For the latest episode of FP Live, I sat down with former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Doha Forum in Qatar in front of a live audience. We discussed the Trump administration’s just-released national security strategy, the impacts of U.S. foreign policy around the world, women’s rights, how Democrats can revive their fortunes, and a controversy over remarks that Clinton recently made about why young Americans are shifting their views on Israel.
The full discussion can be watched on the video box atop this page or on the FP Live podcast this week. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: The Trump administration just dropped its national security strategy. What do you make of it?
Hillary Rodham Clinton: There is a very clear message from the strategy that the United States is taking a big turn away from the hallmark alliances of our foreign policy and our strength in influencing global events. There’s a very strong indictment of Europe—in particular, its openness and population composition. That is an unnecessary division between us and countries with whom we have a lot in common and are necessary to our security.
Updating President James Monroe’s Monroe Doctrine, which is about dominating the Western Hemisphere, is going to be very difficult to pull off. We’re watching the administration build up and use military power in the region, which raises more questions than answers about what actually will be done to implement the strategy’s broad statements.
RA: What impact has [President Donald] Trump’s second term had on countries around the world?
HRC: I am concerned about the impact because there has been a heavy emphasis on moving away from core American values, though that’s not to say that there haven’t been some successes. For example, the United States has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by rarely criticizing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin for the brutal war he has waged on the Ukrainian people and by attempting to coerce the Ukrainians into accepting a peace deal that would leave them vulnerable to further Russian activity. Russia has been in Ukraine since 2014; this didn’t start in 2022. These issues need to be reviewed from a long-term consequence perspective.
It’s unclear what the administration’s objectives are, but it seems to be to cause disruption and hope it will lead to a better outcome. We’re not yet seeing the actual effects. I supported the 20-point Gaza peace plan and gave the president and his people credit for getting that terrible war to finally end. But it’s a plan that takes an enormous amount of effort, diplomacy, and negotiation—and carrots and sticks—to make sure all the parties are present at the table, and that’s where we’ll find out if this is really going to stick.
The United States is in a terrible position in Ukraine. Thirty-five years ago, another dictator invaded a neighbor—when Saddam Hussein crossed the border to seize parts of Kuwait. The world rightly reacted, because you cannot reward that kind of aggression. Putin is intent on taking as much of Ukraine as he can. We could have played a much more assertive role, both in the Biden administration and now in the Trump administration, in helping Ukraine defend itself, as it so heroically continues to do.
There are also important points in the national security strategy about economic and strategic competition with China. The buildup of Chinese military assets poses a direct threat to our allies in the region and to us. Diplomacy of any kind requires follow-up, and there is an aversion within the administration to the front-line work of officials trying to fulfill these national security objectives—there’s a very small group around the president that he trusts to do this. That is not adequate for the complexity of the problems we face.
RA: But part of the Trump administration’s criticism of the Obama and Biden administrations is that there was too much of all that diplomatic work; and they also claim they right-sized the China strategy after years of misdirection. In a sense, there’s bipartisan agreement in the United States that we needed a different approach to China.
HRC: There’s a lot to critique in any presidential administration, but there’s also a lot to learn about what works and doesn’t work. So much boring, hard work goes into making peace agreements stick, such as achieving demilitarization and the decommissioning of combatant weapons in the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and the Dayton Agreement in the Balkans.
There’s a lot to be said for the dramatic, bold action we see from this president, but that alone is not sufficient. It may be necessary to get the world’s attention and make immediate efforts to show progress, but then you’ve got to do all of that hard work—it’s not either-or.
I saw many kinds of diplomacy in the 1990s, when I was in the Senate, and as a part of the Obama administration. There are a lot of tools in the toolkit, among those [is] soft-power development, which we have unfortunately decided is not going to be a prominent tool of influence. China’s filling that gap, particularly in Africa. I worry that we are shutting a lot of doors, cutting off many of our allies, and not learning from past lessons right now.
RA: You’ve been in the news this past week for comments you made at the Israel Hayom summit in New York. You said that smart, well-educated young people are getting their news about Oct. 7, 2023, and Gaza from social media and TikTok. It appears to be part of a broader lament on your part about declining support among Americans for Israel.
