Time published a puff-piece profile of Antony Blinken:
Even officials close to Blinken admit the U.S. position—calling on Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians while continuing to tout their support—is becoming untenable. But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior U.S. officials and diplomats, most argue the Secretary’s even-keeled approach is a reassuring projection of American leadership at a perilous moment. “He’s the right guy at the right time,” says Tom Nides, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel until July. “I’ve sat in those rooms with him and Bibi. Tony’s a nice guy—but don’t screw with him.”
The idea that Blinken has been providing “a reassuring projection of American leadership” is impossible to take seriously. Who has been reassured by his empty rhetoric and shameless water-carrying for Israel’s brutal war? The people serving under him at the State Department certainly haven’t felt reassured by what Blinken has been doing. Morale in the State Department is extremely low under Blinken. As bad as things were under Tillerson and Pompeo, they are arguably even worse now. The State Department has been sidelined for the last three months and relevant area experts are ignored while Biden and Blinken drive U.S. policy into a ditch.
One of the key problems is that Blinken is a longtime Biden loyalist and seems to have no inclination to challenge his boss. Like Biden, he also fully buys into the false belief that tightly embracing the Israeli government no matter what it does is the right way to manage the relationship. Blinken won’t press Biden to change course, and neither of them will make a concerted effort to pressure the Israeli government. That is how we end up with Blinken running around the region doing political damage control while Gaza is demolished and its people are being blown up and starved to death.
Late last year, Blinken congratulated the administration on its record, saying, “In a year of profound tests, the world looked to the United States to lead and that’s just what we did.” Back in the real world, the record was much less flattering. As the year came to an end, the U.S. stood virtually alone in its unconditional backing for the war in Gaza and its hostility to a ceasefire. When it comes to the most urgent humanitarian crisis in the world, the U.S. has done what it could to block international efforts to provide relief at the same time that it keeps arming and defending the government responsible for creating the disaster.
Just the other day Blinken denounced South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice as “meritless,” which only showed the world how spineless the Secretary is. Anyone that heard the South African government present their case today would have been impressed by how wrong Blinken is about this. To make their case, the South Africans needed only to quote senior Israeli political leaders, including the prime minister, to show their intent and then point to the devastating measures that the Israeli government has taken against the people of Gaza, including the deadly siege that has created an extraordinary humanitarian catastrophe. As one of the lawyers from the South African team put it, “the evidence of genocidal intent is not only chilling, it is also overwhelming and incontrovertible.”
Blinken and the State Department have no serious answer for any of this. Blinken has said, “The U.S. believes South Africa's genocide submission against Israel distracts the world from important efforts for peace and security.” Of course, what worries him is that it focuses the world’s attention squarely on Israel’s atrocious conduct, and he would rather have the world looking at anything else but that.
If American “leadership” is facing a test, as the profile says, it seems fair to say that Biden and Blinken are failing that test about as badly as any pair of American leaders can fail it.