Blinken is president-elect's pick as U.S. secretary of state: Biden ally
By: Matt Spetalnick and Trevor Hunnicutt (YahooNews)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Read full article By Matt Spetalnick and Trevor Hunnicutt November 22, 2020, 9:41 PM·4 min read FILE PHOTO: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken listens to journalists' questions during a news conference, at a hotel in Mexico City
By Matt Spetalnick and Trevor Hunnicutt
NEW YORK/WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - Joe Biden will pick Antony Blinken as U.S. secretary of state, a person close to the president-elect's transition said on Sunday, elevating one of his most seasoned and trusted aides as he prepares to undo President Donald Trump's foreign policy.
Blinken is a longtime Biden confidant who served as No. 2 at the State Department and as deputy national security adviser in President Barack Obama's administration, in which Biden served as vice president.
A second Biden ally said that Blinken was Biden's first choice. An announcement is likely on Tuesday.
Blinken's appointment makes another longtime Biden aide with a foreign policy background, Jake Sullivan, the top candidate to be U.S. national security adviser, the first source said. Bloomberg News first reported the expected roles.
Biden's transition team declined to comment. Neither Blinken nor Sullivan responded to requests for comment.
While neither are household names, Blinken and Sullivan have helped Biden formulate a strategy that will include immediate outreach to U.S. allies who have often been antagonized by Trump's "America First" approach, and to demonstrate a willingness to work together on major global problems like the coronavirus epidemic and its economic fallout.
Biden has vowed to rejoin a nuclear deal with Iran if the country returns to compliance, return to the Paris climate accord, abandon plans to leave the World Health Organization and end a U.S. rule that bans funding of aid groups that discuss abortion. Each move would reverse Trump's policies and some could take place quickly after Biden takes office on Jan. 20.
Biden is also likely to name Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, media outlets reported on Sunday. Thomas-Greenfield is Black, an expert on Africa policy and held a top diplomatic post in the administration of former President Barack Obama.
'DIPLOMAT'S DIPLOMAT'
Blinken, 58, has long touted the view that the United States needs to take an active leadership role in the world, engaging with allies, or see that role filled by countries like China with contrary interests.
"As much of a burden as it sometimes seems to play ... the alternative in terms of our interests and the lives of Americans are much worse," he said in an interview with Reuters in October.
When asked if relations with the United States might improve with Blinken replacing Mike Pompeo, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian sidestepped the question by saying he does not comment on U.S. domestic affairs.
He reiterated that China was willing to improve communication, strengthen cooperation and manage differences with the United States.
People familiar with his management style describe Blinken as a "diplomat's diplomat," deliberative and relatively soft-spoken, but well-versed in the nuts and bolts of foreign policy.
After Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Trump, Blinken became one of the founders of WestExec Advisors, a Washington consultancy advising corporations on geopolitical risks.
Having practiced law briefly, he entered politics in the late 1980s helping Democrat Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign raise money.
He joined Democratic President Bill Clinton's White House as a speechwriter and became one of his national security aides.
Under Obama, Blinken worked to limit most U.S. combat deployments to small numbers of troops. But he told Reuters last year that Trump had "gutted American credibility" with his pullback of U.S. troops in Syria in 2019 that left Kurdish U.S. allies in the lurch in their fight against Islamic State.
On the campaign trail, Blinken was one of Biden's closest advisers, even on issues that went beyond foreign policy.
That trust is the product of the years Blinken worked alongside Biden as an adviser to his unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, as national security adviser early in his vice presidency and as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair.
Sullivan, formerly a close policy aide to Hillary Clinton, became one of the key policy advisers to Biden. He served as the former vice president's national security adviser during the Obama administration.
A 43-year-old graduate of Yale, who was also a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and has a reputation as a behind-the-scenes operator, Sullivan took part in secret back channel talks with Iran that led to a 2015 international nuclear deal that Trump subsequently overturned.
He took on a broad portfolio on foreign and domestic policy, including the campaign's views on the public health and economic response to the coronavirus pandemic, and was quickly chosen to stay on with Biden through the transition.
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Tags
Who is online
71 visitors
"Biden has vowed to rejoin a nuclear deal with Iran if the country returns to compliance, return to the Paris climate accord, abandon plans to leave the World Health Organization and end a U.S. rule that bans funding of aid groups that discuss abortion. Each move would reverse Trump's policies and some could take place quickly after Biden takes office on Jan. 20.'
The above sentence constitutes Biden's foreign policy.
Complete bio:
Antony J. Blinken was confirmed by the United States Senate as Deputy Secretary of State on December 16, 2014. He was sworn in by Secretary Kerry on January 9, 2015. Mr. Blinken has held senior foreign policy positions in two administrations over two decades.
He most recently served as Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor. In that capacity, he chaired the inter-agency Deputies Committee, the administration’s principal forum for formulating foreign policy. During the first term of the Obama Administration, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President.
