Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the National Defense University in Washington DC, August 16

While campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama was asked about his future administration and promised that he would form his own “team of rivals.”

Team of Rivals was a 2005 volume by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin which described how President Abraham Lincoln included political adversaries in his cabinet and steered the Union to victory in the Civil War.

When Obama assumed the highest office, it wasn’t the best of times for the United States to lead in the world. In Lincoln’s spirit though, he kept on Republican Robert Gates as defense secretary and asked his primary rival Hillary Clinton to lead the State Department. With the president campaigning for reelection, it’s worth evaluating her tenure as the nation’s secretary of state.

Clinton’s tenure as the nation’s chief diplomat is on par with that of several of her illustrious predecessors and head and shoulder above her contemporaries. She ranks among the nation’s greatest secretaries of state which include William Henry Seward, Cordell Hull and Henry Kissinger.

Seward was widely expected to be nominated by the Republican Party for the presidency in 1860 but had to tolerate Abraham Lincoln as the party’s standard bearer. He agreed to become secretary of state reluctantly and the two men needed considerable time to overcome their differences of character and opinion. However, as the Civil War dragged on, Seward came to be perceived as Lincoln’s prime minister. The two led the Northern states to victory against the Confederate South and it was Seward who predicted soon after Lincoln’s assassination that the president would be remembered as one of the greatest leaders the United States had ever known.

Cordell Hull was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief diplomat and the longest serving secretary of state of America. He was the architect of the United Nations and recognized for this effort with the 1945 Nobel Peace Prize.

Henry Kissinger served first as national security advisor and later as secretary of state under Richard Nixon. He negotiated the end of the Vietnam War and “opened up” China in order to balance against Soviet expansionism. Kissinger understood the balance of power and how to ensure it perhaps more than any other secretary of state in modern history.

Unlike these three stalwarts and her immediate predecessor Condoleezza Rice, Clinton had no formal background in international relations when she became secretary. As President Bill Clinton’s wife and a senator, she did gain tremendous experience in the field before running for the presidency herself in 2008. As Barack Obama’s secretary of state, she has traveled around the world almost nonstop and like her predecessors Seward, Hull and Kissinger, pulled chestnuts out of the fire to secure diplomatic victories in trying times.

Under Clinton’s stewardship, American foreign policy has witnessed a paradigm shift from the neoconservative objective of creating allies by military force from positioning the United states an an “offshore balancer” in the Asia Pacific. She has helped reduce the negative impact of American warmongering in the Middle East to improve the nation’s standing in Africa, Central Asia and Europe.

It is largely because of Clinton’s initiative that China’s neighbors in the West Pacific, including Vietnam, are prepared to live under America’s defense umbrella. She has also reset relations with Great Britain, sealed a long term relationship with India and isolated Iran in conjunction with the president. All of this was achieved through her tenacity and clear understanding of geopolitics.

President Obama deserves credit for appointing Hillary Clinton to one of the most powerful positions in his administration. The decision was, in hindsight, more than political. It helped his government achieve numerous foreign policy successes.

General Douglas MacArthur before a landing in the Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, January 9, 1945 (Life)

In the gloomy days of December 1941, when Pearl Harbor had just been attacked by Japan and Nazi-Germany had conquered virtually all of Central and Western Europe, there was a American general in the Philippines bidding goodbye to his friends. “I shall return,” he promised them.

Three years later, Douglas MacArthur did return. He reconquered the Philippines and went on to help the United States win the war in the Pacific in 1945.

More than sixty years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made a similar statement in Foreign Policy magazine where she writes about “America’s Pacific Century.” Even if she doesn’t articulate a policy yet, it’s clear that the United States are on the verge of abandoning Richard Nixon’s Guam Doctrine in Asia.

The thirty-seventh President of the United States expected allies to fend for themselves and would only come to their aid if it was absolutely necessary. Clinton suggests that America’s allies in the Pacific needn’t be able to defend themselves in the event of armed conflict anymore but can become part of Washington’s security umbrella that aims to contain China’s rise in Southeast Asia.

With the United States preparing to pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq, it can afford to try to encircle China with its friends in Asia, ranging from Japan and South Korea in the north to Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia in the east to India in the southwest. All of these nations are threatened by China’s mounting assertiveness in the region. Washington’s objective is clear: it doesn’t want to compete with China for influence in the Atlantic world so it seeks to confine it to the Pacific.

