WASHINGTON (AP) – Elected President Joe Biden on Saturday filled his State Department team with a group of former Obama administration career diplomats and veterans, indicating he wants to return to ‘after four years of uncertainty and unpredictability’. a more traditional foreign policy. under President Donald Trump.
Biden will nominate Wendy Sherman as Deputy Secretary of State and Victoria Nuland as Secretary of State for Political Affairs – the second and third highest positions respectively. They were among the officials elected to serve under incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The team “embodies my core belief that America is the strongest when it works with our allies,” Biden said in a statement. He said he was confident they would use their diplomatic experience and skills to restore America’s global and moral leadership. America is back. ”
Among others are:
—Bc McKeon, Assistant to the Biden Senate, as Deputy Secretary of State for Management.
– former senior diplomats Bonnie Jenkins and Uzra Zeya, to be under Secretary of State for Arms Control and Deputy Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights respectively.
—Derek Chollet, a well-known Democratic foreign policy officer, as a State Department adviser.
—Previously UN official Salman Ahmed, as director of policy planning.
—Suzy George, who was a senior assistant to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, will be Blinken’s chief of staff.
—Ned Price, a former member of the Obama administration’s National Security Council and a career CIA official who resigned in protest in the early days of the Trump administration, will serve as the department’s public face and take on the role of spokesperson.
—Jalina Porter, communications director of Representative Cedric Richmond, D-La., Who leaves Congress to work in the White House, will be Price’s deputy.
Price and Porter plan to return to the practice of holding daily press conferences, officials said. These briefings were eliminated under the Trump administration.
Jeffrey Prescott, a former national security assistant when Biden was vice president, is Biden’s choice to be deputy ambassador to the United Nations. He serves under UN delegate Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Five of the 11 are either colored or LGBTQ. While most are not household names, all are proponents of multilateralism and many are well-known in Washington and overseas foreign policy circles. Their choice is a reflection of Biden’s intention to turn away from Trump’s transactional and often one-sided “America First” approach to international relations.
Sherman led the Obama administration’s negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which Trump withdrew, and negotiated ballistic missiles with North Korea during President Bill Clinton’s second term. Nuland served as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs during the Ukraine crisis.
Sherman, McKeon, Nuland, Jenkins and Zeya will need Senate confirmation in their posts, while the others will not.