The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton will adopt a more forceful foreign policy than Barack Obama. She will be "tough on national security," very much the woman who wanted her president to intervene in Syria and Libya, who championed the pivot to Asia.
Think again.
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The primaries in her own party revealed a lurking left-leaning presence that came close to retiring her from public life in favour of a 75-year-old socialist from Vermont.
Bernie Sanders has campaigned hard for her but there is a condition: President Clinton will have to deliver for the party's left.
That will leave little of the new president's time for joining sectarian civil wars or forcing regime change in the Muslim world.
"No more quagmires!" will be the rallying cry of Sanders and his political heir, Senator Elizabeth Warren. She is capable of mounting a challenge to the Democratic incumbent if Hillary lets down the left of their party. Just like her predecessor as Senator for Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, with President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
In the Middle East Clinton is unlikely to depart from Obama policy. She will adhere to the multinational nuclear deal with Iran. She will seek to beat Islamic State with air strikes and aid for local forces. She will not send planes into Syrian airspace.
"Wicked problems rarely have a right answer," she wrote in her memoir.
![Would a President Clinton be able to overlook the consensus that Russia was behind her campaign's email hacking?](/web/20161110200936im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/h/p/6/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsjuto.png/1478653914738.jpg)
Like this one: at the present rate of development North Korea's nuclear missiles could target the West Coast of the United States by 2020.
Does the president simply hope the prospect of mutually assured destruction (MAD) restrains the feudal-Marxists in Pyongyang? Or must the US embrace a preventive war? Or accept that this is inapplicable given the vulnerability of South Korea and the deep-seated interest of China?
Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State failed at an attempt to "reset" relations with the Russian president. How can she now overlook the consensus of US intelligence experts that the Russians were behind the hacking of her election campaign's emails? Challenged by Putin, US policy makers will have to focus on an agenda for cyber security and Europe like never before.
In the South China Sea she will continue to run freedom of navigation patrols within the 12 nautical mile radius of Chinese-claimed territory. And then? She's unlikely to declare a red line on Chinese construction on artificial islands.
If she asks Australia to mimic US patrols the Turnbull government is entitled to ask whether any other American friend will join in or whether this is a once-in-a-lifetime offer for plucky little Australia alone.
Philippine fishing vessels have returned to the waters of Scarborough Shoal with the apparent agreement of the Chinese. This may be a hint that China is capable of subtle diplomacy when it's offered an opportunity like that presented by President Duterte. For his part, Duterte seems to have tacitly agreed to set aside the difference over sovereignty in return for fishing access to the disputed area.
Hugh White made the point in The National Interest that America is unlikely to fight for Scarborough Shoal. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is entitled to tell President Clinton that, in all these circumstances, we don't think we should be the only American friend to embark on such patrols although we will continue to run aerial patrols in the area and argue the applicability of international law to Beijing
If China were to stick to its recent diplomatic tack and put a halt to its more assertive behaviour (no guarantees, of course) then it's hard to see a Clinton administration deliberately elevating the South China Sea. And on behalf of whom? Duterte? Or the Vietnamese, who in October hosted Chinese warships in Cam Ranh Bay?
There will be plenty to fill the new president's 18-hour days. There is likely to be constitutional civil war between the Clinton administration and a Republican Congress. There is also the urgency of rebuilding Democratic Party support with America's furious white working class. The alternative is to entrench their isolation, to see them evolve into an aggrieved block of white nationalism.
The US is in a political nervous breakdown, with no imminent return to health. It's already forced Clinton to abrogate one area of US global leadership – the 12 nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. As realist academic Stephen M. Walt put it in Foreign Policy, fixing US politics is a hell of a lot more important to the US's future "than trying to determine who's going to run what's left of Syria or who gets to pretend to be in charge in Kabul."
In other words, no more quagmires.
The wisdom of President John Quincy Adams rings down the ages: "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
There's a portrait to hang in the Oval Office.
Bob Carr is a former foreign affairs minister and NSW premier. He is director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney.
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