Hillary Clinton, former US State Secretary, took the stage on Friday at the 2022 Amundi World Investment Forum in Paris to share her views on some of the biggest geopolitical challenges that the world is facing today. “We are in a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy.”
Interviewed by Amundi CEO Valerie Baudson, Clinton, the Democratic party nominee in the 2016 US presidential elections, expressed concern about increasingly aggressive diplomatic and military behaviour by China and also commented on US relations with Russia.
“How much time do we have?” she said when asked about US-China relations. “The US relationship with China is simply dependent on the leadership of both countries. Donald Trump had a very limited view of the US relationship with China. His only policy was one of tariffs. Biden has a more comprehensive approach to China.”
Significant military build-up
As three factors to consider, Clinton noted China’s “significant military build-up” in the Pacfic and also Africa, with military ports on atolls and on land to build “a necklace of military assets” stretching from the South China Sea to East Africa and the Indian Ocean.
Eventually China wants to take over Taiwan, she said. “We see evidence that they are getting more aggressive.”
China’s diplomacy, meanwhile, has become “aggressive and coercive,” she said. “The US has not paid enough attention to the implications of this. It’s very threatening for those countries and eventually for their stability.”
As a third factor, China faces economic challenges while there are signs that its population is becoming “more vocal” and showing “unrest”. China’s internal national challenges are going to cause it, as “an authoritarian regime, sadly”, to pay more attention to what is happening externally and become “more aggressive, both economically and militarily” outside the country.
Clinton also commented on statements made earlier this week by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, during a visit to St Petersburg, compared himself to Peter the Great.
Peter the Great
“Putin has signalled what he is looking for for quite a number of years. When the Soviet Union fell, for him it was one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the world,“ she said. “He wants to be like Peter The Great… rebuild imperial Russia.”
Clinton said she believed that Putin “has been biding his time” in recent years because he believed that Trump would have pulled the United States out of the Nato alliance. When it became clear Trump would not be re-elected, Putin decided to prepare his invasion of Ukraine.
“If he had been elected to a second term he would have taken us out of Nato, like he did with the Paris climate accord, and the agreement on nuclear weapons,” Clinton said, adding that former Trump officials have confirmed that would have happened had Trump won a second term.
On a more upbeat note, Clinton cited former US State Secretary Madeline Allbright. “I choose to be an optimist. Like Madeleine Allbright said ‘I am an optimist who worries a lot’,” Clinton said. “It is just a better way to live. That is just the way I choose.”