https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/american-foreign-policy/
The ongoing crisis in American culture has brought two seemingly unrelated trends to the forefront: advocacy of technocratic expertise aimed at solving global issues, and condemnation of America’s allegedly irredeemable racism. American diplomacy exemplifies these trends through the figures of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Both trends are founded in Puritanical moralism, according to which salvation is difficult if not impossible and “crisis” is a tool for accumulating power.
Though American foreign policy has always vacillated, its actual practice has managed at least the appearance of consistency. But in a period when American society as a whole is undergoing a psychodrama regarding race, class, history, climate, and “whiteness,” it is not surprising that diplomatic practitioners have been affected.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield are telling examples of both intellectual trends among American elites and the institution of American diplomacy. For both, there are extraordinary crises that must be addressed immediately by the global community. But the contrasts between Blinken’s level presentation of globally oriented technocratic “expertise” and Thomas-Greenfield’s full-bore anti-Americanism cannot be more profound. In neither case do American interests come first. Can they been reconciled or explained?
Antony Blinken’s pedigree as a certified internationalist (and fluent French speaker) need not be recapitulated. His return to the State Department was heralded as the return of American probity and leadership. What are his priorities and methods? His remarks to the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate are indicative. “What the United States can do at home can make a significant contribution toward keeping the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” he stated, without elaboration. “But of course, no country can overcome this existential threat alone.”
Elsewhere, Blinken has depicted human-induced climate change as a veritable Frankstein’s monster causing “[m]ore frequent and more intense storms; longer dry spells; bigger floods; more extreme heat and more extreme cold; faster sea level rise; more people displaced; more pollution; more asthma,” as well as “Higher health costs; less predictable seasons for farmers. And all of that will hit low-income, black and brown communities the hardest.” Almost as bad, “Russia is exploiting this change to try to exert control over new spaces. It is modernizing its bases in the Arctic and building new ones, including one just 300 miles from Alaska. China is increasing its presence in the Arctic, too.”
To address these unfolding horrors, America will put “climate crisis at the center of our foreign policy and national security, as President Biden instructed us to do in his first week in office. That means taking into account how every bilateral and multilateral engagement—every policy decision—will impact our goal of putting the world on a safer, more sustainable path.” The US will then “mobilize resources, institutional know-how, technical expertise from across our government, the private sector, NGOs, and research universities” and “emphasize assisting the countries being hit hardest by climate change,” notably by “leveraging instruments like the financing provided by the Export-Import Bank to incentivize renewable energy exports; the proposed expansion of tax credits for clean energy generation and storage in the President’s American Jobs Plan; and the Administration’s ongoing efforts to level the global playing field for American-made products and services.”
