Making his remaining journey as America’s prime diplomat final week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in Paris, his former hometown, to a hero’s welcome.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, proclaimed Mr. Blinken “an eminent servant of peace” at a ceremony on the Élysée Palace earlier than awarding him the nation’s highest tribute, the Legion of Honor medal. With its crimson silk ribbon pinned to his jacket, Mr. Blinken known as the medal “the dignity of a lifetime.”
It was a really completely different scene again in Washington a couple of days later, when Mr. Blinken gave a remaining speech earlier than a crowd of international coverage specialists.
“Secretary Blinken! Your legacy might be genocide! You’ll without end be referred to as ‘Bloody Blinken, Secretary of Genocide,’” shouted a protester who had infiltrated the Atlantic Council occasion. Safety officers led her out of the room, in addition to a person waving an indication that learn “Blinken: Conflict Felony.”
An identical drama punctured Mr. Blinken’s farewell information convention on the State Division two days later, as a journalist, shouting that Mr. Blinken belonged in The Hague, was carried from the room by safety officers.
The contrasting scenes reveal the duality of Mr. Blinken’s tenure as secretary of state. Over 4 years and multiple million flight miles logged, Mr. Blinken was the face of America’s deep involvement in two wars, one in Ukraine and the opposite in Israel and Gaza. The primary, the protection of Ukraine in opposition to Russia, was a well-liked trigger marked by Ukrainian flags flying from American porches, and it allowed Mr. Blinken to take pleasure in accolades as he invoked the best ideas of worldwide regulation and human rights.
However the battle between Israel and Hamas in Gaza ignited by Palestinian terrorist assaults turned a political and ethical nightmare for the Biden administration as Israeli strikes with American-supplied weapons killed an estimated 46,000 Palestinians, lots of them ladies and kids.
Whereas President Biden set the coverage, Mr. Blinken, his decades-long aide and surrogate son, introduced it to the general public. The diplomat was accused of gutting the very ideas he had championed in Ukraine, and have become the goal of vitriol hardly ever directed at a U.S. secretary of state.
So entwined is Mr. Blinken’s work and his repute with battle that he might simply as simply be known as by a retired cupboard title that’s nonetheless on workplace plaques within the previous State Division constructing — secretary of battle.
Mr. Blinken mirrored on the query throughout an interview this week in his wood-paneled workplace, which he had embellished with up to date artwork items from the likes of Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning. Mr. Blinken mentioned, “If we need to use the time period ‘battle’ expansively, I feel the State Division has been” — he paused — “sure, it has taken up numerous our effort and time, and sure, as a part of that, you study quite a bit about weapons methods.”
Conflict introduced the Biden administration with the chance to forge nearer worldwide partnerships, and it’s there that the president and his aides have excelled, Mr. Blinken mentioned. “The US is ready to have interaction a extra contested, a extra sophisticated, a extra flamable world from a place of power,” he mentioned. “That’s what I imagine our legacy is.”
Over an extended profession as a Washington international coverage hand, together with as deputy secretary of state, Mr. Blinken was no stranger to battle, having grappled with the American quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. And his childhood was formed by the reminiscence of World Conflict II, particularly by tales of how his stepfather, Samuel Pisar, survived the Holocaust.
On the ceremony in Paris, Mr. Blinken cited a lesson he realized from his stepfather: “We’ve to stay eternally vigilant, as a result of humanity’s striving for one of the best can generally be overcome by its capability for the worst.”
However the world served up an particularly ugly parade of horrors as Mr. Blinken took cost of the State Division: strife and atrocities in Yemen, Syria, Haiti, Ethiopia, Armenia, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, the place the secretary declared this month that combatants had been finishing up a genocide.
Bearing a flawlessly well mannered and self-effacing demeanor, Mr. Blinken spent numerous hours making an attempt to resolve and forestall battle. However for higher or worse, his legacy rests not on forging grand peace treaties — these conventional diplomatic prizes eluded him — however on his position in two wars that always solid him in very completely different lights.
Drawing the Line In opposition to Russia
Mr. Blinken’s first check, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, was extensively seen as a fiasco.
The Taliban’s swift takeover of Kabul caught the State Division unexpectedly, forcing a chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies. Some Republican lawmakers demanded that Mr. Blinken resign.
His second got here when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Visiting Berlin a month earlier than the assault, Mr. Blinken delivered a speech invoking the way in which Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan had stood as much as Soviet energy and declared that the USA would once more defend “the governing ideas of worldwide peace and safety.” A day later in Geneva, he confronted down his grim Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, warning {that a} Russian assault would draw “a swift, extreme and a united response.”
It was the sort of commanding, high-stakes diplomacy you would possibly see within the Netflix sequence “The Diplomat.” Mr. Blinken deployed his flawless French in Paris and Brussels, and cajoled leaders in Seoul and Tokyo. The end result: a coalition of about 50 nations dedicated to supplying weapons to Ukraine or imposing financial sanctions on Russia.
Because the battle progressed, neither facet sought negotiations, so Mr. Blinken was much less a peacemaker than a battle strategist. Immersed in particulars of army {hardware} and battlefield situations, he typically argued in opposition to extra risk-averse Pentagon officers in favor of sending highly effective American weapons to Ukraine.
