The first reports came out on Sunday night that Anthony Blinken would become U.S. Secretary of State in the Biden administration, an exclusive interview of his past circulating on social media.
It was September 2016 Conversation with Grover, A character from Seelam Street, on the subject of refugees, directed American children who may be new class friends from distant lands.
Blink said to the vague blue puppet, “We all have something to learn and something to get from each other when at first it doesn’t seem like much in common with us.”
After four years of administration, which has separated migrant children from their parents and kept them in cages, Blinkon’s arrival in the state department will mark a dramatic change, at least.
While Mike Pompeo has been a domestic politician during his tenure as Secretary of State, who has given the lion’s share of interviews to radio stations in the Midwest, for example, Blinkon is a very born internationalist.
He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar and play football (l (soccer), and sheltered his dreams of becoming a filmmaker. There were games, and he has two singles, Lip Service and Love Songs called Patience, which are uploaded to Spotify.
All of those contacts and urban bilingual charms will aim to appease the irritated nerves of Western allies, assuring them that the U.S. Is back as a traditional team player. In the first days of the Biden administration, foreign policy priorities will rejoin the treaties and agreements abandoned by Donald Trump.
There is little doubt that Blinkon will be on the same page as B Biden. He has been in the presidential-elected party for almost two decades. After serving on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, he became Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser in the Senate in 2002, as staff director of the Foreign Relations Committee, and in 2008 on Biden’s failed presidential bid.
After Obama made Biden vice president, Blinken returned to the White House as his national security adviser. His face can be seen behind the monitoring room that killed bin Laden in a famous photo of Obama officials.
In the last two years of the Obama administration, Blinken served as deputy secretary of state. His return to the top job then is the embodiment of continuity. But in a recent interview he acknowledged the mistakes and regrets of the Obama era.
Regarding the decision not to intervene significantly in Syria (opposed by Blinken), he told CBS News: “We have failed to stop the fatalities. We failed to stop the massive displacement હું I will take the remaining few days with me. “
He also signed an open letter with other former Obama officials in 2018, acknowledging that the initial support they gave to the Saudi war in Yemen did not succeed in limiting or ending the war and turned into a blank investigation under the Trump administration. , Resulting in catastrophic civilian casualties. The Biden administration is expected to cut off military involvement in the conflict.
Those who know Blinkon well insist that his commitment to human rights is genuine and rooted in experience. It is the footsteps of a Holocaust survivor and Clinton worked at the White House on the intervention of Bosnia and Kosovo.
Since Biden won the Democratic nomination, Blinken has sought to reach the left side of the party, narrowing down at least some of the differences about Saudi Arabia and its climate goals. News of his expected nomination was quickly welcomed by Matt Dus, Bernie Sanders’ chief foreign policy adviser.
“This is a good choice. Tony has the strong confidence of the president-elect and the U.S. There is knowledge and experience for the important task of building diplomacy. Dusse wrote on Twitter.
“Top diplomats who regularly work with progressive bottoms will also be a new and great thing.”
But the U.S. Future tensions with an old flaw in foreign policy also saw difficulties on Sunday night. Blinken has been adamant about the Biden administration’s commitment to Israel’s security and said military support should not be relied on for Israel’s policy decisions.
In his comment on Dus’s tweet, the Michigan Congress woman Rashida Talaib“Just make sure he doesn’t try to silence me and suppress my first amendment to speak out against Netanyahu’s racist and inhumane policies,” the Palestinian rights advocate said.
The policy conflict will eventually move on but Blinkon – who arrives at the State Department at 58 a.m. as the father of two young children – is not Pompeo and the U.S. Is likely to start with an extended honeymoon with a definite desire to survive. Back to leadership on the world stage on global issues like covid, climate and non-proliferation.
He told the Intelligence Matters podcast in September: “We’ll really show up again, day in and day out. But to engage the world, it wasn’t like it was in 2009 or even in 2017 when we left it, but as it is and as we assume it will be: emerging powers, new actors super-empowered by technology and information, which we have Bring along if we will make progress. “
