Can Indonesia cope with Hillary Clinton?

Departing from Tokyo 7 hours earlier, The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton arrived at Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport, Jakarta on Wednesday the 18th.

Indonesia was her first Asean’s country destination after She is elected as The US Secretary of State. Under President Obama, She tries to bring the new image of America’s world affairs world wide.

She’s scheduled to have a meeting with Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. To him, Hillary’s assertive figure is not something new, because The President himself had worked under President Megawati Soekarnoputri. But in this meeting, He will have a different prospect in trying to build a well-established cooperation with the new face of American government.

Since her arrival in Indonesia, Hillary is considered to make right approaches. She delivered the kind of statements that Indonesians would love to hear.

“Building a comprehensive partnership with Indonesia is a critical step on behalf of the United States’ commitment to smart power,” she said after meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda.

“Certainly Indonesia… will play a leading role in the promotion of that future,” she added referring to the Obama administration’s new outlook on world affairs.

Hillary has even given hope on that US will be more involved in the sub-region by starting the process of accession to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC).

With her guile and charm, She is surely enchanting the whole nation in her only 24 -hours stopever.

And now the question is Who really is Hillary Clinton?

Is she genuinely openning arms as friends, or Does she merely put a mask carrying out the international public relations duty to promote the new face of American’s administration on world affairs under the elected New President, Barrack Obama?

First of all, we need to look at her political track record in order to have hints on what kind of person she is in political field. She is the kind of pragmatic and opportunistic person who steadily support ideological issues that sometimes can not accepted by common sense.

It is obviously shown during the Democratic debates, when Hillary stood against Obama for Presidential nomination from Democratic party.

Once she clearly declared that she would refuse to meet leaders from states like Iran if she’s elected as President. Her remark was quoted as “we cannot have our President meet with these people”. And now her remark may soon haunt her as the secretary of state, if she ever gets any diplomatic duty to meet some states leaders who she won’t meet if She was elected as President.

Another issues were when Hillary didn’t agree on the lifting of the Embargo on Cuba, and also when she insisted and urged President Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games. Or when in 1999-2000, she called for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to be moved to Jerusalem. And of course, these kinds of issues are contradicting to Indonesian’s foreign policy. To some issues, it seems that she’s just repeating an egocentric policies of Bush’s administration. To carefully look at her foreign policy experience, there’s a tendency that she might remain using aggressive policies rather than negotiation and compromise in dealing with states.

However, despite of Hillary’s political view, She has done great accomplishments on developing world issues, such as child care, education, the environment and women’s rights. For example, she supports the Kyoto Protocol and as a senator, she has pushed for the quick passage of the Education for All Act, which provides US$10 billion to train teachers and build schools in the developing world.

In a book on Clinton titled “For Love of Politics” by Sally B. Smith, she wrote that Hillary Clinton, as first lady, deserves more credit than anyone for securing increased development funding for USAID.

Furthermore, Hillary Clinton is surely a royal and reliable Democratic Party constituent. And being Democratic Party stalwarts, both President Obama and Hillary share similar ideological viewpoints such as showing reluctance on free trade issues and support for Israel. What makes them seem different is more likely on their style during the debates and nominating process
After all, will Hillary be able to put her influence on the Obama US foreign policy vision?

To remind you, former President George W. Bush had two very able and accomplished secretaries of states, Collin Powell- a distinguished soldier, respected and upstanding gentleman, and Condoleezza Rice,- an Ivy league scholar. And the history shows us that these two great people were not able to do much to sway Bush’s US foreign policy vision.

In her autobiography, Living History, Hillary lauds Eleanor Roosevelt’s axiom that women in political life must “develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide”. Therefore, it is likely that she will restain her own instincts and accede to an Obama-run policy orientation.

Thank you for visiting Indonesia Vacations ..

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