WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden filled his State Department team on Saturday with a group of former career diplomats and Obama administration veterans who expressed a desire to return to politics more traditional exterior after four years of uncertainty and unpredictability under President Donald Trump.
Biden will appoint Wendy Sherman as deputy secretary of state and Victoria Nuland as undersecretary of state for political affairs, respectively, second and third. They were among the officials chosen to serve under the new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
The team “embodies my fundamental belief that the United States is the strongest when working with our allies,” Biden said in a statement. He said he was confident that “they will use their diplomatic experience and skill to restore the global and moral leadership of the United States. America is back.”
Among others there are:
—Long time, Biden Senate aide, Brian McKeon, to be deputy secretary of state for management.
—Former diplomatic leaders Bonnie Jenkins and Uzra Zeya, who would be Secretary of State for Arms Control and Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights, respectively.
—Derek Chollet, a family member of 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 aide to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, will be Blinken’s chief of staff.
—Ned Price, a former National Security Council official and CIA official in the Obama administration who resigned in protest in the early days of the Trump administration, will serve as the department’s public face, assuming the role of spokesman .
—Jalina Porter, communications director for Representative Cedric Richmond, D-La., Who is leaving Congress to work at the White House, will be Price’s deputy.
Price and Porter plan to return to the practice of holding daily State Department press meetings, officials said. These reports had been removed under the Trump administration.
Jeffrey Prescott, a former national security aide when Biden was vice president, is Biden’s choice to be deputy to the United Nations ambassador. She would serve under the designation of UN envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Five of the 11 are people of color or LGBTQ. While most are not well-known names, they are all supporters of multilateralism and many are familiar in Washington and overseas foreign policy circles. His selections are a reflection of Biden’s intention to deviate from Trump’s transactional and often unilateral approach to America First’s “international relations”.
Sherman led the Obama administration’s negotiations leading to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which Trump withdrew, and had held talks on ballistic missiles with North Korea during President Bill’s second term. Clinton. Nuland was Deputy Secretary of State for European Affairs during the Ukraine crisis.
Sherman, McKeon, Nuland, Jenkins and Zeya will require Senate confirmation of their charges, while the others will not.