the Republican candidates, and as basically tied with Bernie Sanders. She supports the Iran nuclear deal; the Republicans all oppose it. She supports using diplomacy to solve the North Korean nuclear crisis; John Kasich is the only Republican to do so. She supports negotiating with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons; no Republican candidate does.
This measured only policies related to nuclear weapons, and so is far from comprehensive. But on these major geopolitical challenges — including the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, which seem among the few crises that could plausibly draw the US into war — Clinton is significantly more dovish than all three Republican candidates.
How to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory stories about Hillary Clinton's foreign policy, in which the conventional wisdom portrays her as a super-hawk surpassing every remaining Republican, whereas a straight reading of her policies often suggests almost the exact opposite?
Put another way: Is the conventional wisdom right? Is Clinton really the biggest hawk in the race?
We have three distinct ways of evaluating a candidate's foreign policy, and you really need to look at all three: her past record, her current policies, and her larger worldview.
Taken together, in Clinton's case, these three metrics give a more complicated view of her foreign policy than the conventional wisdom suggests.
They reveal Clinton as someone who is exceptionally enthusiastic about the merits and potential of American engagement in the world. She is indeed, more than any other candidate in the race, a true believer in American power.
But Clinton's policies and past record suggest that her vision of power includes military force as well as diplomacy, so that while she is more likely to act in foreign affairs, she is also more likely to do so peacefully.
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