While Joe Biden must unveil his first choices for the future US government, two months before his inauguration, he appears according to several media, including the New York Times and Bloomberg, that the Democrat intends to appoint as Secretary of State Antony Blinken .

According to the Financial Times, which describes him as Joe Biden's alter-ego, his name is also cited for the strategic post of national security adviser along with that of Susan Rice, the former US ambassador to the United Nations.

A pragmatic diplomat and a fine connoisseur of Europe, the former US Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, born in 1962, has been in Democratic diplomatic circles for several decades.

Member of the National Security Council of President Bill Clinton (between 1994 and 2001), he left the administration to join the Senate, where he became a member of the staff of the Committee on Foreign Relations then chaired by a certain Joe Biden (2002 - 2008).

After Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, Joe Biden, then vice-president, recalled his right-hand man and installed him as national security adviser to the vice-presidency.

This is where Barack Obama notices him and in turn appoints him Deputy National Security Advisor to the Presidency, then, in 2015, Deputy Secretary of State, alongside John Kerry, with whom he actively participates in the negotiations. of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Present at almost all sensitive meetings, he appears in particular on the famous photo of the "situation room" of the White House, broadcast on May 2, 2011, when Barack Obama and the most important American officials followed the capture of Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani villa in Abbottabad.

A very special relationship with France

Antony Blinken is very attached to multilateralism, as a specialist in transatlantic relations, and to American values.

Thus, he considers that it is the duty of American diplomacy to promote democracy and defend human rights.

A primordial question in his eyes, and in those of his late Franco-American father-in-law Samuel Pisar, one of the youngest survivors of the Shoah, who became a writer, international lawyer and special advisor to John Kennedy.

In the name of these ideals, Antony Blinken had pleaded for military action against Syria, in 2013, when the Assad regime was accused of having used chemical weapons.

A path that President Obama ultimately refused to follow, despite France's support for this strategy and the red lines he had set in Damascus.

"As leaders of the international community, the United States has its share of responsibility in the Syrian conflict; there are times, we will never know, it may be that our diplomacy, supported by the highly targeted use force, could have made the difference and put pressure on Bashar al-Assad to come to the negotiating table for a transition, "he told France 24 in May 2017.

Unconditional fan of the Beatles, Antony Blinken, himself the son and nephew of diplomats, has a very special relationship with France, and in particular with Paris, where his family lived in an apartment located on avenue Foch.

After passing his baccalaureate (schooling at the École Jeannine Manuel, a French bilingual and international school) and studying law in the French capital in the 1970s, he returned to the United States and obtained degrees at Harvard and Columbia. , At New York.

Supported by Joe Biden since the announcement of his candidacy for the American presidency, his probable appointment must serve to restore the traditional diplomatic doctrine of the United States on which the Trump administration had turned its back.

During several interviews granted in recent years to France 24 in the language of Molière, Antony Blinken has never ceased to deplore the "erratic and impulsive" diplomacy of President Donald Trump, and to call for the restoration of American leadership. .

"We have a totally different view of the world and of the role of the United States in the world," Antony Blinken told France 24 in June 2017. For us, under the Obama administration, we were convinced that there were 'win-win' solutions, where everyone could register success and progress. For President Trump, there are only zero-sum questions, where you need a winner and a loser (...), for me , the world doesn't work like that. " 

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