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WASHINGTON (AP) – Veteran diplomat Antony Blinken, who served as No. 2 in the U.S. State Department and was deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, is President-elect Joe Biden’s most likely choice for be secretary of state, a Biden ally said Sunday (Nov. 22).
Bloomberg cited sources who said an announcement about Blinken’s appointment was expected on Tuesday. Biden’s transition team declined to comment, and Blinken did not respond to a request for comment.
A Biden ally, who did not want to be named, told Reuters that Blinken was Biden’s most likely choice and that an announcement was expected as soon as this week.
Blinken has been a longtime confidant of Biden.
Biden will announce the first of his cabinet elections Tuesday, incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said Sunday.
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In an interview with Reuters in October, Blinken said the United States must not give up its leadership role in the world.
“For a burden that sometimes seems … the alternative in terms of our interests and the lives of Americans is much worse,” he said.
People familiar with his management style describe the 58-year-old Blinken as a deliberative and relatively soft-spoken “diplomatic diplomat,” but well versed in the practicalities of foreign policy.
After Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump, Blinken became one of the founders of WestExec Advisors, a Washington consultancy that advises corporations on geopolitical risks.
Born in New York City and educated at Harvard, Blinken briefly practiced law and entered politics in the late 1980s helping Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign raise funds.
He joined Democratic President Bill Clinton’s White House as a speechwriter and became one of his national security advisers.
Under Obama, Blinken worked to limit most US combat deployments to a small number of troops. But he told Reuters last year that Trump “destroyed American credibility” with his withdrawal of US troops in Syria in 2019 that left the US’s Kurdish allies in the lurch in their fight against the Islamic State.
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In the election campaign, Blinken was one of Biden’s closest advisers, even on issues that went beyond foreign policy.
That trust is the product of Blinken’s years working alongside Biden as an advisor to his failed 2008 presidential campaign, his national security adviser early in his vice presidency, and as the Democratic staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was appointed. President.
