Secretary of State designate Antony Blinken gives “high-priority” to strengthening ties with India.
As President-elect Joe Biden announced key members of his foreign policy and national security team, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris called them “crisis-tested national security and foreign policy leaders” that America needs.
“President-elect Biden and I know that the moment we walk into the White House, we will inherit a series of unprecedented challenges,” the Indian American leader said Monday.
“These crisis-tested national security and foreign policy leaders have the knowledge and expertise to keep our country safe and restore and advance America’s leadership around the world,” Harris said.
“They represent the best of America,” she said noting, “They come from different places and reflect different life experiences.”
“But they all share an unwavering belief in America’s ideals and an unshakeable commitment to democracy and the rule of law,” she said. “And they are the leaders America needs to help meet the challenges of this moment — and those that lie ahead.”
“We have no time to lose when it comes to our national security and foreign policy,” said Biden. “I need a team ready on Day One to help me reclaim America’s seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face, and advance our security, prosperity, and values.”
The nominees announced Monday include Antony Blinken, as Secretary of State, who has said that strengthening ties with India would be a “high-priority” in the new administration.
From “Biden’s perspective, strengthening and deepening the relationship with India is going to be a very high priority,” Blinken said during the presidential campaign.
Blinken has met with Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar when he was the foreign secretary and Blinken was the deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration.
India is “fair, stable, and hopefully increasingly democratic and it’s vital to being able to tackle some of these big global challenges,” Blinken said during a talk at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, in July.
“It’s usually important to the future of the Indo-Pacific and the kind of order that we all want,” he said affirming President Donald Trump’s emphasis on the region as a counterbalance to China.
Speaking of the differences Biden has with India, Blinken said, “You’re always better engaging with a partner and a vitally important one like India, when you can speak frankly and directly about areas where you have differences even as you’re working to build greater cooperation and strengthen the relationship going forward.”
“That would be the approach and again, I think we’ve seen evidence that it works,” he said.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry was named as the special presidential envoy for climate and as a member of the National Security Council, highlighting the high-level of importance Biden places on the environment.
A close adviser to Biden, Jake Sullivan has been designated national security advisor. He was Biden’s national secretary advisor when he was the vice president.
Avril Haines, who was designated for the director of national intelligence, will become the first woman to head the intelligence community.
She is a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and deputy national security advisor and had worked with Biden when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Alejandro Mayorkas is the designee for Secretary of Homeland Security, the first Latino named for the post.
For permanent representative to the United Nations, Biden has designated Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who will get a cabinet rank. She is a former assistant secretary of state in charge of Africa.