Clinton addresses US role in the world

The NYT reports: When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped back to center stage here on Wednesday to present an ambitious blueprint for America’s role in the world, the State Department billed it as a major foreign policy address.

But with its muscular tone and sweeping scope, it was also an effort to recapture the limelight after a period in which Mrs. Clinton has nursed both a broken elbow and the perception that the State Department has lost influence to an assertive White House.

Declaring that “no nation can meet the world’s challenges alone,” Mrs. Clinton said the United States was pursuing multifront diplomacy with a host of countries and other players, even adversaries like Iran. She condemned Tehran for cracking down on postelection protests, saying its actions were “deplorable and unacceptable.”

With a few exceptions — during the presidential primary campaign, she had derided the idea of engaging Iran — the speech sounded like one Mrs. Clinton might have given as a candidate, when she sought to make her foreign policy credentials a trump card over the rival who is now her boss.

She even marshaled a cheering section of special envoys and other senior American diplomats in the first few rows at the Council on Foreign Relations. Faced with a White House that has tended to centralize control over policy, Mrs. Clinton is defending her prerogatives as an influential, but loyal, member of the president’s team.