That comment has generated a lot of controversy. Congressman Ro Khanna, for example, said he “doesn’t think that the answer is to disparage the intelligence of young people.” How are you reflecting on your words and the controversy?
HRC: It is a provable fact that most Americans, and an even bigger percentage of young Americans, get their news from social media.
RA: Is that a bad thing?
HRC: I don’t know if it’s a bad thing, but it’s an incomplete—
RA: Let me rephrase this—
HRC: They should be listening to you, Ravi, obviously.
RA: People do listen to me, for what it’s worth, and I am also on Instagram and TikTok. Poll after poll shows Americans shifting in their views about Israel, and people are getting information not just from social media, but also from reputable journalists operating in the region and Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Why do you think that information is not accurate?
HRC: I’m not saying it’s not accurate. I teach at Columbia University, and I’ve had many conversations with very smart young people from around the world, who don’t always know why they say what they say. All I’m asking is for people to come with empathy and a historical perspective for what has happened, both to the Palestinians and the Israelis. We’re not going to achieve what I still believe is the only realistic outcome—a two-state solution—if people who say “from the river to the sea” don’t know what river and sea they are referring to, which has happened in conversations that I’ve had. This is a larger issue. We are not doing a good job teaching history or giving young people the context they need to be decision-makers.
RA: I can’t gauge how well young people grapple with history, but I can speak to the fact that they’re witnessing livestreamed images and videos every day today—yes, there is misinformation and disinformation, but a lot of it is real. There’s a genuine anger in the United States and around the world that some of that anger is being deflected.
HRC: I’m angry about human rights abuses, excessive use of force, what happened on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, and what happened in Gaza; I’m angry about what Russia’s doing in Ukraine, Sudan, and the eastern Congo. That’s why the national security strategy is not to my liking, because the United States has an important role in trying to resolve these conflicts, alleviate suffering, and give people a chance to have peaceful, prosperous lives. That should be our goal. That is in America’s interest.
Of course, the suffering in Gaza is horrific. Full stop. The suffering everywhere is horrific. So, let’s look at what we can do to resolve what is being done to people in so many different settings right now. The emphasis on one terrible conflict doesn’t do justice to the challenges we are facing. And I don’t want my country saying that trying to resolve conflicts and standing for democracy, freedom, and human rights is a waste of time. That is an abdication of leadership. I want us involved everywhere, trying to stop the kind of horrible abuses that are going on.
RA: We often hear the argument that the United States has a different role in the Middle East, because it supports Israel and is therefore complicit in what is happening in Gaza. But I was to draw a line from this back to 9/11 and the United States’ misadventures in Iraq and the war on terror. And one could argue that the United States has been unable to curb Israel in this particular case, and more broadly, to speak credibly about values because it has also skirted rules and norms in its history.
Are we entering a world where rules and norms don’t matter as much? What can the United States do?
HRC: It’s an interesting analogy.
I was a senator from New York on 9/11, so I was deeply involved in dealing with families who lost loved ones and people who were grievously injured. That was a traumatic event, and people don’t always make the best decisions post-traumatic events. That wasn’t well-understood after 9/11 in American decision-making.
That’s part of the reason why we established norms and laws after World War II. The rule of law—setting expectations and standards for militaries in combat—was an effort to construct a system that could rein in bad leaders like Vladimir Putin, who wants to dominate and destroy his neighbors, and leaders who are traumatized by horrific events and lash out unrestrained.
To move away from norms and laws in the international system will only benefit the worst actors, whether they are heads of state or criminal cartels. It’s a mistake for the United States to not uphold those rules. Does that mean we’re going to always follow them perfectly? No, nobody ever has. But we need to not just pay lip service to them but try our best to set an example and to be a nation of laws, not men. The world will be much worse off if the United States retreats from that position.
We have a big dispute going on right now over the bombing of fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela, and there has not been an adequate showing. When I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee, we required the Bush administration to explain things and provide information. Even in the most secret negotiation in the situation room that I was ever involved in during the Obama administration—the decision to go after Osama bin Laden—congressional leaders were briefed. There were norms, rules, and legal and moral expectations.
