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WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden complemented his State Department team on Saturday with a group of former career diplomats and Obama administration veterans, signaling his desire to return to more traditional foreign policy after four years of uncertainty and unpredictability under President Donald Trump.
Biden will appoint Wendy Sherman as Assistant Secretary of State and Victoria Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – the second and third highest positions, respectively. They were among the officials chosen to serve under the new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
The team “embodies my fundamental belief that America is strongest when it works with our allies,” Biden said in a statement. He said he was confident, “They will use their diplomatic experience and skills to restore America’s global and moral leadership. America is back. “
Amongst others:
—Longtime Biden, Senate Assistant Brian McKeon, as Assistant Secretary of State for Management.
– the former high-ranking diplomats Bonnie Jenkins and Uzra Zeya, who will respectively be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights.
—Derek Chollet, a regular on Democratic foreign policy, will be a State Department adviser.
– former 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 career CIA official who resigned in protest in the early days of the Trump administration, will serve as the public face of the department, assuming the role spokesperson.
—Jalina Porter, communications director for Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., Who is leaving Congress to work in the White House, will be Price’s assistant.
Price and Porter intend to return to the practice of holding daily State Department briefings, officials said. These briefings had been eliminated under the Trump administration.
Jeffrey Prescott, a former national security aide when Biden was vice president, is Biden’s choice to be deputy ambassador to the United Nations, and he would serve under the leadership of UN envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Five of the 11 are people of color or LGBTQ. While most are not known names, all are supporters of multilateralism and many are familiar in Washington and in foreign policy circles abroad. Their selections reflect 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 leading to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which Trump withdrew, and had engaged in ballistic missile talks with North Korea during the second term of President Bill Clinton. Nuland was Deputy State Secretary for European Affairs during the Ukraine crisis.
Sherman, McKeon, Nuland, Jenkins and Zeya will need Senate confirmation for their positions, while the rest will not.
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