Dead thread, but I have been pretty gratified by Biden’s choices for his diplomatic and national security team, other than SecDef going to a general. They are invariably experienced and level headed, and generally not given to ideological orthodoxy. Gives me hope that at least the US side will not intentionally land in the Thucydides Trap with China during the course of the great power competition. After all, the Sino-US relationship remains the most consequential one in the world, today and into the future. The competition part is unavoidable, even natural. Unbounded and destructive competition, on the other hand, would be ruinous to all involved.
President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday he is nominating William Burns, who has served in the State Department under five different administrations, as his director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Noam Galai/Getty Images for National Committee on American Foreign Policy
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toggle caption Noam Galai/Getty Images for National Committee on American Foreign Policy
William Burns, shown here during a 2019 event, is President-elect Joe Biden s pick to lead the CIA. Noam Galai/Getty Images for National Committee on American Foreign Policy
Updated at 9:20 a.m. ET
President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate veteran diplomat William Burns to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Burns, 64, is a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and Jordan. As a career foreign service office, he worked under Democratic and Republican presidents. He was deputy secretary of state during the Obama years, but he left the State Department in 2014 to run the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.
Biden taps veteran diplomat, Iran negotiator as CIA head
U.S. president-elect hails William Burns as exemplary diplomat with decades of experience ; Russian and Arabic speaker is specialist on Moscow and Mideast and led secret talks for Obama that paved way to 2015 Iranian nuclear deal
Reuters |
Published: 01.11.21 , 20:33
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will tap a former career diplomat in William Burns to lead the CIA, his transition team said on Monday, as the Democrat races to put a national security team in place before his inauguration.
Over a 33-year career as a U.S. diplomat and eventually deputy secretary of state, the Russian, Arabic and French speaker honed specialties in Russia and the Middle East.