As published for Shadow Government on foreignpolicy.com on October 13, 2009:

By Peter D. Feaver

An intriguing article in today’s New York Times addresses a favorite Beltway party game: Where is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on important policies? This game, which was temporarily suspended for a weekend so insiders could play another game (“What is the best Nobel Peace Prize joke you have heard?”), really matters and, if the NYT piece can be believed, it may prove dispositive in determining President Obama’s Afghanistan decision.

Secretary Clinton has largely sailed under the radar and contented herself with high-profile actions on low-profile issues like trips focusing on women in Africa and efforts to promote peace in Northern Ireland. She has won some oddly effusive plaudits, but few people not directly on her payroll would credit her as a driving force in President Obama’s foreign policy thus far.  Indeed, the pattern has been unmistakable: The more important the issue, the less prominent the activity and voice of Secretary Clinton.

The thesis of today’s NYT story is that this pattern may obscure her real influence. Secretary Clinton’s power may come by way of serving as an amen corner for Secretary Gates, the most powerful member of President Obama’s cabinet. By endorsing Gates’s view on Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and other issues, Secretary Clinton guarantees that the issue will not be framed internally as an us vs. him issue, where the “us” is Team Obama and the “him” is the holdover appointee from the Bush administration. She has thus played a crucial role in forging the most important, if most often misunderstood (cf. the curious convergence of views between former Vice President Dick Cheney and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee) fact about President Obama’s national security policy thus far: its dramatic continuity with President Bush’s national-security policy.

Read the full article here