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Weissman writes: "A true liberal interventionist, Blinken puts forward a global vision that previous empires would have envied."

Vice President Joe Biden talks to Tony Blinken as their helicopter lands at Pristina Airport in Kosovo. (photo: WhiteHouse.gov)
Vice President Joe Biden talks to Tony Blinken as their helicopter lands at Pristina Airport in Kosovo. (photo: WhiteHouse.gov)


Will the Democrats Ever Get Beyond Their Urge to Intervene?

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

16 March 15

 

eet Antony John Blinken, the U.S. deputy secretary of state and a rising star to watch if Hillary Clinton becomes president, and even if she does not. Tony Blinken has “a rare sense of balance and wisdom,” says his mentor, Vice President Joe Biden. “He has the judgment, the raw substantive knowledge, and the ability to interface with leaders to do any job his country could ever ask of him.”

Though only recently in the spotlight, Blinken exemplifies the best – and most dangerous – in the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment. Why dangerous? Because of how he differs from his Republican critics, be they neo-cons, paleo-cons, or theo-cons. The cons all tend to want the United States to have its way in the world by relying primarily on money and military muscle. As Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Biden, as Obama’s deputy national security advisor, and now as John Kerry’s understudy at State, Blinken has often relied on dollars, drones, and boots on the ground. But he much prefers to use superior smarts. He has a great eagerness to woo allies and build coalitions, and he has a deep-seated belief that his country remains exceptional, indispensable, and primarily a force for good.

“Never has the United States and its government been more engaged in more places than at this particular time,” he recently told a meeting hosted by the Aspen Institute. “And if you look at what we’ve done in recent months and in recent years mobilizing, quite literally, international coalitions and countries to deal with ISIL, to deal with Ebola, to deal with climate change, to deal with Ukraine and Afghanistan, you see that leadership in action.”

“If the United States was out of the picture, imagine where we would be,” Blinken went on. “Where would we be without the United States in the campaign against ISIL? Where would we be on Ebola, Ukraine, et cetera? The fact of the matter is we are leading.”

A true liberal interventionist, Blinken puts forward a global vision that previous empires would have envied. But, in practice, it boils down to a belief that he and those who think like him should lead the world – for the good of all, of course. Blinken sincerely believes this, which deepens his zeal and threatens any hope for a less imperial foreign policy, without which Washington will never find the time, energy, or money to sustain the much-needed social and economic reforms that Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Bill de Blasio are now pursuing.

Many Democrats will find this a difficult argument to accept. For them, it’s enough that Blinken is no John McCain. Or that he is even less like Lindsey Graham, who just promised New Hampshire Republicans that the first thing he would do if elected president is call in the military to force Congress to restore the recently cut defense and intelligence budgets. Blinken would never serenade reporters with “Bomb, Bomb Iran,” nor foolishly shoot from the lip. Blinken is worldly, nuanced, and cultured. He has a superb wit in both English and French. He generally knows what he’s talking about, even when he repeatedly flip-flops, as he, Kerry, and Obama continue to do over Syria. He is rational about the advantages of making deals with Iran and Cuba, even as he supports sanctions on Venezuela and the continuation of longstanding U.S. efforts to overthrow first Hugo Chavez and then his successor, Nicolas Maduro. He talks like a humanitarian, as he did when he urged Clinton to intervene in Bosnia, and later helped push Obama to accept that, in Politico’s words, “it was in America’s interests to stop Muammar Qadhafi from slaughtering his own people.”

No one should be surprised. Blinken is in many ways a poster child for the takeover of the Democratic Party by an interventionist Wall Street and the 1%. His father Donald co-founded E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., which the Washington Post describes as “a powerhouse global venture capital firm.” A patron of the arts and major donor to the Democrats, he became Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Hungary. Tony’s uncle Alan Blinken, also a major Wall Street player and Democratic Party fund-raiser, became Clinton’s ambassador to Belgium. Tony’s mother Judith was a major figure in the arts, first in New York as manager of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and then in Paris, where she lived with Tony after divorcing Donald and marrying Samuel Pisar, a Holocaust survivor, former advisor to John F. Kennedy, and globe-trotting lawyer to movie stars, Coca Cola, and the International Olympic Committee.

The list goes on, but the point is made. Tony Blinken comes from a fascinating world and is a very talented man. It’s a real shame that he remains a limousine liberal who will hardly advance populist reform or a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Nowhere is this more important than on Ukraine and the new Cold War with Russia. Serving on the National Security Council in the 1990s, he saw first-hand how Bill Clinton followed in the footsteps of George H.W. Bush and expanded NATO toward Russia’s borders, pushing a majority of Russians to feel themselves humiliated and see themselves under threat. This expansion has proved incredibly short-sighted. One need not accept that either Russia or the United States should have a sphere of influence, or that Vladimir Putin has some historical or God-given right to protect his fellow Russian-speakers and others, whether in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, or the Baltic nations. But the evidence is overwhelming that that Clinton, both Bushes, and Barack Obama helped provoke Russia’s ultra-nationalism, which now seems destined to continue long after Putin leaves the scene. A leading figure on Obama’s NSC, Blinken himself helped promote the American-led coup in Ukraine (see here and here), and now at State continues to push a nuclear-tinged Cold War that threatens us all.

Doesn’t the ultra-sophisticated Blinken see what he’s doing? Not that I can find. But his father recently wrote an opinion piece on Huffington Post, in which he argued that “expanding NATO has enhanced Russia’s security by extending the frontiers of stability.”

“I was the American Ambassador to Hungary in 1996 under President Clinton and welcomed this expansion of NATO,” he wrote. “My reasoning, and that of the administration, was that the U.S. had a moral obligation to help the former Soviet satellites make the transition to stable democracies, and that enlargement of NATO eastward would offer them the same political, economic, social, environmental and human rights benefits that the alliance had brought to Western Europe nearly half a century before.”

The Germans, Central Europeans, and Baltic States “seized the moment,” joining NATO and an enlarged European Union, the elder Blinken concluded. But the Russians “failed to take advantage of a free and peaceful Europe by embracing a constructive relationship with NATO. Their ‘humiliation’ is self-inflicted.”

Our way or the highway – such is the arrogance and ideological blindness that the Democratic Party’s liberal interventionists have suffered since the start of the first Cold War.



A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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