The first major Cabinet nomination by President-elect Joe Biden is a reassuring one. Biden has selected Antony John Blinken to be his new secretary of state. There is some good news, some bad news, and some “best” news for Ukrainians in this nomination.
First, the best news is that Biden has passed over Susan Rice – a close associate and national security adviser to President Obama – who was responsible for keeping lethal weapons from reaching Ukraine, and who (many Ukrainian-Americans feared) would be Biden’s first choice.
The good news is that Blinken is a 58-year old, widely respected, knowledgeable foreign affairs expert with a coherent and well-established outlook on Russia and Ukraine that removes much of the uncertainties and fears aroused by President Donald J. Trump in his references about Ukraine and his relations with Vladimir Putin.
The bad news is that he was Biden’s close aide and Obama’s deputy secretary of state in a central role in responding to the Crimean and Donbas crises with all their disastrous consequences for Ukraine.
However, there is reason to believe that Blinken, in his new role and with the newly elected president’s full support, will steer a course that will be both unfavorable for Russia (in particular its oligarchic elite) and supportive for Ukraine’s economic and military development. In an article appearing this very day on Newsweek’s website, Blinken vowed to “revitalize American global leadership, strengthen strained U.S. alliances and champion democracy and human rights worldwide.”
Blinken believes that undermining Russia in the international community and isolating it politically diminishes its power by weakening its geopolitical influence. He criticized Trump for being too soft on Putin in taking Putin’s position over that of his own intelligence agencies, and failing to do anything when told that Russia had put bounty on the heads of US troops in Afghanistan. He promised that President Biden “would be in the business of confronting Putin for his aggressions, not embracing him.”
However, he also defended the Obama administration’s responses in Crimea which consisted largely of sanctions on Russia but failed to contain Putin’s aggression. In addition, and even more importantly, the Obama/Biden Administration allowed Putin’s North Stream 2 project to start and move forward without any meaningful efforts to stop it. Trump stopped it in a day. Further sanctions to prevent the pipeline from being completed may be the first litmus test of the Biden administration’s seriousness in applying tough economic pressures on Russia.
In a 2017 op-ed in the New York Times. Blinken applauded Trump for what he saw as the beginning of a united front among his advisers in recognizing Russia’s aggression as the “gross violation of the most basic norms of international conduct….for one country to change the borders of another by force.” He endorsed the appointment of Kurt Volker to run point on Ukraine policy, and the Administration’s continuance of tough sanctions on Russia. In addition, he approved of Trump’s sustaining efforts to strengthen Europe’s western flank and the multibillion-dollar European Reassurance Initiative.
But, perhaps most gratifying is Blinken’s deviation from Obama’s policies in his acknowledgment that “defensive weapons for Ukraine is an idea whose time has come. What gives Mr. Putin pause …in taking another whole bite out of the country – is the knowledge that his troops would be bloodied in the doing.” He concludes that “against all expectations, the Trump Administration is not giving up on Ukraine and going back to business as usual with Moscow. Russia can stay where it is. But so will the US-led front against aggression.” Such favorable comments by a life-time liberal Democrat supporter on Trump foreign policy decisions is a rarity in today’s highly charged partisan political environment and a credit to Blinken’s priority interest in good policy rather than good politics.
Blinken stands firm on both Obama’s and Biden’s position that the U.S. will not recognize Crimean annexation but believes that multilateral diplomacy and stronger economic pressures – especially on the assets held abroad by Russian oligarchs – may prod Russia out of the Donbas. He believes that the Minsk agreement is the key to a final resolution and that “Ukrainians have made a very significant effort to implement their responsibilities under the Minsk accords; but, unfortunately, the same can not be said for the separatists in Russia.” Blinken is likely to defer closely to Kurt Volker’s very favorable (for Ukraine) observations on the complexities and ramifications of those accords. He believes that Putin’s regime must be regarded as a criminal one that has been looting its nation and that Russians should be apprised of their leaders’ conduct in office. Here, too, there is an opportunity for Blinken to impress on the world America’s respect for the rule of international law by reaching beyond the Minsk accords to the more basic and binding treaty underpinning America’s and Russia’s relationship with Ukraine, the Budapest Memorandum.
Blinken was born in New York City where he attended the Dalton School before moving to Paris to study at the Ecole Jeannine Manuel. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Harvard University he earned a J.D. degree at Columbia Law School. He has held foreign policy positions in two administrations over two decades. Between 2002and 2008 he was appointed staff director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Blinken was pivotal in the formulation of the Obama Administration’s response to the Crimean crisis, emphasizing that a “wide and expansive sanctions regime was critical, focusing on Putin’s inner circle and the Russian public at large.”
In 2002, Blinken married Evan Ryan in a bi-denominational ceremony officiated by a rabbi and priest at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington D.C.
