Not A War Hawk (Democrats Aren't). Told You So. Too Late.
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/9/12401150/hillary-clinton-foreign-policy-war-hawk
Why Hillary Clinton wouldn't be a foreign policy hawk as president
Updated by Jeremy Shapiro and Richard Sokolsky on August 9, 2016, 8:30 a.m. ET
Everybody knows Hillary Clinton, and everybody particularly knows her foreign policy views. After all, she has been a presence in national politics for more than 25 years and has a long record as first lady, senator, and secretary of state.
Most believe that Hillary Clinton is a "hawk" on foreign policy, and that as president, she would escalate current US military commitments in the Middle East and elsewhere, dragging America into more military misadventures in various far-flung corners of the world.
For instance, the New York Times' Mark Landler writes that "her affinity for the armed forces is rooted in a lifelong belief that the calculated use of military power is vital to defending national interests, that American intervention does more good than harm."
Clinton has indeed often favored the use of force. But President Hillary Clinton would not likely be the uber hawk that so many expect. First, her record is in fact more nuanced than is often appreciated — she has just as often pushed for diplomatic solutions as military ones.
But more importantly, it is because, as president, she will find that the use of force abroad will offer precious few opportunities for making a difference, and will come at a considerable political cost at home.
The case for Hillary the Hawk
Portrayals of Hillary Clinton as super-hawkish on foreign policy typically point to a number of decisions she's made over the years to support the use military force.
As first lady in the 1990s, she supported US intervention in the former Yugoslavia. As a senator, she voted for the war in Iraq in 2003. She supported the troop surges in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009. As secretary of state, she advocated military intervention in Libya in 2011 and forceful measures in Syria (for example, the early arming of the moderate opposition and more recently the creation of safe or no-fly zones). Where others wavered, she supported the use of force to kill Osama bin Laden.
On the campaign trail, she has supported President Barack Obama's decisions to deploy more special forces and intensify air strikes against the ISIS. Many of her advisers are prominent advocates of increased use of the military, particularly in Syria.
So it's easy to look at her history and her belief in American leadership and exceptionalism and conclude that there will be no rest for war-weary Americans.
Clinton has been a hawk, but a prudent one
But while there is no doubt that Clinton has often supported the use of force, she just as frequently supported diplomacy and negotiations as the nation's first line of defense.
As the Woodrow Wilson Center's Aaron David Miller noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, Clinton frequently complained about the militarization of US foreign policy when she was secretary of state and touted the virtues of "smart power" (the idea that all elements of national power are needed to solve foreign policy problems) and diplomacy in tackling the nation's most serious national security challenges.
Consistent with this approach, she started the secret negotiations with Iran in 2012 that ultimately led to the Iran nuclear deal. She has similarly supported President Obama's opening to Cuba. She supported and implemented the reset with Russia that began in 2009.
When China started becoming aggressive in the South China Sea, she did not reach for military tools, but rather looked to a regional diplomatic approach that stood in stark contrast to Beijing's military aggression.
A President Clinton will have few opportunities for military intervention
And indeed, there will arguably be less need and less scope for her to show her military mettle as president than might have been the case a couple of years ago. It should be obvious, to paraphrase Woody Allen's observation about life, that all the options for the use of force to repair a badly broken Middle East can be divided into the miserable and the horrible.
In Syria, the idea of risking US boots on the ground or war with the Russians to support an opposition that consists largely of Islamist extremists is not likely to appeal to her any more than it has to President Obama.
For fighting ISIS, Clinton seems comfortable with Obama's template for the use of military force: the limited use of armed drones, special operations forces, air strikes, and efforts to build local capacity for ground operations and stabilization duties.
Clinton has often emphasized that terrorism cannot be fully defeated on the battlefield.