Interventionist guitarist

The US Secretary of State under Bayden will be Tony Blinken. This is how he will change the American external course (and what to wait for Russia)

Three weeks after the election of the US President, the current President Donald Trump finally initiated the process of transferring power. An important part of it is the selection of candidates for members of the new administration. And the most important of the appointments of the elected President Joe Biden is the position of Secretary of State, who, as the head of the State Department, will head the entire foreign policy of the United States. Baiden appointed his old acquaintance and a colleague for the administration of Barack Obama - Anthony Blinken. At the request of Medusa, the journalist and photographer Evgeny Feldman figured out why this choice was inevitable and what the starting positions of the new Secretary of State look like.

The elegant building of the huge royal theater in Wilmington - the largest city of Delaware - was built in the 18th century. It changed the owners many times, from the hotel it turned into a cinema and was abandoned in 1959. For almost half a century it fell slowly, but in 2008 it suddenly came to life: they left the facade from the building, they carried out a complete reconstruction inside, and the cinema was redone to the concert hall.

The pandemic of Coronavirus threatened to re -turn the theater into ruins again, but unexpectedly the central events of American politicians began to take place here: black SUVs with flashing lights scurried around, and the hall filled the flat blue light from the huge screens installed on the stage. Joe Biden, who lived in Wilmington from the age of nine and then represented the Deader in the US Senate, made this building the headquarters of his campaign. Hence, all the spring and summer of 2020, in a video conference mode, he was agitation, on the stage of this theater a public part of the process of transferring power is now taking place.

On November 24, 2020, 58-year-old Anthony Blinken, whom Baiden chose as a Secretary of State, head of the foreign ministry, entered the microphone on the forefront. After the words of gratitude to the chosen president, family and colleagues, Blinken told a story worthy of the theater scene.

“My father served in the Air Force during the Second World War, and then became the ambassador of the United States [in Hungary]. He is an example for me and my hero. And my stepfather, Samuel Pizar , was the only child from his school who managed to survive the Holocaust, ”said the future Secretary of State. - At the end of the war, he managed to escape during the “march of the dead” in Bavaria. Hiding, he saw a tank - but not with an iron cross, but with a white five -pointed star. He ran up and in the opening hatch saw an Afro-American infantryman. Having fallen to his knees, his stepfather said the only English -speaking words that his mother taught him before the war: “God bless America”. ”

Who is Anthony Biginen?

Blinken was born in 1962, grew up in New York and Paris. He studied at Harvard, and received a degree in jurisprudence at Columbia University. In 1988, together with his father Anthony, he worked at the election headquarters of candidate Michael Dukakis, who defeated Joe Bayden during the primaries of the Democrats (though the presidential election Dukakis with a devastating score lost George Bush - the eldest).

Since then, Blinken managed to work in the commission on international affairs in the Senate and on both democrats. Under Bill Clinton, he was a member of the National Security Council and was an adviser to the president, under Obama he became deputy Secretary of State. All this time, at every important fork, he supported the actions of the presidents-even the Republican Bush Jr. in his decision to invade Iraq.

Blinken advocated sanctions against Russia in 2014, supported the campaign in Libya (Biden was against), the attack of Saudi Arabia on Yemen and the supply of weapons to the Syrian rebels. He called Obama's decision to start the murder of Osama Bin Laden "the most daring decision of the leader that I have ever seen." Blinken believes that the peaceful resolution of the conflict is more likely if the other side knows that war is possible.

However, he recognized the post -fact of a mistake in Syria, saying that "we could not prevent a terrifying number of deaths, and this will be with me until the end of my days." He also said that "in Syria we did the right thing, that we did not repeat Iraq's mistake and did not fit too deep - but made a reverse mistake and did not fit enough."

Little is known about the personal life of Blinken. He is married to Evan Ryan, from 2013 to 2017, who worked as the head of the State Department of Education and Culture. They got married in 2002, Ryan, who was born in the family of Irish Catholics, did not accept the religion (and surname) of her husband, so the wedding ceremony was carried out by representatives of both faiths: the rabbi from Blinken and the Catholic priest from the wife.

