In considering foreign policy, the external environment matters a lot. So does the degree of interest and control that a president exercises over American foreign policy. To use an example, James Baker is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest secretaries of state of all time. His diplomacy helped ensure a peaceful end to the Cold War and a unified, multilateral coalition for the first Gulf War. But Baker had the wind at his back: a fading Soviet Union and a president who was keenly interested and engaged in international relations. Baker deserves credit, but not all the credit, if you know what I mean.

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So, with that in mind, here’s my ranking, from worst to first, of the six post-Cold War secretaries of state. I will preface this by saying that Baker towers over this lot, but I’m not including him in the post-Cold War set. Indeed, the Cold War secretaries of state (George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Dean Rusk and George P. Shultz) are on average of a much higher caliber than the ones discussed below.

6) Warren Christopher. The “Cars 2” of the post-1992 secretaries of state, “Chris” got a bad beat. His president did not care a flying fig about foreign policy for at least the first two years of his presidency, and Christopher felt constrained by that fact. Nonetheless, Christopher’s preternatural caution generally let bad situations (Somalia, Bosnia) deteriorate on his watch. There isn’t a single account of the Bill Clinton administration’s foreign policy record in which Christopher comes out looking good — and that includes his own memoirs. Given the favorable geopolitical situation the United States inherited when he took office, it’s a lackluster performance.

5) Colin Powell. Powell was badly hamstrung by the lack of trust between him and President George W. Bush. Bush overruled Powell on diplomacy with North Korea in March 2001, and things went downhill from there. Powell’s constant bureaucratic battles with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld proved problematic for his tenure, as it kept him in Washington when he needed to try to make America’s case to allies and partners. The biggest mistakes of Bush’s first term were not Powell’s, but he failed to stop most of these catastrophes, and his performance did little to compensate for them.

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4) John Kerry. This ranking is probably unfair — he still has six months left, and history will offer a better perspective. Kerry gets major points for the Iran deal, a significant feat of diplomacy that was more him than President Obama. The Paris climate change agreement is also significant. The problem comes with trying to list things after that. It is to Kerry’s credit that he has invested in tough tasks, like Iran or an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. It is to Kerry’s debit that some of those investments did not pay off. The opportunity cost of them is Kerry looking flat-footed and underinvested in other trouble-spots, such as Eastern Europe.

3) Madeleine Albright. The first female secretary of state, Albright benefited greatly from a president who was more comfortable and more engaged in international relations than he was in his first term. But Albright was also willing to take more risks than Christopher, a trait that paid off in the case of Kosovo. The biggest criticism of Albright would be her absence from the most significant foreign policy crisis of Clinton’s second term — the Asian financial crisis.

2) Condoleezza Rice. Well, this will be the second-most controversial ranking. Rice’s disastrous tenure as national security adviser will color most people’s perceptions of her time at Foggy Bottom. The parlous state of American foreign affairs in January 2009 will also lead many to pooh-pooh Rice’s performance as secretary of state. But it requires some willful amnesia to forget the situation that Rice inherited when she took the job, and the skillful ways in which she was able to outmaneuver Rumsfeld and Cheney. Her close relationship with the president allowed Rice to pivot American foreign policy away from the excesses of Bush’s first term to something akin to competency in her second term. It was a thankless task, and Rice’s legacy will always be tarnished by her NSC stint. Nevertheless, she did a good job in a tough time.

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1) Hillary Clinton. Here’s the dirty little secret of trying to evaluate Clinton’s record as secretary of state: The Obama White House centralized foreign policy control almost as much as Richard Nixon. Which means that it’s tough to credit or blame Clinton for what happened during her four years in office. Nonetheless, she played a significant role in restoring America’s standing abroad. She was nimble in handling some thorny diplomatic kerfuffles with China (Google “Wang Lijun” or “Chen Guangcheng” to see what I mean). She helped put together formidable economic sanctions against Iran. Even on Libya, Clinton deserves credit for her ability to get NATO, the Arab League and the U.N. Security Council to endorse action; the post-Libya fiasco has less to do with Clinton and more to do with her boss. And one can argue that the Paris climate change accord only happened because of Clinton and Obama’s actions in Copenhagen.