'The Interview': Antony Blinken Insists He and Biden Made the Right Calls
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What challenges did Antony Blinken face during his tenure?
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. Four years ago, after the tumultuous first Trump administration, President Biden came into office promising to rebuild old alliances and defend democracy. The man tasked with doing that on the world stage was Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a longtime diplomat who'd worked with the president for decades. The message to America's allies and enemies alike was that a new era of stability was at hand. Instead, the world blew up. Secretary Blinken was beset by an escalating series of international crises almost from the beginning, from the Afghanistan withdrawal to Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Hamas's attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza and conflict in the wider Middle East.
All the while, Blinken championed this promise of robust American diplomacy to solve the world's many problems. But as the Biden administration winds down, those conflicts around the world rage on. A new Trump administration is set to retreat from the very alliances and institutions Blinken championed. And what role America will play in the changing global order is an open question.
How did the Biden administration's foreign policy evolve?
On Thursday, I sat down with Blinken at the State Department for a wide-ranging conversation about the world he's leaving behind, which, despite it all, he argues, is better than the one he inherited. Here's my conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Secretary Blinken, four years ago, you inherited the world from President Trump. And now you're about to hand it back to him. Your tenure has been an unprecedented interregnum, if you will. Have you thought about what a strange position that is to be in?
Well, I think a lot about the two sides of this coin that you just alluded to, what we inherited and what we're handing off. In terms of what we inherited, it's so easy to lose sight because people are focused understandably on the present and on the future, not on the past. But if you just look back four years, when we took office, we inherited arguably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We inherited the worst public health crisis in at least 100 years. We had a country that was divided, and we had fraught relationships with allies and partners around the world, and a perception from our adversaries, whether it was Russia, whether it was China, other countries, that the United States was in inexorable decline.
Today, as I sit with you and as we look at all of the terrain we've traveled these last four years, I think we hand over an America in a much, much stronger position. Having come through the economic crisis, having come through the health crisis, and having changed much for the better our position around the world because we've made those investments in alliances and partnerships stronger.
Thinking back to when you first came into office, you know, President Biden painted a portrait of a world that was seeing a sort of battle between democracy and autocracy, a phrase that was repeatedly used. Yet at home, voters have been skeptical of that fight. Many voters bought into Trump's vision of an America that should be less involved in the world. Why don't you think that the Biden administration and you in particular were able to convince voters of the benefit of what you have been endeavoring to do these past few years?
I'm not sure that I agree with the premise of the question, which is, from what I see, from what I read, from the analysis that I see, most Americans want us to be engaged in the world. They want to make sure that we stay out of wars, that we avoid conflict, which is exactly what we've done, but they want to see the United States engaged. And I think they understand that if we're not engaged, If we're not leading, then one of two things is likely. Someone else will do it in our place and probably not in a way that reflects our interests and our values. Maybe it's China, maybe it's some other country. Or maybe just as bad, no one does it. And then you're likely to have a vacuum that's filled by bad things before it's filled with good things. And inevitably, that comes back to bite us.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What challenges did Antony Blinken face during his tenure?
0:05–1:21
2
How did the Biden administration's foreign policy evolve?
1:21–13:40
3
What are the implications of the Afghanistan withdrawal?
13:40–18:34
4
How did the Ukraine conflict shape U.S. foreign policy?
18:34–36:03
5
What is the current state of U.S.-China relations?
36:03–44:36
6
How has the war in Gaza influenced U.S. diplomacy?
44:36–51:55
Speakers
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