Mr. Blinken served for six years on Capitol Hill (2002 – 2008) as Democratic Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mr. Blinken was a member of President Clinton’s National Security Council staff at the White House from 1994 to 2001. From 1999 to 2001, he was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs – President Clinton’s principal advisor for relations with the countries of Europe, the European Union and NATO. From 1994 through 1998, Mr. Blinken was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Speechwriting and then Strategic Planning, overseeing foreign policy planning, communications and speechwriting and serving as President Clinton's chief foreign policy speechwriter.
Mr. Blinken began his government service at the State Department where, from 1993 to 1994, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs.
After leaving the Clinton Administration, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies between 2001 and 2002 .
Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Mr. Blinken practiced law in New York and Paris. He has been a reporter for The New Republic magazine and has written about foreign policy for numerous publications including the New York Times , The New York Times Magazine and Foreign Affairs . He is the author of Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis (Praeger, 1987). He appears frequently on cable and network television on behalf of the Obama administration. Mr. Blinken attended grade school and high school in Paris, France where he received a French Baccalaureat degree with high honors. He is a graduate of Harvard College Magna cum Laude and Columbia Law School.
Tony Blinken certainly sounds like an excellent pick and will likely do a great job as Secretary of State, unlike the partisan hack Pompeo. Trump hollowed out the State Department. That will be turned around. Trump turned his back on our allies and sucked up to dictators. I think that we can look forward to Secretary of State Blinken working with President Biden's full foreign policy team to restore America's place of leadership in the world, which was totally undermined by the venal and corrupt Trump regime.
It is a reversal on foreign policy, as expected.
Could it have been worse?
Absolutely!
Blinken isn't partisan?
Blinken is one of the assholes in the Obama Administration that got the US involved in such wonderful places as Libya (How did destabilizing that country work out?); Yemen (another shit hole the world has to than him for); Syria (Sorry, the rest of the world doesn't recognize the US War on Terror. It has 0 standing at the UN or in the World Court. Also, the Kurds in Syria are not the same faction as the Kurds in Iraq- and not even close to being an ally of the US.); Ukraine (backing a coupe that represents the minority of the country's population); and sending US troops back into Iraq to save a government loyal to Iran.
Now, that is an absolute resume of abject failure. No wonder Biden wants him. Four more years of US allies tail wagging the US dog. Whatever could go wrong?
finally, the beginnings of an executive staff of proven qualified people, instead of a group of ass kissers and political campaign donors with no experience in their pay to play appointments.
Yup, like Jake Sullivan.
"Joe Biden’s likely choice for national security adviser sent more than 200 classified emails found on Hillary Clinton’s private email network, and touted a now-debunked allegation before the 2016 election which fueled the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was in cahoots with Russian leaders."
dailycaller.com/2020/11/23/jake-sullivan-biden-national-security-adviser-clinton-emails/
I thought Obama wanted Joe to pick Susan Rice for Secretary of State? What happened to that?
Go down the list in this article...............
and click on the "show more" tab under each of the names. Experience, sure. Ass kissers and status quo believers, most definitely. And looking at said "qualifications", note they have (at least most of them) all been tied to Biden or Obama in one position or another. He's picking cronies.................as all Presidents do. Don't be naive. He's headed back to "the bad old days".................................NOT progressing. AOC is having a shit fit.
if I were you I'd be more concerned with the number of trump administration emails that weren't preserved, by law. so sorry that biden is playing along with the obama 2.0 administration narrative the autocrat losers of the last election are trying so hard to press.
To the contrary, unlike you and others here I'm concerned with the president-elect and his agenda. It looks like all Joe knew how to do is bring back Obama's second stringers, which is probably better that the old A team.
compared to the revolving door of incompetent self-servers in the current administration? the new AG is going to be very busy.
If the selections were good, you wouldn't be comparing them to others.
Thanks again.
there is no comparison between proven public servants and self-serving white collar criminals. that's what this last election was all about. you're welcome.
Wrong again.
It was about an economy that China destroyed. I'll bet the PRC is delighted to see their man Joe again!
Antony Blinken is a neoliberal. Joe Biden selecting Blinken for SoS is a clear signal that Biden intends to bring back neoliberal hell. But the world has moved on; it's too late.
Neoliberalism began to falter during the George Bush administration and began unravelling during the Barack Obama administration. Trump's nationalism has only been an incremental step as the rest of the world turns away from neoliberalism.
Joe Biden is signaling failure. Global neoliberal exploitation can't be revived. National resilience has become more important than international dependence. Attempting to return to the neoliberal order of extending influence through proxy wars and exploitive economics will ultimately alienate the United States. The United States trapping itself in the quagmires of regional conflicts is what has undermined American leadership.
Which ultimately was not accurate ................. I was against the pullback of US troop - have been a long time proponent of the Kurds - the Syrian Kurds saved the lives of the Yazidi by providing them with safe passage off the mountain, while the Iraqi Kurds fought Daesh to defend their homeland and protect US interests in Erbil (meanwhile Obama was busy trying to get Maliki out of office - so would not send Iraq support to defend against Daesh 'it was their war' .. even leaving the Yazidi / Kurds hanging til Maliki stepped down ..)
any whoooo back to the subject at hand .... the US remained in Syria against Daesh .. Blinken should have been uptight about the drawback leaving the Syrian Kurds vulnerable to Erdogan .....! Of which .. did you know that tapes of explosions ran by the news media that were supposedly Turkey attacking the Kurds were some kind of training tapes filmed in the US?
