Editor’s note: This piece has been updated with a correction note, as found at its conclusion.
Tuesday was not a good day for U.S. diplomacy.
The Justice Department announced charges against several Iranian agents for planning a brazen kidnapping attempt in New York against a prominent Brooklyn-based Iranian American author. In effect, the FBI broke up an Iranian attempt at a Jamal Khashoggi situation on U.S. soil. But get this, the State Department’s reaction was first, behind the scenes, to pressure the DOJ to mute or slow its efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice and, barring that, to dismiss the case as an isolated “law enforcement matter.”
At the same time, the Biden administration continues with its unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan in the face of a Taliban offensive. Afghan Shiites flee in terror from the Taliban advance just as their Iraqi counterparts once did from the Islamic State. Videos now show the Taliban gunning down unarmed and surrendering Afghan forces. Add to this a Taliban announcement that the group plans to crush gay people by collapsing high walls on them and requiring permits for women to leave the house. Blinken, however, says that fear of a pariah status might keep the Taliban in line. The reality is that the Taliban care as much for public opinion as the Khmer Rouge once did.
The list continues. After castigating the Trump administration for being soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin, the State Department waived sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, giving the Kremlin financial and diplomatic leverage in the heart of Europe. The idea that offering Germany a Russian olive branch would compel Berlin to cooperate with liberal democracies against China was always stupid. For Germany, commerce always trumps principle. Rather than ratchet up pressure on China, it now considers working with Berlin as part of a China-driven “Africa Quad.”
Then there is Haiti. The assassination of Haiti’s president by a band of mercenaries was tragic, and the United States is right to aid the investigation. But omitting defense security assistance from an interagency rapid reaction team puts Manhattan boardroom sensibilities above reality.
Confirmation hearings are increasingly a show, one that sheds little light on the actual policies a nominee will pursue. Nominees feign moderation but, once confirmed, pursue radical policies confident that the Senate will never use its power of the purse to enforce its oversight role. So it was with Blinken, now approaching the six-month mark of his tenure. Blinken’s worldview is the diplomatic equivalent of Saul Steinberg’s famous “View of the World from 9th Avenue” New Yorker cover, only with New York and Washington in the foreground, Europe taking up much of the rest of his world view, and both Asia and Africa largely afterthoughts.
That Manhattan worldview not only makes Jimmy Carter seem by comparison Reaganesque but also, on the world stage, appears naive. The press may fawn over the bilingual Blinken and his liberal talking points. Unlike former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a conservative Christian with a military background, Blinken is one of them. This only reinforces the bubble, however, and compounds the problem.
Blinken is the 71st secretary of state, but, as he defines his legacy, he increasingly appears like the 45th, Minnesota’s Frank Kellogg. Kellogg was a senator and President Calvin Coolidge’s ambassador to the United Kingdom before returning to Washington to take Foggy Bottom’s helm. Like Blinken, he sought to reset U.S.-Mexico relations. He is most famous, however, for the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a 1928 treaty that renounced war as an instrument of national policy. Intellectuals cheered the agreement — Europe was just a decade removed from the horrors of World War I. Kellogg took home the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize. A decade later, World War II began. Outlawing war, it turned out, was as naive as believing fear of a pariah status would transform the Taliban.
The only question for Blinken now is not whether the short-term accolades he received in Washington, New York, London, and Paris are worth the long-term price to international order — they are not — but how soon America will have to pay the price for his acting like the 20th century’s most naive secretary of state.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece suggested that “Secretary of State Antony Blinken waived sanctions on Iran’s oil trade to allow Japan and Korea to infuse billions of dollars into Iran’s failing economy.” The State Department challenged this assertion post-publication, observing that “Iran is not getting any money from the renewals. The renewals allow Japan and South Korea to draw from Iran’s overseas reserves to re-pay Japanese and Korean companies.” On further review, editors have assessed the State Department’s observation is correct. We have thus removed the relevant text and issued this correction note. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
