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Presidential Issues: International Relations

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Grading Clinton’s foreign policy speech

June 6, 2016

By Michael Mazza

Hillary Clinton’s “major” foreign policy speech yesterday may have effectively knocked Donald Trump down a peg in the eyes of voters — although Teflon Trump has been largely immune to such attacks thus far — but should not reassure anybody that she’s prepared to deal with the most serious challenges facing the United States.

The speech was long on Trump mockery (not exactly a difficult task), but short on foreign policy details, thus undermining Clinton’s case that she is the responsible choice for national security voters.

Consider her remarks on Russia and China. Although she deserves credit for referring to them as “rivals,” she missed the mark on illustrating why that was the case. She explained, “Moscow has taken aggressive military action in Ukraine, right on NATO’s doorstep.” Clinton is right, of course, but she could have and should have spoken more plainly: Russia invaded and then annexed a sizeable chunk of a neighboring country for the second time in seven years.

Read the full article at the American Enterprise Institute: Grading Clinton’s foreign policy speech