Hard choices

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTONS INSIDE ACCOUNT OF THE CRISES, CHOICES AND CHALLENGES SHE FACED DURING HER FOUR YEARS AS AMERICAS 67TH SECRETARY OF STATE, AND HOW THOSE EXPE-RIENCES DRIVE HER VIEW OF THE FUTURE.

All of us face hard choices in our lives, Hillary Rodham Clinton writes at the start of this personal chronicle of years at the centre of world events. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. In the aftermath of her 2008 presidential run, she expected to return to representing New York in the Unites States Senate. To her surprise, her formal rival for the Democratic Party nomina-tion, newly elected President Barack Obama, asked her to serve in his ad-ministration as Secretary of State. This memoir is the story of the four ex-traordinary and historic years that followed, and the hard choices that she and her colleagues confronted.

Secretary Clinton and President Obama had to decide how to repair frac-tured alliances, wind down two wars and address a global financial crisis. They faced a rising competitor in China, growing threats from Iran and North Korea, and revolutions across the Middle East. Along the way, they grappled with some of the toughest dilemmas of US foreign policy, espe-cially the decision to send Americans into harms way, from Afghanistan to Libya to the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Secretary Clintons descriptions of diplomatic conversations at the highest levels offer readers a masterclass in international relations, as does her analysis of how we can best use smart power to deliver security and pros-perity in a rapidly changing world-one in which America remains the in-dispensable nation.