Hillary Clinton apparently hasn’t learned yet that words are important on the international stage:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said this week a nuclear Iran could be contained by a U.S. “defense umbrella,” setting off tremors in the Middle East.
Since making the remark on a television chat show in Thailand, Clinton has backpedaled, saying she was only restating existing policy and not referring to any sort of formal guarantees of protection under an American “nuclear umbrella.”
And when Israeli officials raised alarms that she seemed to suggest the U.S. was resigned to a nuclear-armed Iran, Clinton and senior State Department officials hastily insisted such a prospect was still unacceptable and that no policy had changed.
Extending the “nuclear umbrella” is serious business, and shouldn’t be thrown around as small talk. It’s a pity the president chose his Secretary of State for political considerations, rather than foreign policy competence.