President Barack Obama visited four Asian partners in November of last year and Hillary Clinton has subsequently traveled to many more. The president will also visit Australia, a critical partner in the effort to balance against Chinese encroachment in Southeast Asia, next month.

This containment strategy seems to signal a paradigm shift away from Obama’s aim to “strategically reassure” China in the early days of his administration. The shift has occurred for two reasons.

In the Middle East, the United States have abandoned the neoconservative ambition of forcefully democratizing states while in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the terrorist network Al Qaeda has been disrupted if not virtually destroyed. The American public is tired of the Afghan campaign but anxious that China might surpass the United States as the world’s economic superpower in mere decades. Containment seems an appropriate strategy for the imminent cold war of this century.

If that’s the strategy, it’s a far cry from the early days of the administration when it was hoping to establish close relations with Beijing and even prepared to court Iran for stability in Afghanistan. It’s not entirely unexpected however. Just as America hesitated to be drawn into conflict with other greater powers in MacArthur’s days, once it chose to engage, it did so wholeheartedly. And so the eagle is back in Asia—again.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discusses future American involvement in Iraq on NBC's Meet the Press, October 23

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran on Sunday not to exploit the American withdrawal from Iraq. “No one should miscalculate America’s resolve and commitment to helping support the Iraqi democracy,” she said.

American combat forces are scheduled to leave Iraq before the end of this year but that is not to say that Iran will be allowed to fill the security vacuum, Clinton suggested. “We have paid too high a price to give the Iraqis this chance,” she told NBC’s Meet the Press. “And I hope that Iran and no one else miscalculates that.”

More than four thousand American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the war there started. Iran, a majority Shiite country, has attempted to improve its relations with the religious minority in Iraq which was governed by a Sunni dictatorship before the 2003 invasion.

Although the civilian government in Baghdad realizes that it cannot properly defend the country on its own yet, it could not afford politically to ask the United States to maintain a significant military presence beyond the December deadline either.

Under the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, the forty thousand remaining American forces will have to leave the country in two months.

Opposition Republicans are critical of the drawdown, worried that it could undermine progress won at considerable cost but Clinton was quick to point out that the “deadline was set by the Bush Administration.”

On CNN’s State of the Union last week, Republican senator John McCain, a national security hawk, accused the Obama Administration of mishandling the security transfer. “There is a risk of renewed violence,” he said along with “continued Iranian penetration into Iraq that’s already happening in southern Iraq” where the Shī’ah population is concentrated.

Clinton admitted that Iran will “always” have an influence in Iraq but pointed out that the United States are very present in the region. “We may not be leaving military bases in Iraq but we have bases elsewhere,” she said. “We have support and training assets elsewhere. We have a NATO ally in Turkey.”

In an interview with ABC’s This Week, the secretary noted that “it’s been American policy for many years that settlements were illegitimate.” Most recently, in December of last year, Clinton said she did not accept the legitimacy of further settlement construction in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. “We believe their continued expansion is corrosive not only to peace efforts and the two-state solution, but to Israel’s future itself,” she professed.

This weekend, Clinton reiterated the Obama Administration’s commitment to “keep working toward a two-state solution.”

In September, President Barack Obama saw a window of opportunity for peace but negotiations collapsed after mere months despite a self imposed Israeli moratorium on settlement construction. The Palestinians have threatened to unilaterally seek recognition of sovereignty at the United Nations as a last resort.

Some 300,000 Israelis currently live in settlements on the West Bank which is home to approximately 2.5 million Palestinians. Another 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem which the Palestinians claim as their capital.

Israel suspended settlement construction for eight months in 2010. When the moratorium expired, the United States attempted to convince the Israeli Government to extend it in exchange for increased military support. Pressured by nationalist hardliners in his own cabinet however, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not accept the proposal, prompting the Palestinians to walk out on the latest peace talks.

A UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion failed as a result of the United States’ veto. All other fourteen members of the Security Council, including nonpermanent members Brazil, Germany and India, voted in favor.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice agreed that settlement construction “violates international commitments and threatens prospects for peace” but she added that the resolution risked harming the peace process.

The Palestinian Authority has announced to turn to the United Nations General Assembly for a similar action. The White House failed to persuade President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw his resolution ahead of the vote this weekend. He described the American veto as “immoral behavior and a disregard of the international community.”

Hamas, the Islamic terrorist organization that controls part of Palestinian territory, added in a statement that the veto proved America’s bias toward the “occupation.”

Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Barack Obama of the United States during a bilateral meeting at the White House in Washington DC, September 1, 2010

My television has been tuned to CNN for the past twenty-four hours, and the footage that the network has been broadcasting (thanks to Al Jazeera and those brave Egyptians with cell phones) is nothing short of extraordinary. Young and middle aged Egyptian citizens from all walks of life are holding hands and shouting in unison, “down down with Mubarak.” The Egyptian Government has issued a citywide curfew for Cairo, Alexandria and Suez in an attempt to regain some hold over the situation. Yet the protesters have thus far been undeterred.

As is expected, the situation inside Egypt is very fluid, a term that was used by the American State Department two nights ago during a press conference. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, through the Sunday talk show circuit, has urged the Egyptian Government and the protesters to refrain from further violence, a standard neutral response from an administration that isn’t exactly sure how to proceed.

President Hosni Mubarak finally felt the urgency to stand up in front of a podium to address the Egyptian people, sacking his entire government and appointing a vice president for the first time in thirty years. President Barack Obama also made a brief speech immediately proceeding Mubarak’s remarks, calling on the Egyptian president “to take concrete steps and actions that deliver” toward political and economic reform.

It’s hard to predict what the Egyptian Government will do in the immediate future, but if Mubarak’s initial counter to the demonstrators is any indication, the United States and the rest of the world should not be surprised if a broader political opening is stalled until the next presidential election. Mubarak’s stopgap concession to the protesters—sacking his cabinet and appointing new ministers—is a shallow strategy that won’t blunt their rage. The main objective of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians camping in downtown Cairo is clear: they want Mubarak to step down and cease control of the country.

The Egyptian people are not stupid. They recognized long ago that all of the ministers, regardless of personal charisma, are subservient to the president. The fact that Mubarak thinks that he can fool the Egyptians into believing that the replacement of a few party loyalists will change things in any substantial way is a testament to how separated he has become from his own people.

What the United States chooses to do will be crucial to what happens on the ground in the next couple of days. Apart from the commentators who say that the United States have nothing to do with the conflict, officials inside Obama’s foreign policy team will understand that a positive response is crucial.

This won’t be easy. The United States have had a thirty-year relationship with Mubarak and the Egyptian dynasty has become the most important Arab partner for Washington’s Middle East peace initiative.

Unfortunately, this tight knit relationship with Mubarak is a phenomenon that millions of Egyptians simply denounce. What Americans view as a valuable alliance for peace and security, Egyptians see as a deliberate American endorsement of Arab authoritarianism.

Whether the United States like it or not, the Arab world points to the $1.3 billion of American aid to Mubarak’s army as a sign of involvement in the crackdown. Indeed, some Egyptian protesters on the street have been quick to remind the region that the bulk of the army’s weapons are were made in the USA.

If the demonstrations continue and the Egyptian Government is unable to impose order, the Obama Administration will find itself in a very awkward position, especially if the White House is not seen as being on the “right” side.

The worst thing President Obama can do is gamble by committing himself to either side though. Staunchly supporting Mubarak, only to find out the next day that he has fled the country, would portray the United States as a hypocritical nation that isn’t serious about spreading the values of democracy it espouses.

On the other hand, helping the protesters may sever the American-Egyptian partnership should Mubarak survive. The key is to find the right balance. The problem is how to get there.

President Barack Obama responded to the demonstrations after speaking with his Egyptian counterpart by phone on Friday night. He said that the Egyptian people are entitled to determine their own destiny and he denounced the violence. “Violence will not address the grievances of the Egyptian people,” he said.

And suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. What’s needed right now are concrete steps that advance the rights of the Egyptian people: a meaningful dialogue between the government and its citizens and a path of political change that leads to a future of greater freedom and greater opportunity and justice for the Egyptian people.

The United States have much at stake in Egypt. Every year, Washington invests several billions of dollars in the country, much of which is allocated to sustaining Egypt’s armed forces which are among the strongest in the region.

The protests thus pose a dilemma for Washington where officials are unsure whether to embrace them as the rising of a democratic vanguard or signs of temporary unrest that will eventually be suppressed by the regime.

The situation is complicated by the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is Egypt’s largest opposition movement despite being officially banned. Some observers believe that the organization has moderated in recent years but formally, it continues to support the implementation of Islamic law.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to such worry on Fox News Sunday where she professed that the United States “want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void” of political power. “We don’t want to see some takeover that would lead not to democracy but to oppression,” she added.

