Biden's expected Secretary of State

While Mike Pompeo has remained a domestic politician throughout his tenure as secretary of state, giving the lion’s share of his interviews to conservative radio stations in the midwest, for example, Blinken is very much a born internationalist.

He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar and play football (soccer). [...] Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists.

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All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.

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News of his expected nomination was quickly welcomed by Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ chief foreign policy adviser.

“This is a good choice. Tony has the strong confidence of the president-elect and the knowledge and experience for the important work of rebuilding US diplomacy,” Duss wrote on Twitter.

“It will also be a new and great thing to have a top diplomat who has regularly engaged with progressive grassroots.”

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Those who know Blinken well insist that his commitment to human rights is genuine and rooted in experience. He is the stepson of a Holocaust survivor and worked in the Clinton White House on the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo.

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After working in Bill Clinton’s national security council, he became Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser in the Senate in 2002, as staff director on the foreign relations committee, and worked on Biden’s failed presidential bid in 2008.

After Obama picked Biden as vice-president, Blinken returned to the White House as his national security adviser.

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In the last two years of the Obama administration, Blinken served as deputy secretary of state. His return in the top job then is the embodiment of continuity. But in recent interviews, he has acknowledged the mistakes and regrets of the Obama era.

On the decision not to intervene in any significant way in Syria (a decision Blinken opposed), he told CBS News: “We failed to prevent a horrific loss of life. We failed to prevent massive displacement … something I will take with me for the rest of my days.”

He also signed an open letter with other former Obama officials in 2018, acknowledging that the initial support they gave to the Saudi war in Yemen had not succeeded in limiting or ending the war and had mutated into a blank check under the Trump administration, resulting in devastating civilian casualties. A Biden administration is expected to cut off military involvement in the conflict.

  Guardian

One problem (and it's a problem in both Republican and Democratic administrations):

Blinken has been adamant about the Biden administration’s commitment to Israel’s security and said military support would not be made dependent on Israel’s policy decisions.

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The policy struggles will eventually rise to the fore but Blinken – who at 58 arrives at the state department as the father of two young children – is likely to begin with an extended honeymoon simply by not being Pompeo and having the stated desire to lead the US back towards leadership on the world stage on global issues like Covid, climate and non-proliferation.

As long as they don't try to shove foreign leaders aside to resume a stranglehold on all global issue decisions. The one thing that has been positive about Trump's reign of terror is that America's outsized role in global affairs has been pared back to something more equitable for other countries.

Also, I hope they quickly reinstate the good civil servants who left or were driven out of the State Department by Trump.