Differences in Biden and Clinton foreign policy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/us/politics/a-biden-run-would-expose-foreign-policy-differences-with-hillary-clinton.html?

. . . .The collision between Mr. Biden, the vice president, and Mrs. Clinton, then the secretary of state, was hardly the only one that played out during the four years they served together in the Obama administration. Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton represented the yin and the yang of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, one encouraging the president’s own natural caution and the other giving voice to his more assertive side. If Mr. Biden were to join the Democratic presidential race for the 2016 election, the contest between him and Mrs. Clinton would in effect put on a public stage the struggles waged in the secrecy of the Situation Room. More so than on domestic policy, where their differences are narrower, the two former compatriots reflect the competing voices that have shaped Mr. Obama’s approach to the world and the poles that continue to divide the Democratic policy on national security.
If he came in, it would change the nature of the debate,” said Vali R. Nasr, who served under Mrs. Clinton as a special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan and is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “It would be much more a debate about these two fundamental approaches.” Time and again, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Biden faced off over the use of American power in the world. Mr. Biden oversaw the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011 while Mrs. Clinton supported keeping a residual force behind. She argued for the military intervention that ultimately toppled Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya while he opposed it. . . .
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After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton came down in roughly the same place — for the Iraq invasion but later opposing President George W. Bush’s troop surge to finally put down insurgents. “If you look at their votes on wars or supporting guerrilla efforts by others, they voted almost exactly the same way,” Mr. Gelb said. “The differences begin to occur in the Obama administration." Mr. Biden seemed to emerge from the Iraq crucible with more scars, and shifted more to the left. He was quicker to repudiate the war and, with Mr. Gelb, crafted a plan to essentially divide Iraq into three autonomous regions under a limited central government. Once he became vice president, he was determined to avoid what he saw as the mistakes of the Bush administration.

Mrs. Clinton resisted disavowing her original vote for the war for a long time and as secretary of state pressed for a muscular approach to the world. In effect, she and Mr. Biden competed for Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. It was not overtly hostile — the two would often have meetings to hash out their positions before the main national security gatherings in the Situation Room. But once the debate began, neither was a shrinking figure. And aides said Mr. Obama encouraged Mr. Biden to play a devil’s advocate role, questioning the military. . . .