While Clinton noted that the United States have been urging reform for decades, she wouldn’t condemn President Hosni Mubarak outright. His role in the peace process, she said, may have saved many lives, including Egyptian lives.

The secretary similarly recognized Mubarak’s contributions to regional stability on NBC’s Meet the Press but “much more has to be done,” she said.

On the same program former Middle East peace negotiator and ambassador to Israel for President Bill Clinton, Martin Indyk, noted the possible similarities with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. “We do not want to be on the wrong side of history like we were with the shah,” he said. America’s strong support for the monarch was partly responsible for the alienation that occurred between Iran and the United States once the ayatollahs took power.

Indyk wasn’t optimistic about the eighty-two year old president’s chances. “The contact with his people has been broken,” he said. It cannot be put together again.” Indyk urged the military leadership as well as the former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, whom Mubarak appointed vice president yesterday, to tell the president to resign and announce elections within six months.

Former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who was placed under house arrest immediately after he returned to Egypt two days ago, agreed that the country needed “a government of national salvation, in coordination with the army.” He told ABC’s This Week that the United States should abandon Mubarak and “side with the people” instead.

According to ElBaradei, the Muslim Brotherhood is not an extremist organization. “They are no way using violence,” he said. “They are not a majority of the Egyptian people. They will not be more than maybe 20 percent of the Egyptian people.” ElBaradei believes that they have to be included in a future political arrangement nevertheless, like evangelic groups and religious orthodox are in other countries.

Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi of Japan and Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo, January 13

Both US Secretaries Hillary Clinton of State and Robert Gates of Defense have come down pretty hard on China this week. Ahead of President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington later this month, Clinton said that Sino-American relations are at a “critical juncture” today, adding that the world expects China to abide by and help shape “a rules based international order.”

Ties between the world’s two largest economies have been strained in recent months. Even as both powers remain heavily interdependent, discord had emerged on monetary and climate policy. With America mired in recession, protectionism rears its ugly head once more while China, still rising, has become more assertive.

Washington’s newfound closeness to New Delhi meanwhile has prompted the Chinese to intensify their own relations with Pakistan, India’s western neighbor and foe.

China’s seeming lack of concern over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and November’s shelling of a South Korean island fueled American apprehension about China’s policy on the peninsula last year. China’s revisionist posturing in the South China Sea moreover has antagonized neighbors in Southeast Asia and strengthened the belief that China stopped rising peacefully.

It is all the more reason for both nations to build a “positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship,” as Secretary Clinton put it, and deepen mutual trust.

The words of Defense Secretary Gates, who was in Beijing to mend relations this week and went on to visit Japan, certainly did not help with regard to deepening trust though. He said in Tokyo today that America’s military presence in East Asia remains integral to the region’s stability. “Without such a presence,” he warned, “North Korea military provocations could be more outrageous or worse. China might behave more assertively toward its neighbors.”

Gates explicitly cited a territorial dispute that erupted between China and Japan last year to underscore the lasting significance of Japan’s alliance with the United States.

The defense chief also expressed his concern about the evermore “lethal” behavior of North Korea. Both secretaries called on the Chinese to help resolve the dangerous situation on the peninsula in fact. Clinton urged Beijing to use its “unique ties” with the regime to persuade it to end its nuclear program.

While stressing the importance of improved bilateral relations with China, Clinton said that America views things within a “broader regional framework,” referring to the strong ties it maintains with other nations in East Asia, including Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand—all of which are worried about China’s mounting willingness to secure its interest with intimidation, if not force.

Making clear that the United States will interpret aggression against these states as an escalation that would necessitate military intervention could actually help reduce ambiguity about its commitment in East Asia and thus defuse tension. The Chinese feel increasingly encircled at the same time by a chain of American allied nations along its eastern seaboard while some hardliners continue to believe that Washington cannot be trusted.

This is a difficult balancing game for the Obama Administration. President Hu’s visit to the United States may be an opportunity to redefine the rules of the game. Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski urged President Barack Obama last week to use the occasion to set out the principles of Sino-American cooperation, which should have a wider mission than national self-interest, he wrote. The relationship between the two countries should be guided by the moral imperatives of the twenty-first century’s unprecedented global interdependence instead.

Hu is due to arrive in Washington on Tuesday and will be honored with the full pomp of a state visit on Wednesday at the White House.

