Here Comes Hillary

Thanks to the global financial crisis, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has enjoyed something of a grace period over these first 100 days of the Obama administration. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has garnered most of the attention—and nearly all the criticism. That's about to end. Now that the fog of economic catastrophe seems to be lifting—if barely—the outlines of a fairly grim foreign-policy landscape are becoming visible. And it is very likely that Clinton and her boss will be more occupied with the challenges abroad in the next 100 days than with the recession and crisis at home.

Clinton is expected to deliver a major speech, possibly next month, to outline the administration's broader foreign-policy goals, according to administration officials. The aim is to build on dramatic new efforts at engagement with Iran, Cuba and the G20 nations, to move past crisis management and set out a positive agenda. With the State Department at the forefront, the United States will seek to reclaim leadership on everything from energy to global health to nuclear non-proliferation.

Despite these big plans, it's all but certain that in the coming months several flashpoints on the map will dominate the headlines.

The most urgent of all these problems, by far, is Pakistan. Dubbed "the world's most dangerous country" by NEWSWEEK in an October 2007 cover story, it is looking more perilous than ever. Relations between the United States and Pakistan are badly frayed—despite the frenzied efforts of Clinton's "special representative," Richard Holbrooke—and the Pakistani Taliban have gained dramatically in strength, coming within 60 miles of the capital of Islamabad before the Army launched a counteroffensive this week.

Holbrooke has been working almost nonstop on the problem, but he must deal with a weakness at the center of this nuclear-armed nation. The government of Ali Asif Zardari is very unpopular, and the Army chief of staff, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is increasingly seen as indecisive. Since the failure of the peace deal with the Taliban in Swat, the Pakistani government has been embroiled in a debate over the best approach to dealing with the jihadists. Many on the civilian side in Zardari's government now realize that the "counterinsurgency" approach, whereby they try to isolate "irreconcilables" and win over "reconcilables," is not working. That's one reason why, unnoticed by the news media, the head of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, flew to Washington last week to meet with CIA Director Leon Panetta. Some in the Zardari government are pushing the Army and ISI to take a more aggressive "counterterrorism" approach and to move in and clean out the more hard-core areas of jihadi activity. But they lament that the Army under Kayani is still mostly focused on India as the main strategic threat.

Holbrooke may be planning to use the $5 billion pledged at the recent Tokyo Donors Conference as leverage to pressure the Pakistanis to take a harder line against the insurgents. He is also constantly on the phone with Zardari and his chief political rival, Nawaz Sharif, to push for a reconciliation.