Clinton's Female-centric Diplomatic Style Confuses the Boys Club
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Hillary Clinton receives flowers upon her arrival in Pakistan for a three-day visit. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesAmerican Secretary of State Hillary Cinton has arrived in Pakistan for a three-day visit, as the deadliest Taliban bombing in two years ripped through a women’s market in the Pakistani city of Peshawar today, killing almost 90 people.
Meanwhile, analysts continue to call Mrs. Clinton’s role in the Obama administration ‘nuanced’ but effective as a trusted member of the Team Obama. The most repeated refrain in all the reporting is that Secretary Clinton needs a signature issue and that all these Obama emissaries have the power, not her. via Reuters
Why is the question not about the effectiveness of Richard Holbrooke, special emissary to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who sat out Senator John Kerry’s visit to Afghanistan last week and Secretary Clinton’s visit to Pakistan today?
On the subject of the Obama Administration’s bad standing currently in Pakistan, Clinton said: “The US plans to be “aggressive” with the Pakistan media. “I think we have, as a government, not done a very good job in responding to what you rightly call propaganda, misinformation, even in some instances disinformation about our motivations and our actions in Pakistan.” The News International (Pakistan)
In a boys club that rates ‘effectiveness’ as being the the man standing on top of his province of responsibility, Hillary Clinton might appear ‘lacking’ to the media club that evaluates her.
Richard Holbrooke in Afghanistan in 2006For thousands of years, the top guys in most countries of the world calls the shots. More often than not, they do so aggressively and with intimidation.
‘Rule’ ranges from military ones to calling up God and morality issues to discredit opposing viewpoints.
Yet Mrs. Clinton and US Defense Secretary of Defense Gates know that this strategy no longer instills the fear of Allah into anyone. Allah’s their man in the Middle East, in many of today’s terrorist-breeding countries, and not any guy in the US government or America himself.
Perhaps Secretary of State Clinton can make Pakistan the priority it must be in the Obama Administration, and she will do so with a soft, firm hand and not a sledgehammer. The cPakistan hallenge is a duanting one.
Pakistan is at the bottom in yesterday’s World Economic Forum Gender Equality report for 2009, an assessment that measures how a nation’s aid and resources are distributed by gender. This vitally important nation in the global terrorism market, Pakistan reveals the most patriarchal of systems even today.
Countries with little gender equality also produce the most terrorists.
Yet, while Mrs. Clinton and Secretary Gates both stress that the global empowerment of women is a top foreign policy priority, patriarchal Holbrooke-style diplomacy is the one we recognize as effective, even in America and among TV’s talking heads.
Perhaps our own inability to see the effectiveness of Hillary Clinton’s approach in the boys club analysis, stems from the fact that America ranks an abysmal 31 in the WEC 2009 report, having slid backwards a few notches from 2008.
Our rank of 31, behind almost every country in Europe, Canada and developing countries like Sri Lanka, Cuba, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago is driven largely by our score of 61 in gender equality in our political institutions and governing bodies.
This is not rocket science, my friends. An emerging theme at Anne of Carversville isn’t only a lack of gender equality in terrorist-birthing countries. It’s the lack of gender equality and strong feminine Smart Sensuality values here in America.
If we look at Secretary of State Clinton in a global, TED.com view, one that believes Traditional and Modern manthink values will eventually blow up the whole world, then the Smart Sensuality, Cultural Creative Clinton style just might be the most progressive one in Washington. Anne