Clinton attended a summit of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe in Kazakhstan Wednesday where she also spoke with the country’s president and foreign minister. She thanked Kazakhstan for cooperating with the West in the realm of nonproliferation. Earlier this year, she pointed out during a press conference, along with the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan and the United States secured over ten metric tons of highly enriched uranium as well as three metric tons of weapons grade plutonium. “That is enough material to have made 775 nuclear weapons,” she said. “And now we are confident it will never fall into the wrong hands.”

The secretary visited Kyrgyzstan next which has been site to considerable political upheaval in recent months. This spring, violence in the small Central Asian republic forced its president to flee to Belarus while the interim government subsequently struggled to hold on to power. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced as a result of the unrest.

After meeting with Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva, Clinton praised her for forming a coalition government two months after the country held parliamentary elections. “There are many who say parliamentary democracy, true parliamentary democracy, cannot work in Central Asia or in many other places in the world,” said Clinton. “We reject that and we think Kyrgyzstan has proven that it can.”

Neighboring Tajikistan has also witnessed waves of armed rebellion in recent months. As the central government appears unable to suppress the uprising, Joshua Kucera at The Diplomat warns of a “power vacuum in a part of Tajikistan that borders northern Afghanistan and southern Kyrgyzstan, both of which are themselves becoming more and more unstable.”

Despite the mounting instability in the region, the United States are preparing a range of strategic construction projects throughout Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The largest project entails the construction of an antiterrorism training facility in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Currently, the only American base in operation in the region is the transit center at Manas, near the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek and close to its border with Kazakhstan. Last year, the now ousted president attempted to close the air base with parliament’s approval. Only the intervention of American and Russian diplomacy managed to reverse that decision in June 2009. In return for continuing to operate the Manas facility, the military increased rent payments from $17 to $60 million a year to the Kyrgyz Government.

Clinton’s last stop in the region was Uzbekistan, the most populous republic in Central Asia but also its least republican. The country has never held an election judged fair by international observers while the executive wields most actual power. Dissidents are persecuted. Opposition parties are not allowed to exist and foreign media have been driven out of the country. Clinton urged the president, Islam Karimov, who has been in power since 1990, “to demonstrate his commitment through a series of steps to ensure that human rights and fundamental freedoms are truly protected.”

The State Department has defended Clinton’s visit to Uzbekistan as a chance to promote political reform but it is also an opportunity to affirm security cooperation. Uzbekistan is one link in what the United States call their Northern Distribution Network which brings supplies to Afghanistan through Russia and the different states of Central Asia.

The increased American presence risks exacerbating what some observers have dubbed the “New Great Game” which sees China, Russia and the United States competing for influence in Central Asia—very much like Russia and the United Kingdom used to quarrel over the region during the original Great Game in the nineteenth century.

There is moreover a danger of straining relations with Iran whose strategic orientation has shifted northward since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “In the past fifteen years,” according to Dario Cristiani of World Politics Review, “Tehran has been particularly active in trying to create a deep net of institutional and economic links in the region, in part to counter the increasing reach of Turkey, perceived as an American proxy, and of Pakistan, historically an enemy of Iran.” This, he pointed out, explains the strong attention paid by Tehran to nearby Afghanistan and Tajikistan, “which represent cornerstones of the Iranian strategy in the region.”

Iran’s ultimate goal is to become a technological and economic power in the region, and to this end, Tehran is supplementing its cultural and historical links with a more resolute economic presence, including investments in massive infrastructure projects.

Besides the dangers of geopolitics, Central Asia is a tar pit filled with confusing micro-nationalities, borders arbitrarily drawn without regard for ethnic divides, and a geography that is bound to frustrate any attempt at military intervention.

Up to the early twentieth century, Central Asia had no real borders. Rather the region was one large frontier separating the Russian Empire from the British Raj in India. With the emergence of the Soviet Union however and its aggressive attempts at spreading communism abroad, the former khanates of Central Asia were quickly absorbed and divided into neat little socialist republics. Neat, except that their borders were drawn with the express purpose of keeping the populations there divided lest they rise up against the Soviet usurpation.

The borders were redrawn several times during the 1920s and ’30s, prompting violent demarcation disputes after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Separating the five newly independent states are Soviet borders; linking them are Soviet era roads, pipelines and electricity grids.

The Russian influence continues to pervade up to this very day. Kyrgyzstan for instance is desperately divided, with an Uzbek minority living in the west near the Uzbekistan border while north and south seem different countries altogether. The north, around the capital of Bishkek, is more developed, with some industry and a semblance of Russian culture. The south, largely agrarian and more Islamic, is cut off by a mountain range through which just two usable roads traverse.

