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President-elect Joe Biden has sent a clear message to the world and the American people with the first announcement by top officials to his cabinet and White House staff: the number one priority of the upcoming Democratic administration is to build a state-led front. United of imperialist powers in preparation for increased military pressure and total war against Russia and China.
All six nominations announced in press releases on Monday – the candidates themselves will be presented to the public later today – concern the sphere of foreign policy and national security. They are all veterans of the Obama-Biden administration, and many have been confirmed in those previous positions by a Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell, demonstrating that Biden intends to form a government entirely acceptable to the Republican right.
The six officials appointed on Monday include:
Antony Blink, Secretary of State: Blinken is a longtime National Security Assistant to Biden in both the U.S. Senate and Biden’s vice-presidency, and was Deputy Secretary of State in 2015-2016.
Jake SullivanNational Security Advisor: Sullivan succeeded Blinken as Vice President Biden’s National Security Advisor, as well as serving as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff.
April Haines, Director of National Intelligence: Haines was on Biden’s staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then on the Obama-Biden National Security Council, before serving for two years as CIA Deputy Director in 2015-2016.
Alexander MayorkasHomeland Security Secretary: The son of Cuban-born immigrants, Mayorkas is a career internal security officer who was Deputy Secretary of DHS in the Obama administration, who deported more immigrants than any previous government.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Ambassador to the United Nations: The highest-ranking African American in career overseas service, Thomas-Greenfield was appointed ambassador to Liberia by George W. Bush, then Chief of Staff of the State Department under Obama and later Assistant Secretary for African affairs. She was forced to leave Trump in 2017 and became an advisor to the Albright-Stonebridge Group, a foreign policy think tank for Democrats headed by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
John Kerry, Presidential Special Envoy for Climate: The former senator, presidential candidate and secretary of state, now 76, co-chaired Biden’s climate change task force along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He will direct a US effort to re-enter the Paris climate agreement.
The first and most obvious fact of all six candidates is that they are staunch defenders of American imperialism and Wall Street interests. Many are multimillionaires, while all are comfortably within the top tier financially. Blinken, for example, is the son of a founder of the Warburg Pincus investment bank, Donald Blinken, who served as chairman of the board of the State University of New York for 12 years.
For all the media hosannas about the “diversity” of these initial nominees – an African American, a Hispanic, two women – these aspects of their identity are completely irrelevant. It does not matter to the victim of torture in a secret CIA prison that the torturer (or his boss in Washington) is a woman. It doesn’t matter to refugee children separated from their parents by immigration officers that the DHS secretary is Hispanic. It does not matter to the victims of US military aggression that the diplomat who defends this violence in front of the world is black.
The emphasis on diversity is used to distract from the reactionary character of the incoming Biden administration’s foreign policy stance, which its apologists try to disguise by using the skin color, gender, and national origin of the staff who will perform it.
Little has been said in the media about the importance of Biden’s choice, in the midst of a nationwide and worldwide public health catastrophe that has already claimed the lives of 250,000 Americans, to be the first to announce his foreign policy team. If victory over the coronavirus was the number one priority, as Biden said during the fall campaign, why not announce those who will lead the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies with primary responsibility for fighting the pandemic?
This is a signal that the real point of difference between the Democrats and Trump is not his catastrophic performance in relation to COVID-19. While Trump now openly embraces “herd immunity” and dismisses the death toll as irrelevant, the Democrats will essentially pursue the same policy and Biden has flatly rejected any new blockade of the US economy.
Since Trump took office, the focus of the Democratic Party opposition has been on foreign policy, particularly Trump’s alleged “soft” line on Russia and his withdrawal, albeit largely rhetorical, from state commitments. United towards Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that Biden expects to be in control of US foreign policy in less than 60 days, he is showing that this will be the initial goal of policy changes.
Both leading Democratic Party newspapers pointed this out in their coverage of Biden’s team launch. The Washington Post wrote: “Biden is planning to prioritize foreign policy as a major pillar of his administration, with a promise to unite global alliances and place the United States in a more prominent position on the world stage.”
The New York Times he was even more blunt, identifying China as the main target of the new administration. In a front page profile, the Times described Blinken as “a defender of global alliances” and said he “will seek to unite skeptical international partners in a new competition with China …” He identified trade in the Indo-Pacific region, technology investments and Africa as areas where the United States would “compete with China”.
Other profiles noted that Blinken and Biden were generally aligned on foreign policy issues during the Obama administration, except on two occasions – the US attack on Libya and the US policy towards Syria – where Blinken favored a more aggressive US intervention and Biden was more cautious.
The two were completely in step with Ukraine, where Blinken played a key public role in turning Crimean secession and reunification with Russia into a major international crisis. Blinken was the main US spokesperson to support heavy sanctions against Russia, not just to punish the Putin government but the people of the country as a whole. In a speech at the time, he said sanctions were needed to “prove to the Russian people that there is a very hefty fine for supporting international criminals like” Putin.
Of the other appointees, Avril Haines is also a close personal associate of Biden, who served on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was president, then moved to the National Security Council at the Obama-Biden White House prior to the his two years at the CIA. After leaving government when Trump joined, Haines joined Blinken at the newly formed WestExec Partners, a national security think tank that provides advice to U.S. companies. Another partner was Michele Fluornoy, the former Pentagon official under Obama who is widely expected to be Biden’s choice as defense secretary.
Late Monday, following the launch of the group Biden called the “crux” of his national security team, Biden’s transition revealed that his next major cabinet pick was former Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen. to serve as secretary of the Treasury. This underscores the incoming administration’s sheer submission to Wall Street, as Yellen has been identified with the Fed’s policy of unbridled financial taps to support financial markets during the 2008-2009 Wall Street crash.
Yellen was a senior Fed official from 2004 onwards, working with then-President Ben Bernanke, moving to vice-presidency in 2009, and appointed by Obama to succeed Bernanke in 2013. Trump declined to re-appoint her for a second term in 2017. .
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