What will Hillory do as the Secretary of State?

billzhao · 发表于 2008-12-2 00:14

President-elect Barack Obama named Hillary Rodham Clinton as his choice for Secretary of State on December 1st, 2008.

In the United States federal government, "Secretary of State" uniquely refers to the official responsible for foreign policy, the analogue of the foreign secretary or foreign minister of a country that has one or the other. The U.S. Secretary of State is head of the United States Department of State.

The secretary of state is the administrator of the Department of State and the principal spokesperson for the President on U.S. foreign policy. The secretary serves as a member of the President's “inner cabinet” of advisers and, by law, as a member of the National Security Council. The secretary has the primary responsibility for preparing the budget for foreign affairs programs, including diplomatic missions, foreign aid to developing nations, and contributions to multinational organizations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Six Secretaries of State became presidents (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan) and four won Nobel Peace Prizes (Frank Kellogg, Cordell Hull, George Marshall and Henry Kissinger).

The now long-established terms "Department ..." and "Secretary of State" were preceded (for two months following the effective date of the Constitution) by the narrower title Secretary of Foreign Affairs and the corresponding departmental name; the change reflected the addition of some miscellaneous domestic responsibilities.

The position is widely regarded as the most senior in the Cabinet. In the presidential line of succession the Secretary of State falls first among Cabinet officers, and fourth overall. The Secretary of State is also, in protocol, the first Cabinet member in the order of precedence, immediately preceding any former presidents and former first ladies, who are followed by the rest of the Cabinet.

The U.S. Secretary of State as of 2008 is Condoleezza Rice, the second woman to hold the position, following Madeleine Albright. Secretary Rice is also the second African-American to hold the position, following President Bush's first Secretary of State, the retired general Colin Powell.

[ 本帖最后由 billzhao 于 2008-12-2 00:19 编辑 ]

billzhao · 发表于 2008-12-2 00:18

The secretary of state is the administrator of the Department of State and the principal spokesperson for the President on U.S. foreign policy. The secretary serves as a member of the President's “inner cabinet” of advisers and, by law, as a member of the National Security Council. The secretary has the primary responsibility for preparing the budget for foreign affairs programs, including diplomatic missions, foreign aid to developing nations, and contributions to multinational organizations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The secretary defends foreign affairs programs before subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and is the principal spokesperson for the administration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The President may also assign the secretary to communicate foreign policy to foreign heads of state or to serve as the principal U.S. diplomat at international conferences.

As head of the first department of government established in 1789, the secretary is the first cabinet officer in line to succeed to the Presidency in the event there is no Vice President, Speaker of the House, or president pro tempore of the Senate to assume the office. A Presidential resignation is submitted to the secretary of state.

Though some secretaries are highly influential advisers and policymakers, others have merely administered the State Department. Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state, resigned from George Washington's cabinet because his pro-French policies were not adopted. For the first two decades of the 19th century, each secretary of state was an influential shaper of foreign policy, and each became the next President: James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Daniel Webster ran U.S. foreign policy when President John Tyler and the Whig Congress remained stalemated in domestic matters. William Seward wrote a memorandum to Abraham Lincoln in which he offered to run foreign policy, but Lincoln wrote back that as President he would retain final responsibility; Seward's main accomplishment was buying Alaska from Russia. Franklin Roosevelt used Presidential assistants to implement his policies, bypassing his secretary of state, Cordell Hull. President Harry Truman, by contrast, relied heavily on George Marshall, who proposed the Marshall Plan for economic recovery in Western Europe after World War II, and Dean Acheson. Acheson was the architect of the U.S. policies of collective security—making alliances to confront aggressor nations—and containment of communist aggression.

Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated the policy of “brinkmanship,” which involved pushing a situation to the brink by threatening to use the armed forces (including nuclear weapons) to prevent communist regimes from expanding their influence. Dean Rusk served in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; he was preoccupied with resisting communist aggression in Southeast Asia, and he defended the Johnson administration against charges that it was not willing to negotiate a peace with North Vietnam.

Richard Nixon's secretary of state, William Rogers, was overshadowed by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: his one major initiative, the Rogers Plan for Mideast Peace, went nowhere. Eventually, he was succeeded by Kissinger, who as secretary of state engaged in successful “shuttle diplomacy” between Jerusalem and Cairo to bring about a disengagement of opposing forces in the Sinai Peninsula after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Cyrus Vance, Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, resigned as a matter of honor after Carter ordered a U.S. raid to free diplomats held hostage by Iran; Vance had been kept in the dark about the raid and had not been able to keep his promise to the Senate to brief it in advance of any military action.

Ronald Reagan's first secretary of state, Alexander Haig, suggested to the President that he be the “vicar” of U.S. foreign policy, but Reagan never gave him full responsibility, and Haig was involved in conflicts with Vice President George Bush and National Security Adviser Richard Allen. He offered to resign so many times that eventually Reagan accepted. Secretary George Shultz opposed Reagan's plan to sell arms to Iran and was frozen out of policy-making. But after the Iran-Contra scandal erupted, Shultz became the dominant figure in the Reagan administration because he had the confidence of Congress. George Bush's secretary of state was his close political adviser and campaign manager, James Baker. The two dominated foreign policy in much the way Nixon and Kissinger had done, though Baker failed to convince Iraq to pull out of Kuwait and his Middle East Peace Conference failed to achieve an agreement between Israel and the Arab states.

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to be appointed secretary of state, and Bill Clinton nominated her in part to make history. She was neither a close political adviser nor a national security official he relied upon prior to her appointment. Clinton assigned Albright highly public roles in dealing with Congress, particularly the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, with whom she developed some rapport that was helpful in providing the State Department with funding. Albright had a tendency to substitute bombastic and inflated rhetoric for quiet diplomacy, and often she had little to show for her efforts. Her most constructive work involved the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as the two sides worked to develop a framework peace agreement.

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