When north and south clashed most recently, the country’s interim president asked Russia to intervene but so far, even Moscow hasn’t shown a willingness to submerge itself in this quagmire.

In Portugal yesterday, President Barack Obama attested that the allies had aligned their approach “on the way forward in Afghanistan, particularly on a transition to full Afghan lead that will begin in early 2011 and will conclude in 2014.” According to Secretary Clinton, different NATO countries have pledged to increase their numbers of training forces in the country to support that process. “This was a great vote of confidence in President Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan,” she told Fox News Sunday.

The period between 2011 and 2014 will be one of transition, conditioned based, “so where it can happen, at what pace it can happen, how many troops can be substituted for—that is what General [David] Petraeus and the military leaders are going to be working on to recommend to the president,” Clinton said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

The hardest part may be yet to come. Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted a “difficult year” in Afghanistan, telling ABC’s This Week that while “the security situation has started to change” there is still a tough fight ahead.

The other NATO countries are increasingly weary about the future of the Afghan mission meanwhile. Germany and the United Kingdom, major contributors to ISAF, are likely to start withdrawing while the Netherlands has already pulled out. In fact, the only country besides the United States that has announced to stay in Afghanistan for as long as it takes is Australia—not a NATO member.

While affirming his commitment to nuclear weapons nonproliferation on Saturday, the president assured the world that “so long as these weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance and the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal to deter adversaries and guarantee the defense of all our allies.”

At the summit, Obama said to have received “overwhelming” support for the new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia. According to the European allies, New START is “a critical component to US and European security. And they have urged, both privately and publicy, that this gets done,” the president said.

Clinton reiterated those words Sunday. “It’s because they know that this would be an important treaty for the continuing cooperation between Russia and the United States,” she explained on Fox News Sunday. Even as the treaty was signed between Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in April, the secretary said to “understand the legitimate concern that there might not be enough time to debate, to make sure that everybody is well informed.” At the same time, she stressed that since the last nuclear arms treaty expired in December, the United States have not been able to verify Russia’s commitment. That is why, she said, “we cannot wait.”

New START, which was signed between Presidents Obama and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia in Prague last spring, is supported by both the administration and the country’s military leadership. A dozen former secretaries of state and defense have also come out in support of the treaty but a few Republicans are hesitating. They fear that by further downsizing America’s nuclear deterrent while delaying or refraining from modernization efforts, the United States could be at risk if the treaty is ratified.

• Also read: America’s future nuclear arsenal

Writing for The Washington Post, Secretaries Hillary Clinton of State and Robert Gates of Defense explain why New START should be ratified—as soon as possible.

Since the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired in December, American inspectors have not been able to verify the other side’s commitments. New START, the two secretaries argue, “will put in place an effective verification regime to track each side’s progress in reducing its arsenal to 1,550 strategic warheads. We will be able to count the number of deployed strategic weapons more accurately,” they point out, “because we will exchange more data on weapons and their movement than in the past.”

New START will also set the stage for future arms reductions, Clinton and Gates argue, including negotiations on tactical nuclear weapons. “It will help solidify the ‘reset’ of US relations with Russia, which has allowed us to cooperate in pursuit of our strategic interests.”

The Republicans’ procrastinating in the Senate is currently threatening the Russia “reset” which, according to the president, should send “a strong signal to Russia that we are serious about reducing nuclear arsenals, but also [...] to the world that we’re serious about nonproliferation.” Two more sets of legislation are held up in the upper chamber: a civilian nuclear agreement with Russia that is supposed to increase cooperation and the repeal of decade old trade restrictions in order to let the country join the World Trade Organization.

Clinton and Gates reject the notion that New START would undermine America’s own nuclear deterrent. “It will not limit our ability to develop and deploy the most effective missile defenses to protect America’s forces and territory,” they stress, “and to enhance the security of our allies and partners.” They add that the administration remains committed to improving the United States’ missile defense capabilities. It is planning to spend $10 billion next year to improve missile defense along with $100 billion over the next decade to modernize America’s nuclear forces.

In all, the administration proposes spending more than $180 billion on the infrastructure that sustains our nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them—a substantial investment in the credibility and efficacy of America’s nuclear deterrent.

In conclusion, New START deserves prompt ratification, according to Secretaries Clinton and Gates. “Our national security depends on it.”