Blinken is known as a large fan of rock music (on Twitter he calls himself bitloman) and a professional guitarist: he even has a Spotify page with songs of his own composition.

Why did Biden choose Enthony Blinken?

In addition to the key figures of the administration and ministries, the new president will have to appoint four thousand civil servants, some of which should be approved by the Senate. All of them must be checked: many need a secret admission; New officials need access to government computer systems and so on. In addition, they must meet with leaving colleagues to transfer cases.

Usually this process begins the next morning after the election day in early November, but Donald Trump, refusing to accept the voting results, tightened the start for three weeks. When he still surrendered and allowed the transition process, the first actions of Biden showed that he emphasized to return to the “normal” presidency.

Both American parties have their own personnel officials. Their names do not fall into the ballot, but they consistently rise higher and higher with each new president from their party. For example, Colin Powell under Reagan was an adviser to national security, under Bush Starsh-the chairman of the United Committee of the Chiefs of Staff, under Bush Jr. became a Secretary of State. Eric Holder was a district prosecutor at the beginning of the term of Bill Clinton, deputy prosecutor general at the end and general prosecutor at Obama.

Trump interrupted the careers of many careerists by the Republicans. The head of his administration Rins Pribus, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the head of the Ministry of Finance Stephen Mnuchin and other appointments of Trump had never worked in state structures before. Bidden sequentially shows that he intends to return to the traditional approach. “The boring candidates who can be shaking and appointed in the middle of the night, and by morning they will safely sit down for work,” they describe the logic of his appointments.

He will need to conduct all the candidates through a statement in the Senate, where, probably, the majority will have the majority of the Republicans - and at the same time try not to disappoint the new left flank of the Democrats. That is why the list of Biden is quite famous, but at the same time quite inconspicuous people who consistently built a career in the government.

The new special representative of the President of the climate, John Kerry, was previously Secretary of State, the new head of the administration Ron Claine held the same position in the office of Vice President Biden, and the head of intelligence Everyl Haynes worked as deputy director of the CIA and deputy adviser to the president for intelligence.

The exactly the same consistent career was built by Blinken himself, who correctly served all the democrats and agreed with their key decisions.

How did US foreign policy look at Trump?

As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a difficult inheritance will get - which he himself actively criticized, already leaving the Obama administration and becoming a private person.

“The world does not organize itself,” wrote Blinken in the column in The New York Times at the end of the first year of Trump's presidency. “In the absence of the involved American diplomacy, other countries will determine the world agenda, establish rules and dominate international institutions”, so Blinken described the risks that he sees in the departure from the traditions of American foreign policy.

The Secretary of State of Rex Tillerson, who, before appointing Trump on this post, had no experience either in diplomacy or in public administration (and lasted a little longer than a year in this position), Blinken criticized the massive terms of personnel, during which the department lost 60% of the personnel diplomats.

What did Trump do?

During the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump promised to get from other countries - NATO participants of fair contributions approaching the share of GDP to the fact that the United States pays - 3.42%.

During his reign, most of the European countries really increased the share of deductions for defense and the work of the Alliance, only the increase in the increase was signed back in 2014, immediately after the accession of Crimea and a year before the start of Trump's election campaign.

At the same time, the president’s behavior significantly harmed the relations of the United States with many closest allies: almost all the leaders of the Western countries publicly criticized the president, and the English ambassador Kim Darrok wrote in leaked correspondence that “this administration would not become more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; Less diplomatically awkward. "

In addition, Trump derived the United States from several settlement agreements that he called disadvantageous for the country. In 2017, he announced the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, obliging the participating country to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In 2020, the United States left WHO - accusing the organization of China to help the danger of coronavirus in the early days of its spread.