And when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, Mark A. Milley, steered in late 2022 that Ukraine ought to capitalize on battlefield good points by searching for peace talks with Moscow, Mr. Blinken insisted the battle ought to go on.
Visiting Kyiv in Could, Mr. Blinken, a guitar participant, took the stage at a packed music membership and led an area band in a rendition of Neil Younger’s “Rockin’ within the Free World.” The protection of Ukraine had supplied him a literal rock star second.
Bombs and Our bodies in Gaza
5 days after the terrorist assaults carried out by Hamas in October 2023, Mr. Blinken stood subsequent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at a army base in Tel Aviv and advised the world how the killings had seared him personally.
“I come earlier than you not solely because the U.S. secretary of state, but in addition as a Jew,” he mentioned. “I perceive on a private stage the harrowing echoes that Hamas’s massacres carry for Israeli Jews and for Jews all over the place.”
That second, too, had a noble glow. Mr. Blinken was speeding to the rescue of an American good friend who had been horribly violated within the assaults. Hamas and its companions took hostages and killed greater than 1,200 Israelis — the biggest single-day bloodbath of Jews for the reason that Holocaust.
However this time the narrative would develop much more sophisticated. In personal conferences on that very same journey, Mr. Blinken and his aides heard about battle plans for Gaza that foretold extra mass killing — together with ominous reminders from Israeli officers that America had as soon as been keen to annihilate Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Mr. Blinken would make a dozen wartime journeys to the Center East. They had been grim affairs, in distinction to the European excursions the place he was hailed as a savior of Ukraine. Israeli officers complained about stress from Washington on someday whereas Arab monarchs fumed on the subsequent that Israel was uncontrolled.
Once more he immersed himself in army issues. Assembly with Israel’s battle cupboard, he would examine maps of Gaza and talk about particulars of its technique. On one go to, they scrambled right into a bunker when Tel Aviv got here beneath rocket assault.
He beseeched the Israelis to let in additional humanitarian support and restrict civilian casualties as they pummeled Gaza, turning hospitals, faculties and mosques to mud. Some State Division officers argued in useless that Israel was deliberately withholding meals and medication from determined Palestinians. For months, Mr. Blinken has mentioned the division was “assessing” reviews of Israeli battle crimes.
Over time, Mr. Blinken’s visits with Mr. Netanyahu appeared to change into much less and fewer efficient. Generally the Israeli chief would publicly undermine his American visitor’s positions hours after internet hosting him.
Critics of the battle mentioned that solely withholding army support would change the Israeli method. That by no means occurred.
In step with Mr. Biden’s “bear hug” method, Mr. Blinken and the State Division saved sending Israel weapons, together with 2,000-pound bombs that U.S. army officers name unsuited for city fight.
Over the 15 months of battle, Mr. Biden has accredited $26 billion in support to Israel. Mr. Blinken has by no means expressed regrets about not utilizing that leverage. Indicators of “daylight” between the USA and Israel solely inspired Hamas, he says.
State Division officers despatched Mr. Blinken dissent cables opposing the coverage. A handful resigned and have become public dissidents.
“We don’t have a coverage,” mentioned Michael Casey, a diplomat and Iraq battle veteran who resigned final yr from his State Division publish in Jerusalem, the place he labored on Gaza. “We assist the Israeli authorities’s targets over our personal pursuits.”
He mentioned that “of everybody within the solid of characters on the prime, Antony Blinken has been probably the most disappointing.” Regardless of exhibiting flashes of empathy with Palestinians, he mentioned, Mr. Blinken by no means veered from the method to Israel.
Protesters camped exterior his Virginia residence and splashed pretend blood on his black Suburban. The descendant of a Holocaust survivor was accused of enabling “genocide.”
Such invective “comes with the job,” Mr. Blinken mentioned whereas warning {that a} development of hounding public officers in personal areas like their properties might deter folks from getting into authorities.
For a time it appeared that he might need nothing to point out for his many months urgent to realize a Gaza cease-fire deal. Then got here this week’s settlement between Israel and Hamas.
Even when it took stress from President-elect Donald J. Trump, the deal, if it holds, might be a welcome a part of Mr. Blinken’s legacy. However the clock has run out on his larger ambition of brokering a historic settlement to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that may, in principle, have included a first-ever express pathway to a Palestinian state.
Such a pact might need gained him some forgiveness from livid Western liberals and Muslims worldwide.
He admits that public opinion towards the USA has grown “very difficult” in locations the place America is seen as hypocritical for denouncing Russia’s battle whereas defending Israel’s.
He should additionally settle for a irritating uncertainty. Ukraine’s destiny is now in peril beneath Mr. Trump. And as for Gaza, some doubt {that a} cease-fire can endure.
That’s the nature of battle, Mr. Blinken says: “Most of those challenges don’t have neat Hollywood endings.”
He leaves maybe haunted by his gazing into the identical abyss of humanity that his stepfather survived a long time in the past. “What actually drives me greater than anything is the demonization we see in all instructions,” he mentioned. “The lack to acknowledge struggling on either side, the lack to see the humanity within the different.”