I do not have enough knowledge of Blinken to form an opinion .. but I am all about foreign policy ... and during the Obama administration 'our' foreign policy suck'd! 'We' cursed Bush for 8 years after he left office - all the while ignoring the actions of the Obama administration - if Bush was in Iraq 'illegally' than Obama was in complete violation of International Law with the 'illegal' entry into Syria under the guise of a coalition to fight Daesh ... do not even get me started on the deaths and eventual exodus of the Syrian people as 'we' stood by - Russia obtained a strong foothold in the ME by being 'legally' invited in by the Syrian government .. i.e Assad (did not 'we' arm and train rebels (bin Laden) in Afghanistan in order to prevent said stronghold?).... not to mention the debacle that was Crimea!
Soooo individuals may need to cut me some slack if I seem to be disjointed by all these Obama administration era carry overs - is Biden going to have a Biden presidency? The man run for president multiple times before Obama .......... .. so I am thinking he has some ideas of his own ... Biden was once considered to be a foreign affairs expert, I did not witness it in during the Obama years........ perhaps Biden will begin thinking for himself - or lord only knows whose puppet in the party of (D) he will become...
Ugghhh off topic again I roam Vic ... my bad!
Peace!
That was fine. Well done.
It's still hard not to forget what Obama's former Defense Secretary wrote in his memoir:
"Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary for the Obama administration, paused for a moment and said "I don't know" in an interview Sunday when asked if he thinks former VP Joe Biden would be a good president.
CBS's "Face The Nation" host Margaret Brennan asked Gates if he stood by a statement from his memoir that Biden has "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
MARGARET BRENNAN: I was rereading your memoir before we sat down to talk and you said in your memoir, Joe Biden is impossible not to like.
Quote: "He's a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
While media outlets typically intensely scrutinized any of President Trump 's cabinet picks ahead of their confirmation, Blinken's rockin' past appears to play the right tune in the press.
"Joe Biden plans to tap his smooth-talking, Paris-bred, guitar-playing former Senate aide as America’s next top diplomat," Politico managing editor Blake Hounshell tweeted.
"Hard to think of a more different personality from Pompeo than the ever-calm, courteous, europhile, guitar-strumming Blinken," AFP News Agency correspondent Shaun Tandon reacted to the news.
"On Tony Blinken as SoS: 'Chief among his new priorities will be to re-establish the United States as a trusted ally that is ready to rejoin global agreements and institutions.' Also, guitars," New York Times correspondent Edward Wong wrote.
The Financial Times tweeted, "When Joe Biden enters office in January, his closest foreign policy adviser will be a guitar-playing Beatles fanatic who first started promoting American values as a high-school student in Paris during the cold war."
The Guardian also reported, "He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar (he played Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall at graduation) and football, and harboured dreams of becoming a film-maker. Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, and he has two singles – love songs titled Lip Service and Patience - uploaded on Spotify."
It's almost as if he appointed Winston Churchill!
This just in:
"An American former military analyst who last week completed parole for his part in a notorious Cold War spy incident may once again become a source of irritation between the United States and Israel, observers say. Developments in the case involving Jonathan Pollard — who plans to spend his newly free life in Israel — particularly could be unsettling to a Joe Biden administration.
"Biden has a history of extreme distaste for Pollard," a U.S. intelligence official told Just the News. "Biden would watch to see how Israel embraces, or doesn't embrace, their former spy."
As a civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, Pollard in 1984 began selling American intelligence information to Israel. For more than a year, Pollard allegedly supplied classified documents to his Israeli contacts. He and his then-wife, Anne Henderson Pollard, were arrested in 1985 after trying in vain to seek refuge at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Although Pollard was not charged with treason, following a plea agreement he was sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2015 on strict parole.
The incident was a Cold War scandal that shocked official Washington, embarrassed Jerusalem, and for years roiled relations between the two countries.
Last week, the parole was lifted, prompting Pollard to remove his electronic monitoring device — and to announce that he plans to move to Israel.
"The final step to freedom that remains is our return home to the Land and the People we love," Pollard said Sunday in a statement .
Israeli officials both current and former offered congratulations to Pollard and his second wife.
"The Prime Minister hopes to see Jonathan Pollard in Israel soon, and together with all Israelis, extends his best wishes to him and his wife Esther," read a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Some Israel-watchers, though, noted that Pollard's case has the potential to reopen old sores between the U.S. and Israel.
"Mostly it will depend on whether or not the Netanyahu government chooses to act with sensitivity and restraint, setting aside what it might see as political gain and opting instead for sensible geopolitics," wrote New Jersey-based Rabbi Eric Yoffie in an essay for Israel's Haaretz newspaper."
The question is will Joe Biden even remember?
I'm afraid the Biden we used to know is gone.
This is a surprise. I would have expected maybe Wynken or Nod. But Blynken? Wow!
/s duh
McCain on Blynken:
As of Jan 21st it will be China First!
