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32 more in line with what you’re trying to achieve over time,’” she recalls. “And I said, ‘I don’t know how you do one without the other.”” Hillary has already had some successes, most conspicuously her use of American diplomatic leverage in the U.N. Security Council to get China and especially Russia to help isolate Iran and North Korea. She and the president have convinced the Russians that proffering military hardware to [ran isn’t in their national-security interest—a tough sell. And ever since Obama bollixed up his relations with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2010, Hillary has worked overtime to soothe Bibi. “She’s indispensable—the only one trusted on all sides [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict],” says Sandy Berger, who served as Bill Clinton’s National Security Council adviser. Most conspicuously, Hillary has championed what has come to be known as “civil society.” In practice that means moving beyond the usual contacts between the United States and foreign governments to forge ties with the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are essential to stability and development. Like her husband, she’s deployed her international stature for “convening power,” bringing together governments and NGOs on a dizzying array of significant projects that would otherwise lack support. Always a generalist, Hillary thinks concentrating too much on one area is hazardous. “We’ve got a big world out there, and [if] you ignore some part of it, it comes back to bite you,” she tells me. So she has tried to strike a balance between hot spots and the more mundane management decisions that she thinks are necessary to elevate diplomacy and development to the level of defense. That way, the United States would have a more sophisticated, “3-D” foreign policy, looking short-term and long-term, top-down and people-up. Hillary HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024989