TLTP
WILMINGTON
Joe Biden, the US president-elect, has introduced veteran diplomats and policymakers who will make up his national security and foreign policy team, saying: “America is back, ready to lead the world.”
Biden, 78, at an event in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, presented his choices for secretary of state, national security adviser, homeland security secretary, intelligence chief, UN ambassador and climate change envoy.
“It is a team that will keep our country and our people safe and secure,” Biden said as the six men and women stood behind him wearing face-masks on the stage of the Queen Theatre.
“It is a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.”
Biden said that after he is inaugurated on January 20, and Donald Trump leaves the White House, the US will “once again sit at the head of the table, ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies”.
“These public servants will restore America’s global leadership and moral leadership,” the former vice president said in a jab at Mr Trump’s go-it-alone “America First” policies.
Unveiling his cabinet selections, Biden said he had received calls from world leaders saying they were “looking forward to the United States reasserting its historic role as a global leader”.
“This team meets at this moment,” he said. “They embody my core belief that America is strongest when it works with its allies.”
The appointments unveiled by Biden include veterans of the Barack Obama administration and signals a return to traditional US diplomacy and multilateralism.
Antony Blinken, Biden’s choice for secretary of state, said the US cannot solve global problems on its own. “We need to be working with other countries,” the former State Department official said. “We need their co-operation. We need their partnership.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s choice to be the US ambassador to the UN, echoed those sentiments.
“America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back,” said Ms Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat.
Former secretary of state John Kerry, who Biden chose as his special envoy on climate change, confirmed the new administration would bring the US back into the Paris climate accord which Trump pulled out of in 2015.
Cuban-born Alejandro Mayorkas was named to head the Department of Homeland Security, whose policing of tough immigration restrictions under Trump was a frequent source of controversy.
Avril Haines was nominated to be the director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold the post, while Jake Sullivan was named national security adviser.
Former Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen is expected to be named treasury secretary, the first woman to hold the job.
With Biden having won a comfortable victory, Trump’s last card is to try to disrupt the normally routine process of state-by-state certification of the vote and challenge election results in the courts with claims of irregularities.