In addition, Trump fulfilled a pre -election promise in relation to trade agreements. Two of them - transatlantic and transisthoiskean - were developed under Obama, and Trump’s victory destroyed them at the stage of negotiations. This dealt a political blow to the positions of the United States as forces uniting the country around the world into trade and political blocs.

Whether in the termination of negotiations there was a positive effect for the economy and especially for the return of workplaces in America, it is difficult to evaluate, because the data over the past year is too distorted by the effect of coronavirus. Trump, however, announced the triumph of his policy.

The third agreement, North American Nafta, was broken and re -signed in 2019, and ratified in July 2020. The effect of this is even more difficult to assess - but commentators praised new measures that protect the rights of workers in Mexico and helping the digital economy, and criticized protectionist measures that protect jobs in the United States at the cost of increasing the cost of products.

Duties and other protectionist measures-it would seem impossible in the platform of the Republican politician-became the important idea of ​​Trump and in relations with China, in respect of which he began a full-fledged trade war. It lasted almost two years and rather harmed both participating countries: Trump managed to reduce the trade deficit of his country, but at the cost of this was the increase in prices for American consumers and financial difficulties for agriculture.

The first phase of the agreement, signed in January of this year, obliged China to double the volume of trade with American farmers-but these and many other clauses of the agreement are now unsuitable due to the crisis caused by coronavirus. Trump failed to solve his main task: back in January, before the pandemic, the index evaluating the workload of American factories fell to a minimum in 10 years.

All this time, not only Secretary of State Rex Tilleryson and Mike Pompeo, who replaced him in 2018, was engaged in trade relations with China and Mexico, but also the son -in -law of Trump Jared Kushner. This structure caused a lot of friction.

And Trump himself often pushed the Secretary of State from diplomatic processes - as, for example, in relations with the leader of North Korea Kim Jong -un. Over the four years of the country's presidency, the country was close to war (in 2017, the leaders of the two countries exchanged insults), then quickly became close (in 2018, Trump became the first president of the United States to step on the land of North Korea, and the rulers exchanged letters praising each other for a long time). And now relations have returned to the same state as before the Republican came to power: tests of new missiles alternate with threats of new sanctions.

In addition, Trump has repeatedly crossed out the diplomatic efforts of the State Department with his tweets. In December 2018, at the summit of the heads of the Ministry of Defense 13 of the Western Coalition countries, the fight against ISIS was discussed: all participants agreed that they would reach a decisive fracture in the struggle, but it is important not to declare victory and continue the campaign until the terrorist organization was completely destroyed.

Two weeks later, Trump wrote on Twitter that ISIS was defeated, and it was time to return American soldiers home. Member of the summit, then US Minister of Defense John Mattis, resigned in protest.

Trump instructed his son-in-law Kushner to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He proposed several absurd options for a peace agreement, being confident that the parties would agree to the world if the United States can convince them of this financial benefit arising from this. As a result, peaceful negotiations fell apart: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed Trump a fake video in which the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for the murders of children. The next morning Trump yelled on the Abbas: “Killer! Liar! I thought you were a wise elderly person to whom I can trust, and you are just a killer! ” (This was written in the ninth chapter of his book “Fury” journalist Bob Woodword).

Already in the second half of his term, Trump publicly submitted the draft peace agreement, but the Palestinians and Israeli settlers announced the refusal to fulfill its conditions.

Nevertheless, it was in the Middle East that Trump and Kushner managed to achieve his main success. Thanks to trilateral negotiations with the participation of the United States from August this year, the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan have long recognized Israel to Egypt. Perhaps, before the January inauguration of Biden, several more Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, will join them.

All closer to January 20, 2021 - the moment when Joe Biden will become president. In the interval between the lost elections and the inauguration of the new president, Trump accelerates the withdrawal of the American army from Afghanistan, imposes sanctions against Chinese companies and breaks up a possible return to the “nuclear deal” with Iran.

What tasks will the new US Secretary of State will have to solve?

On December 2, 2020, the New York Times was an interview with the elected US President Joe Bayden, in which he also listed the main foreign policy goals of the new administration.

