On Monday, Joe Biden announced he will nominate his long-time advisor Antony Blinken to be the secretary of state for the incoming administration. Blinken has a long history of advocating for intervention in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.
Blinken was Biden’s top aide in 2002 when Biden was leading the charge in the Senate to give George W. Bush his invasion of Iraq. In 2006, Biden penned an Op-ed for The New York Times that called for dividing Iraq into three separate autonomous zones with a central government in Baghdad, later referred to as a “soft partition.” According to the Times, Blinken helped craft Biden’s proposal.
Blinken served various posts in the Obama administration. First, as then-Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor from 2009 to 2013, as the deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015, and as the deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017.
Seen as a loyal Biden aide, Blinken surprised some in the White House when he broke with Biden and supported military intervention in Libya in 2011, according to The Washington Post. Blinken also called for US action in Syria after Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. Sources told the Post in 2013 that Blinken “was less enthusiastic than Biden” about Obama seeking Congressional approval for a military strike on Syria.
In 2019, Blinken co-authored an Op-ed in The Washington Post with neoconservative Robert Kagan. The piece argued against President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and said the US did “too little” in Syria. “Without bringing appropriate power to bear [in Syria], no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed,” the article reads.
In 2015, Blinken facilitated an increase in weapons sales and intelligence sharing for the Saudi-led coalition after it intervened in Yemen to fight the Houthis. “We have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center,” Blinken said in April 2015.
In 2018, Blinken joined over two dozen former Obama administration officials and signed a letter calling for an end to US support for the war in Yemen. But in 2019, Blinken’s name was noticeably absent from a similar letter that included Obama-era officials like Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes.
One area where a Biden administration could be less hawkish than a Trump administration is Iran. Blinken has been critical of President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Speaking at an event earlier this year, Blinken said Biden would return to the JCPOA. “[Biden] would seek to build on the nuclear deal to make it longer and stronger if Iran returns to strict compliance,” he said.
While Blinken is a proponent of the JCPOA, it’s worth noting that Iran hawks seem happy with Biden’s choice. Mark Dubowitz, the head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that regularly calls for regime change in Tehran, celebrated Blinken’s nomination. Dubowitz wrote on Twitter that Blinken and Michele Flournoy, a front runner to be Biden’s secretary of defense, would make “a superb national security team. The country will be very fortunate to have them in public service.”
Another force that will clash with Biden and Blinken’s stated goal to return back to the JCPOA is Israel, a country Blinken is a staunch supporter of. The Obama administration signed a deal in 2016 that gives Israel $38 billion in military aid over the course of a decade, until 2027.
Shortly after Biden was announced the winner of the presidential election, Israeli sources said they were already planning to reach out to Biden about a new long-term military aid package. With some progressives in Congress calling for the US to leverage military aid to Israel over its abuses of Palestinians, Blinken made it clear that a Biden administration’s support for Israel would be unconditional.
“He [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he’s committed to it. And that would be the policy of the Biden administration,” Blinken said in May.
“Blinken surprised some in the White House when he broke with Biden and supported military intervention in Libya in 2011”
So like Obama’s own staff choices, we will have those more hawkish than the already-hawkish Biden pushing him into more war.
And more hawkish than Trump. One can hope that they don’t push Russia or China too hard.
Russia’s Putin will continue to capitulate to the U.S. and NATO as he has for twenty years. He’s currently licking the boots of NATO powerhouse Turkey as it finishes the Armenian genocide it started a century ago.
Armenia had a europhilic government, yet received no help from the EU or NATO.
The Dem leadership already forced a centrist establishmentarian no Lefty wanted on the Dem voters, so of course they’d never let him appoint anyone lacking neocon cred. At least he’s not a “religious” end-of-days nutter like Pompeo, but that’s a very low bar to cross.
This guy has been Biden’s man for some time now. I don’t think Joe Joe is being forced to appoint him. I’m not sure he even knows a noninterventionist let alone him wanting to appoint one.
Rohm’s one of the architects of “no antiwar Congressmen, or women obsession.” He was Obama’s first pick. It exposed the “O” deception earlý on.
No one is surpri$ed are they? I thought he might nominate HRC, but the (R) Senate would probably put a nix on that, because it would offend Vlad. Anyway, any other war mongering interventionalist, with a track record of supporting the wasting of US lives and tax dollars, in god foresaken hell holes should sail through the bloody Senate.
Likely. DC foreign policy doesn’t change much from one POTUS to another. Warmongers to the left and warmongers to the right.
So it is official Washington will continue to fund Israel’s shooting women and children in Palestine and Gaza.
YES PAT. You’về got it. But don’t say anything critical about about their apartheid regime or you will be charged as antisemetic. Soon to be, become a badge of honor for those who refuse to be complicit in the theft & brutal facts of occupation & dispossession being chacterized as some cultural right and entitlement by the perpetrators of these crimes.
Here we go again!!! Another Hillary and not a Hillary light. G-d only knows what makes this guy tick.. Probably the deep State Israel 1st agenda that seems to own/control almost every administration that gets in.. I sure wasn’t giddy about Biden.. Better than Trump I thought, but no friend of my people or ideas. I liked him waaaaay better when he was doing the Neil Kinnock soft shoe as the working man’s friend & before he proclaimed his Zionist beliefs. Where does shooting children who get too close to the Frontier fence of demarcation get placed by Biden’s Zionist cohorts to mark the outer limits of their Occupation & subjugation maybe enslavementof the native inhabitants Even antiwar.com is haunted by the vapour’s of Zionist past dreams & allusions. Too bad we cant conjure up Justin for his take on Biden and his blank check for Zionist misdeeds & presidential fealty too. Sometimes I think that if America was less mortgaged to the all & many beggar & swindler states and had lots of positive financial clout, we woulden’t be so owned by so many small grifter outfits with their dreams of imperial grandeur.
Do indeed miss Justin.
In Washington, the more an experienced policy hand effs-up, the higher s/he rises.
Like Gen.Eberhart top guy at NORAD! Got promoted after AWOL debacle on 911. .Or was he rewarded for following the orders of higher ups???
The boys are back in town.
“He [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he’s committed to it. And that would be the policy of the Biden administration,” Blinken said in May.
That is an amazing statement. Talk about putting yourself in a corner. So lets say Israel comes up with a law that says only a certain part of it’s population has the right to self determination…. Never mind.
No problem with apartheid policy for these guys. Their predecessors gifted nuclear weapons to their aparthe’d pals in S.Africa to defend the system there.
Blinken is an official with the Atlantic Council. That’s a grade above Susan Rice’s Brookings history in term of Atlanticism/globalism, and his appointment will in effect make U.S. foreign policy entirely at the service of NATO.
Not to forget: Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir celebrated Blinken as a “solid choice” to run U.S. foreign policy. Now that the Left has liberated the country from “fascism” and dislodged the man who withdrew and pledged to withdraw troops from Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Germany and South Korea, the democratic socialists can wage “humanitarian” wars at will around the globe. For noble reasons solely, of course; things like leveling foreign capitals with Tomahawk cruise missiles to advance transgender rights.
“dislodged the man who withdrew and pledged to withdraw troops from Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Germany and South Korea”
After he increased troops in Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. Did two missile strikes on Syria and imposed ceasar sanctions to starve the poor bastards. Bombed Afghanistan more during’18 & ’19 than even Obama at his peak. Bombed Somalia more than Bush and Obama combined. Lifted rules of engagement everywhere so it was easier to kill. Tried to coerce more money from Germany and South Korea and didn’t withdraw troops from either place. Not to mention ratcheting up sanctions and enmity towards Iran and Venezuela while threatening to obliterate them and North Korea on multiple occasions. And never mind his vetoing bills that could have put a dent into our enabling the humanitarian disaster that is Yemen, and other wars, for the simple reason that he wanted to sell the Saudis more lethal weapons. Damn left, taking that all away from us.