Josh Rogin
29 January 2010
Being secretary of state is a grueling job; you’re on the road most weeks, and often you get a lot less say in your country’s foreign policy than you’d like. No wonder running the show in Foggy Bottom tends to be a four-year gig. So now that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said shecan’t imagine herself serving another four years after 2012, the obvious question becomes: Who might replace her?
Foreign-policy hands say the choice will depend on what kind of image President Obama wants to project, and what’s going on in the world at the time.
“Obama’s situation and the state of American foreign policy is extraordinarily fluid right now,” said the Council on Foreign Relations’ Walter Russell Mead. “His choice will depend on how he wants to engage the world: to kill them with kindness or to take a more aggressive approach.”