RA: So, I have to ask: Where is Congress today?
HRC: Congress has abdicated its responsibility. It’s very sad. No president wants to be questioned, but in our system established by the Constitution, Congress is supposed to serve as a check on executive power. And they have failed to do that, because the Republican Party doesn’t want to hold the administration accountable. That is not in keeping with our Constitution, and it is not smart.
Our founders understood human nature to need a separation of powers and checks and balances. There is supposed to be tension between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches so that nobody goes too far and leads the country astray, but Congress has abdicated all of that responsibility.
RA: Could the Democrats be doing more, and are you advising them to come up with a better strategy?
HRC: The Democrats actually came out of the [government] shutdown in a strong position because they centered the affordability of health care on the domestic agenda. It was very hard to establish any kind of smart political strategy in the beginning because the Democrats had so few tools. But there is a growing awareness that the Democrats are being more effective in their opposition to the president, and recent elections prove that voters are beginning to ask a lot of questions.
I know many of the Republicans in the Senate from my time there, but I don’t recognize them. They were more than happy to criticize and question [former President George W.] Bush, and certainly [former Presidents Barack] Obama and [Joe] Biden, but whether they’re intimidated by or in agreement with Trump, they’re not doing the same now.
RA: When you look at why Democrats lost to Trump, what are they missing or misreading about where the country is at?
HRC: There were a lot of missed signals in the Biden administration, and a lot of uncertainty about how best to take on the president in the initial months of this term. But the Democrats have found their footing. The candidates who are running—whether Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor-elect in New York, or the newly elected governors in New Jersey and Virginia—are beginning to resonate because their key message of affordability reflects the reality of Americans’ daily lives.
Trump ran on affordability; he promised to get prices down and achieve a better economic future. That hasn’t happened. You can only tell people something for so long before they say, “Wait a minute,” and that’s what happened with Biden. He kept saying economic indicators were really good, but people were not able to afford their grocery list, electricity rates, and health care costs. So they turned on him, and now people are turning on Trump. His favorability is in the thirties in some polls, because the lived reality does not reflect the White House’s messages.
RA: Thirty years ago, you went to Beijing and gave an iconic speech in which you said, “Women’s rights are human rights.” That opened so many doors around the world and was formative in creating a feminist foreign policy. There have been disappointing reversals of these gains in the last few years. You’re not despondent, though—what gives you hope?
HRC: I did make a speech 30 years ago, but what was more significant was 189 countries reaching consensus on the Platform for Action, which was the most historic effort to document all the ways women were being treated unequally and unfairly in societies around the world. Domestic violence was changed from a norm to a crime, and countries began to pass laws against it and train judges and law enforcement to deal with it. Child marriage was seen as a custom that cut into young women’s potential for life, education, and health. Women across the globe advanced toward a greater sense of opportunity.
There has been a reversal, which started with real intention during COVID-19, in part because a lot of families found themselves in terrible economic trouble. Child marriage and domestic violence increased again, and even in countries with advanced economies, a lot of doors are shutting. A lot of corporations now fear getting in trouble for putting a woman on the board. I ended up on the Walmart board because Sam Walton wanted to know what women think when they go into his store. That was not revolutionary or “DEI”; that was common sense and recognizing a big market that wants to sell to everybody, including women and people of color.
There’s a real pushback that is endangering women’s lives. What the Taliban is doing, the continued campaign against women with the forced hijab in Iran, and governments in Hungary, Russia, and Turkey are also turning back laws meant to protect women. [Chinese President] Xi Jinping says he wishes more women would go back into the home because China needs more children. Well, they need more children because they had the one-child policy, and they have a 30 million male surplus because they didn’t keep their baby girls alive when they could only have one child. All of these decisions have consequences, and authoritarianism often picks on women first because they’re more vulnerable and easily scapegoated.
I am optimistic because I think that is out of step with reality. I still believe that women’s rights are human rights and that women’s equality is the unfinished business of the 21st century. Every nation will benefit from giving more opportunities to women to make their own decisions.
