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As President Donald Trump redirects U.S. resources toward operations closer to home, former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo warned that America’s adversaries could benefit from a reduced global footprint.
Clinton told an audience Wednesday that she’d heard of internal Pentagon discussions advocating a “spheres of influence” model that would focus U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere while allowing Russia to dominate Eastern Europe and China to control much of East Asia.
“There seems to be a group within the Pentagon who are advocating for these spheres of influence … I think that’s a disaster. And I think it weakens us vis-à-vis our principal problem, which is… the Chinese Communist Party,” she said during a discussion at Columbia University.
The remarks come as the Pentagon increases counter-narcotics and maritime security missions across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, expanding the U.S. military presence in the Southern Command region to its largest level in decades — a shift that reflects Trump’s renewed emphasis on prioritizing the Western Hemisphere.
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The U.S. last week said it would withdraw a rotational infantry brigade largely based in Romania, with some forces in Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.
Clinton, who was an early architect of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” strategy during her 2009–2013 tenure at the State Department, said any retreat from the Indo-Pacific would invite instability and signal weakness to U.S. adversaries.
Pompeo largely agreed, saying the United States should strive for global “American hegemony” rooted in Western values and must never concede leadership to rivals.
“I agree with almost everything Secretary Clinton said there,” Pompeo said. “I want American values to dominate the world for the next 250 years … I want to influence every sphere of influence.”
Even as the War Department has prioritized a focus on the western hemisphere, Sec. Pete Hegseth has promised the U.S. would “stoutly defend” its interests in the Indo-Pacific.
Pompeo directed particularly harsh words at China, even as U.S.–China relations show tentative signs of easing after Trump’s recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“We shouldn’t use the word competition and the Chinese Communist Party in the same sentence… The Chinese Communist Party wants to cut our heads off,” he said, adding, “They killed 10 million people and didn’t lose a moment’s sleep when a virus was foisted around the world.”
Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and CIA director in the first Trump administration, also claimed that China had given its blessing for North Korea to send troops to assist Russia in its war on Ukraine.
“There are 13,000 North Koreans on the ground inside of that conflict today,” he said. “They did not go there without Xi Jinping asking Chairman Kim… to go.”
Clinton, meanwhile, accused congressional Republicans of staying silent when the White House oversteps its power, citing Trump’s repeated extensions of a deadline for TikTok to divest or face a U.S. ban.
“Their tongues must be totally bitten off because they don’t speak out,” Clinton said.
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She warned that social media is now shaping — and in some cases distorting — public opinion, posing “a huge danger to democracy.” Clinton also said TikTok was “found by a bipartisan decision of Congress to be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Pompeo echoed that concern. “I’m worried about the fact that we’ve got social influencers on TikTok that are shaping your minds, and that that’s controlled by the Chinese Communist Party to a significant degree,” he said.
The pair of former officials found common ground years after Pompeo vowed to release more of her emails in the run-up to the 2020 election. Trump had expressed disappointment that Pompeo’s State Department had not released more of the emails Clinton famously sent from a private server during her time leading the department.
“We’re doing it as fast as we can” Pompeo told Fox News at the time, while predicting “there will be more to see before the election.”
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“It’s pathetic,” Clinton had told the New York Times of Pompeo’s promise.
Pompeo has also been critical of Clinton’s “failures” related to Benghazi and “rampant corruption.”
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