Page 187 - Leadership Secrets of Hillary Clinton

LEADERSHIP SECRETS OF HILLARY CLINTON

tunity for people on the margins whose progress and pros-
perity will add to our own.
Our world has undergone an extraordinary transforma-
tion in the last two decades. In 1989, a wall fell and old bar-
riers began to crumble after 40 years of a Cold War that
had influenced every aspect of our foreign policy. By 1999,
the rise of more democratic and open societies, the expand-
ing reach of world markets, and the explosion of informa-
tion technology had made “globalization” the word of the
day. For most people, it had primarily an economic conno-
tation, but in fact, we were already living in a profoundly
interdependent world in which old rules and boundaries no
longer held fast—one in which both the promise and the
peril of the twenty-first century could not be contained by
national borders or vast distances.
Economic growth has lifted more people out of poverty
faster than at any time in history, but economic crises can
sweep across the globe even more quickly. A coalition of
nations stopped ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, but the con-
flict in the Middle East continues to inflame tensions from
Asia to Africa. Non-state actors fight poverty, improve
health, and expand education in the poorest parts of the
world, while other non-state actors traffic in drugs, children,
and women and kill innocent civilians across the globe.
Now, in 2009, the clear lesson of the last twenty years is
that we must both combat the threats and seize the oppor-
tunities of our interdependence. And to be effective in

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