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President-elect Joe Biden is expected to choose Tony Blinken, his former foreign policy adviser, as his secretary of state, making Blinken one of the most important figures in the incoming administration.
Not surprisingly, Biden is planning to hire Blinken to lead the nation’s top foreign affairs agency, news that was first reported by Bloomberg News and confirmed by other outlets. The 58-year-old has served Biden since 2002, going on to become the director of staff for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden chaired it. Blinken later became Biden’s national security adviser while he was vice president, moving to the State Department in President Obama’s second term to fill the agency’s second job.
While some assumed that Biden would choose Blinken as his national security adviser, it appears that the incoming president prefers his trusted staff to represent the administration and the country abroad.
Biden and Blinken have a strong mind meld, except on one key issue
The choice of Blinken, a former New Republic writer, is likely to anger some on the left and right. Progressives may not like it for praising President Donald Trump’s bombing of Syria in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons against civilians, or for advocating that the United States arm Ukraine against the invasion of Russia. Meanwhile, conservatives won’t like that he’s been a fierce supporter of the Iran nuclear deal.
But Biden would always trust Blinken with a substantive foreign policy position in his administration, regardless of what critics said of him. “He has the judgment, the substantial raw knowledge and the ability to interact with leaders to do whatever work his country may ask of him,” Biden told Blinken Politico in 2013.
During the 2020 campaign, Blinken was Biden’s main replacement and foreign policy spokesperson. He gave interview after interview after interview to explain how Biden would handle global affairs as president.
“Joe Biden would reaffirm American leadership, leading with our diplomacy. We would actually show up again, day after day, ”he told CBS News’s Michael Morell on his podcast in September. The new president would prepare for a world of “emerging powers, new actors super-empowered by technology and information, whom we have to bring if we want to move forward.”
But Blinken and Biden differ on one crucial point: humanitarian intervention. Blinken, who is the descendant of Holocaust survivors, has repeatedly made clear that he believes the United States should intervene militarily to save innocent people from harm.
“We could not avoid a terrible loss of life. We were unable to prevent the massive displacement of people internally in Syria and of course externally as refugees, “he told CBS News in May 2019.” And it is something that I will take with me for the rest of my days. It is something that I feel very strongly. So, you know, what happened, unfortunately, since then is that you could say that a horrible situation got even worse. “
Meanwhile, Biden has backed away from humanitarian intervention in recent years. For example, he opposed the Obama administration’s foray into Libya to topple Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. “It was not for fundamental interests,” a senior White House official told Foreign Policy the following year. “It wasn’t something [Biden] I thought it was necessary to do. “Blinken also opposed Libya’s decision, but it is clear that he still has a liberal interventionist streak.
That could put men at odds if they face a similar situation for the next four years. But most of the time, Biden and Blinken are likely where they used to be: on the same page.