Russia in an interview is mentioned exactly once, after a comma with the rest of the signathers of the Iranian “nuclear transaction”, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States in May 2018. Biden says that the restoration of this contract will be one of the two priorities of the foreign policy of his administration. He wants to attract not only countries that signed the original contract - including Russia - but also a number of Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East, primarily the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The second most important direction of American diplomacy under Bayden is relations with China. In an interview, the elected president says that he is not ready to immediately cancel the 25 percent fee from China, which his predecessor introduced, and is not going to make any sharp moves at all. The goal of the Biden administration, according to him, is to restore the alliance of European and Asian states, with which the United States will be able to develop a unified consistent strategy of relations with China.

Which the Chinese leadership is unlikely to like it, writes The New York Times - they had his own disagreements with Trump, but Beijing at least could be sure that the prospects for the global anti -Chinese coalition were rather foggy. The new Secretary of State should begin to restore old and the creation of new global alliances with the United States as a leader.

Although Bigiden knows Bayden for a long time, he worked as his national security adviser and is known for the support of the policy of the presidential administrations that he worked for, he is a fairly independent official with his ideas about the US foreign policy course, Jill Dortorti, a former chef of the Moscow Bureau of CNN and analyst at the Center for Woodlon Wilson, explains.

According to her, unlike the Russian Foreign Ministry, the US State Department, even formally, is the same foreign policy department, has more independence in decision -making: a Secretary of State is rather an adviser than a subordinate of the president.

It believes that Blinken looks like a supporter of the active US intervention in international affairs, but at the same time he is quite pragmatic to understand: America cannot afford another war. Более вероятно, что в этой роли он постарается как можно скорее восстановить сотрудничество с союзниками США, а также членство страны в Парижском соглашении по климату , за столом переговоров с Ираном по «ядерной сделке» и с Россией — по новому договору об ограничении ядерных вооружений.

Это и будет первой важнейшей задачей новой администрации, считает Джилл Доэрти — ведь срок действия СНВ-III, подписанного в 2010 году Обамой и Дмитрием Медведевым, истекает вскоре после вступления Байдена в свои полномочия президента — в феврале 2021 года.

Но в российско-американских отношениях, говорит в комментарии «Медузе» Федор Лукьянов, главный редактор журнала «Россия в глобальной политике» и председатель президиума Совета по внешней и оборонной политике, есть одна существенная проблема: в них не осталось никакой повестки, которая была бы приоритетной для обеих сторон.

Продление договора СНВ, говорит Лукьянов — это хороший жест, который показывает, что стороны ответственно относятся к договоренностям. Но пока нет никаких оснований полагать, что, продлив СНВ, Россия и США возьмутся за новые формы контроля над вооружениями и обеспечения стратегической стабильности. Что касается Ирана, отмечает Лукьянов, Россия действительно была активным участником переговоров 2015 года, но новый раунд переговоров по «ядерной сделке» администрация Байдена может объявить на своих условиях — и Иран будет вынужден согласиться, так как очень рассчитывает на снятие санкций. Поэтому такую же активную роль, как в 2015 году, Россия уже вряд ли будет играть — да это в целом и не российский вопрос.

Что касается внешнеполитических трендов, напрямую касающихся России, Федор Лукьянов отмечает возможные амбиции команды Байдена добиться большего успеха на Ближнем Востоке, чем Трамп, — что может привести к локальной напряженности, например, в Сирии.

Кроме того, США при госсекретаре Блинкене могут начать уделять больше внимания постсоветскому пространству: Украине, Беларуси, Молдове и так далее. Не факт, считает Лукьянов, что США реально смогут на что-то влиять в этой сфере, но атмосфера может стать еще более нервозной. Но уже ясно, что приоритетом американской внешней политики эта область не будет. И зачем нужны конструктивные отношения с Россией — вечным раздражителем, за исключением разве что ядерной сферы, в США не понимают, уверен Лукьянов.

Евгений Фельдман при участии Алексея Ковалева