The most boring book:
Hard choices is a boring book. Hard Choices is more like the official diary of lady Clinton. Rather it is an appointment book of madam Clinton. It is a book about her engagements all all over the world with different politicians and heads of the state. It is a testimony of confession that United Nation has no role in the world except as a NGO to provide charitable supplies and not the the political solutions.
I wonder how many times the word ‘I’ must have been used in this book. I also wonder if this book makes a record of maximum number of ‘I’s in the book.
The book takes us to various problems faced by different countries around the world at the time when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state of United States of America. As she nicely put it:
“America’s leadership in the world resembles a relay race. A Secretary, a President, a generation are all handed the baton and asked to run a leg of the race as well as we can, and then we hand off the baton to our successors.”
The book is more of a reflection of the personal achievements of lady Clinton in service of United States and humanity. This is how she perceives it. Read it if you are interested in knowing the protocols and all that because the hard bargaining tricks or the real deals are not revealed, as is expected. I felt it too superficial and could not continue beyond 73% and thereafter simply flipped through pages. But it has some well thought nice phrases like:
“….smart power meant choosing the right combination of tools—diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural—for each situation.”
or this one:
“When you are in a common boat, cross the river peacefully together.” For the United States and China, with our economic destinies bound up together in the middle of a global financial storm, this was good advice. My use of the proverb was not lost on Beijing. Premier Wen Jiabao and other leaders referenced it in later discussions with me.
There is not much in it about India or her engagement except something like this:
“….I was happy to see Sonia Gandhi, the head of the Indian National Congress Party, whom I had gotten to know during the 1990s. She and Prime Minister Singh explained how hard it had been to show restraint toward Pakistan after the coordinated terrorist bombings in Mumbai the prior November. They made it clear to me that there would not be such restraint in the event of a second attack. Indians referred to the attack on November 26, 2008, as 26/11, in an echo of our own 9/11. In a show of solidarity with the people of India, I chose to stay at the elegant old Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, which had been one of the sites of the gruesome attack that killed 164 people, including 138 Indians and four Americans. By staying there and paying my respects at the memorial, I wanted to send the message that Mumbai was undeterred and open for business…..”
“….Our hope, I said, was that India would transcend its intractable conflict with Pakistan and become a more active advocate for democracy and free-market values across Asia. As I told the audience in Chennai, the United States supported India’s “Look East” policy. We wanted it to “lead east” as well…”
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