Tapping an old hand when he ran the Senate Judiciary Committee as Secretary of State, President-elect Joe Biden looks to name 58-year-old Antony Blinken, a former Deputy National Security Adviser and Deputy Secretary of State under former President Barack Obama as Secretary of State. More than anything, Biden picks an Obama globalist, ready on Day 1 to reverse 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s American First foreign policy, signaling he intends to rejoin global agreements rejected by Trump. Trump’s four years of American First foreign policy led by 56-year-old Secretary of State Mike Pompeo crashes-and-burns under Blinken, who, above all else, will restore all U.S. past global alliances, putting the U.S. back into Obama’s globalist policy, not a leader in world foreign policy. Obama saw foreign policy as collective action through the United Nations and European Union.
Trump was criticized for everything during the 2020 campaign but mostly for his American First foreign policy that didn’t play well with U.S. allies, other than the United Kingdom. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson liked the U.S. returning to a foreign policy of President Ronald Reagan where the U.S. called the shots, didn’t lead from behind. Biden’s campaign relentlessly criticized Trump for alienating traditional U.S. allies, especially in the European Union and NATO, where Trump demanded more trade concessions and bigger payments for NATO defense budget. Naming Blinken as Secretary of State, Biden signals he’ll return to the Obama foreign policy that deferred to the U.N. land EU when it comes to dealing with Russia and other foreign adversaries, including China and Iran. Blinken’s pick could be bad news for Israel, signaling more sympathy for Palestinians.
Blinken was part of Obama’s State Department that gave 70-year-old Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fits, resulting in no progress toward Mideast peace. But with Trump, it’s clear that his foreign policy took a different approach with Palestinians, recognizing the fact that Mideast peace was far more complicated than only the Palestinian issue. Trump crafted three recent peace deals with United Arab Emirates [UAE], Bahrain, and Sudan and Israel, once thought impossible because American diplomats assumed that all Mideast peace went through Palestinians. While it’s possible Blinken changed, he could very easily go back to Obama’s contentious approach with Tel Aviv. Whether Blinken pressures Israel to remove the U.S. embassy from Jerusalem is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure, he seek approval from the U.N. and EU before doing anything.
Biden picked Blinken because he’ll put his fingerprints back on U.S. foreign policy when Biden played a major role in Obama’s State Department. Blinken backed the Saudi proxy war to topple Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a major Obama-Biden foreign policy failure that cost a 500,000 lives over 10-years and drove 15 million Syrians in refugee status, winding up in refugee camps or seeking asylum in Europe, the U.S. or other countries around the globe. Obama and Biden, joined 66-year-old German Chancellor Angela Merkel and 42-year-old French President Emmanuel Marcon in supplying arms-and-cash to Syrian rebels to topple al-Assad. Obama-Biden’s Syria policy backfired when 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin joined the fight Sept. 30. 2015 to keep al-Assad in power. If the U.S. returns to the Obama-Biden foreign policy, expect more Mideast wars.
No one should forget the Obama-Biden policy to topple 69-year-old Libyan Leader Col. Muammar Muammar Gaddafi, flooding Libya with terrorism. Blinken backed Obama-Biden’s foreign policy that resulted in Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Former 56-year-old National Security Advisor Susan Rice was heavily involved in the Benghazi fiasco, as was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. While Hillary took the brunt of the Benghazi disaster, Obama, Biden and Blinken were responsible for the tragic outcome. Unless Blinken’s changed, Biden’s administration could return the U.S. to more police actions around the globe, especially in the Mideast. It was Hillary in the 2016 presidential campaign that advocated no-fly zones in Syria, a potential disaster.
With the media rubber stamping Biden’s State Department, Blinken could preside over a more more interventionist U.S. foreign policy than Trump. While Trump went after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] with a vengeance, he stayed away from more Mideast or Asian hotspots. U.S. media accused Trump of flirting with WW III with North Korea but somehow nothing happened, with Trump being the first U.S. president to cross over the 38th parallel into North Korea. Biden has made aggressive statements during the campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin would be itching for a confrontation with the U.S. over Ukraine’s Crimea region or even Armenia, where Putin brokered a recent ceasefire. Blinken taking the State Department would send the U.S. back into a globalist foreign policy, deferring to the U.N, EU and NATO to make U.S. foreign policy decisions.
