{"id":221340,"date":"2020-11-29T08:54:31","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T08:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=221340"},"modified":"2020-12-02T05:18:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T05:18:06","slug":"joe-bidens-interventionist-secretary-of-state-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=221340","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden\u2019s Interventionist Secretary of State Pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave DeCamp \u2013 Antiwar.com Nov 23, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

On Monday, Joe Biden announced he will nominate his long-time advisor Anthony Blinken<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Blinken was Biden\u2019s top aide in 2002<\/a> when Biden was leading the charge<\/a> in the Senate to give George W. Bush his invasion of Iraq. In 2006, Biden penned an Op-ed for The New York Times<\/em><\/a> that called for dividing Iraq into three separate autonomous zones with a central government in Baghdad, later referred to as a \u201csoft partition.\u201d According to the Times<\/em><\/a>, Blinken helped craft Biden\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n

Blinken served various posts in the Obama administration. First, as then-Vice President Joe Biden\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Seen as a loyal Biden aide, Blinken surprised some in the White House<\/a> when he broke with Biden and supported military intervention in Libya in 2011, according to The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>. Blinken also called for US action in Syria after Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. Sources told the Post<\/em> in 2013 that Blinken \u201cwas less enthusiastic than Biden\u201d about Obama seeking Congressional approval for a military strike on Syria.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Blinken co-authored an Op-ed in The Washington Post<\/em><\/a> with neoconservative Robert Kagan. The piece argued against President Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy and said the US did \u201ctoo little\u201d in Syria. \u201cWithout bringing appropriate power to bear [in Syria], no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed,\u201d the article reads.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cWe have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center,\u201d Blinken said in April 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Blinken joined over two dozen former Obama administration officials<\/a> and signed a letter calling for an end to US support for the war in Yemen. But in 2019, Blinken\u2019s name was noticeably absent from a similar letter<\/a> that included Obama-era officials like Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes.<\/p>\n

One area where a Biden administration could be less hawkish than a Trump administration is Iran. Blinken has been critical of President Trump\u2019s decision<\/a> 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. \u201c[Biden] would seek to build on the nuclear deal to make it longer and stronger if Iran returns to strict compliance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While Blinken is a proponent of the JCPOA, it\u2019s worth noting that Iran hawks seem happy with Biden\u2019s choice. Mark Dubowitz, the head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that regularly calls for regime change in Tehran<\/a>, celebrated Blinken\u2019s nomination. Dubowitz wrote on Twitter<\/a> that Blinken and Michele Flournoy, a front runner to be Biden\u2019s secretary of defense, would make \u201ca superb national security team. The country will be very fortunate to have them in public service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another force that will clash with Biden and Blinken\u2019s 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<\/a> that gives Israel $38 billion in military aid over the course of a decade, until 2027.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Biden was announced the winner of the presidential election, Israeli sources<\/a> 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\u2019s support for Israel would be unconditional.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he\u2019s committed to it. And that would be the policy of the Biden administration,\u201d Blinken said in May.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet the new boss \u2026 same as the old boss: Joe Biden choice for Secretary of State has a long history of supporting U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":221342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221340"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222071,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221340\/revisions\/222071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/221342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}