U.S. secretaries of state are known for making mistakes. Whether through flawed policies, faulty logic, slips of the tongue, or the simple failings of human nature, some of their utterances and related policies have led to less-than-desirable results that have cost thousands of human lives.
There have been plenty of mistakes made by U.S. secretaries of state over the last 50 years. Let us do a quick review before comparing Antony Blinken and Dean Acheson.
Henry Kissinger (1973–77)
Henry Kissinger (as national security adviser) and former President Richard Nixon “opened China” through secret negotiations in 1971 that led to a state visit to China by Nixon at the height of the Vietnam War in 1972. This began the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) manipulation of the U.S. political class that continues to this day.
The U.S. political class was convinced that communist China could be peacefully brought into the global system through open trade policies and access to world markets and Western technology. Modernizing China included the implementation of “free trade” policies and the off-shoring of U.S. manufacturing facilities to mainland China.
The results over time have been disastrous for most Americans. These policies created the “Rust Belt” in the Upper Midwest of the United States and the subsequent loss of manufacturing jobs, massive annual trade imbalances in favor of China, supply chain dependencies on China that risk U.S. national security, and the rapid growth of the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army.
Descendants of Kissinger’s “China engagement school” continue to dominate the U.S. State Department and Biden administration.
Madeleine Albright (1997–2001)
Madeleine Albright had a direct hand in the Kosovo War (1998-99) by facilitating a de facto alliance with the Kosovo Liberation Army (previously designated as a terrorist organization) that led to the unprovoked NATO bombing of innocent Serbs “in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance,” as reported by The Libertarian Institute. The principle she helped theorize and invoke in the Serbian bombing was “humanitarian warring,” which was subsequently used by other presidents to justify future arbitrary military actions on behalf of “oppressed minorities.”
She also continued former President Bill Clinton’s 1994 Agreed Framework, which supposedly banned North Korea from churning out nukes in return for billions worth of U.S. aid. Even The Washington Post rebuked Albright after she met Kim Jong Il in 2000: “We were amazed that the secretary of state would allow herself to be photographed, smiling, as 100,000 essentially enslaved laborers performed for her and one of the world’s most repressive dictators.”
Her failed diplomatic efforts gifted North Korea with the nuclear capability with which Kim Jong Un has been threatening South Korea and Japan for years.
Hillary Clinton (2009–13)
In a very public stunt, Hillary Clinton presented the infamous “reset button” to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in 2009 to signify a reshuffling of U.S. foreign policy regarding Russia.
As noted by the American Thinker, Lavrov was not amused: “He pointed out that she hadn’t found the right Russian word for ‘reset’ (it translated to ‘overcharge’), and the button was not even in Cyrillic characters.”
How does Obama-Clinton “reset” with Russia look in retrospect today?
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 23, 2013. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Clinton was also a proponent of former President Barack Obama’s “Arab Spring” that led to turmoil in several nations in the Middle East. The capstone of her career as secretary of state came when Libyan terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and murdered the U.S. ambassador to Libya and several others. This was a direct result of her policy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood-supported revolution in Libya carried out by terrorist organizations, such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Clinton’s failure in Libya was summarized by The National Interest: “Her bad judgment and failed policy resulted in the arming of terrorists, months of war and tens of thousands of causalities, the murder of the American ambassador and the deaths of three other brave Americans, continued civil war and the collapse of the Libyan economy, and a failed nation-state contributing to a tragic European migrant crisis.”
John Kerry (2013–17)
John Kerry was directly involved in negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany in 2015. The deal was supposed to have resulted in Iran eliminating its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium and cutting its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent, as well as reducing the number of its gas centrifuges for 13 years and limiting its uranium enrichment over the next 15 years while implementing an inspection regime that would ensure Iranian compliance.
The reality has been quite different, as Iran has been enriching uranium sufficient to make bombs, is not subjected to the “anytime anywhere” inspections trumpeted by Obama-Kerry to help sell the deal, and will have the nuclear infrastructure in place to produce bombs at the end of the agreement. This U.S.-Iran policy change facilitated by Kerry amounted to the acceptance of Iran as a threshold nuclear state, likely resulting in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Antony Blinken (2021–present)
President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made this public statement on Dec. 27, 2022, that was captured on video: “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made it much more complicated the support we’ve been able to give—and that others have been able to give—to Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about Afghanistan during a media briefing at the State Department in Washington on Aug. 25, 2021. (Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
What Blinken implied is that he believes that the United States cannot simultaneously provide full support to two allies in different theaters of operation, which is contrary to long-standing U.S. military policy and planning. Certainly, that was how some careful observers interpreted that statement.
Was Blinken signaling to Beijing that, because the United States is supporting Ukraine with an open checkbook ($100 billion and counting) and is otherwise engaged, the Chinese military would have the freedom to maneuver in a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan?
Was that the greenlight that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been looking for from the United States that would lead to his dream of “reunification” with Taiwan? Even without a subsequent clarification or correction by Blinken, the cat is now out of the bag.
The nature of Blinken’s mistake is not unprecedented. On Jan. 12, 1950, then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1949–1953) gave a speech that excluded South Korea and Taiwan from a U.S. “defense perimeter” running from Japan’s Ryukyu Islands to the Philippines. The omission of Taiwan was a welcome gift to former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, while omitting South Korea gave the USSR-backed North Koreans the green light for an invasion that initiated the Korean War just five months later, on June, 25, 1950. The result was three years of bitter fighting, over 2.5 million dead, and a stalemate on the peninsula that continues to this day. All connected to a strategic misstatement by a U.S. secretary of state.
The parallel between Acheson’s and Blinken’s statements is clear. What will Xi do?
Concluding Thoughts
Blinken’s slate as U.S. secretary of state is still being written. His first meeting with Chinese diplomats in March 2021 in Alaska was widely reported as a U.S. foreign policy disaster, as China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, publicly “lambasted the Americans” without a strong response, as reported by Asia Times. From the article: “Team Biden’s response to Yang’s (and by definition Chairman Xi Jinping’s) insults of American democracy, human rights and national character was unimpressive. And that’s being kind.”
In May 2021, Blinken made this statement: “Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.”
Is he unaware that the Chinese regime has been conducting hybrid warfare against the United States for over a decade (as noted here and here)? Blinken continues to support engagement with the regime in Beijing through his three-pronged “invest, align, compete” strategy despite the results as noted above. Nary a word was spoken about the need for a U.S. military buildup to counter the Chinese military’s modernization and growth over the past 20 years.
It is axiomatic that failing to show strength in the face of adversity leads to more aggression by a strong-willed belligerent. That was certainly the lesson learned in 1938–39 in Europe before Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded