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Biden Picks Foreign Affairs Veteran as Secretary of State Nominee

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has selected one of his
   closest foreign affairs advisers, Antony Blinken, to be secretary of
   state in his new administration, as the projected winner of the U.S.
   election appears set to re-engage the United States in an array of
   global alliances that President Donald Trump had abandoned.
   The 58-year-old Blinken is a veteran of U.S. foreign affairs
   decision-making for two decades, and according to multiple news
   accounts, agrees with Biden on the need for the U.S. to play a leading
   role again in world affairs, a change from Trump's "America First"
   credo that at times left the United States at odds with other long-time
   Western allies.
   In his first days in office after the January 20 inauguration, Biden
   plans to overturn Trump policies and rejoin the Paris climate
   agreement, stop the U.S. exit from the World Health Organization and
   attempt to again join other nations in the international pact to curb
   Iran's nuclear weapons development.
   Blinken served first under former President Bill Clinton, then later as
   deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser under
   former Democratic President Barack Obama when Biden was vice president.
   And while Republican former President George W, Bush was in power,
   Blinken was the Democratic staff director for the Senate Foreign
   Relations Committee.
   In addition to Blinken's nomination, which must be approved by the
   Senate, Biden transition officials told news media that the incoming
   U.S. leader plans to name two other foreign policy veterans to key
   positions -- Jake Sullivan as national security adviser and Linda
   Thomas-Greenfield as his nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United
   Nations.

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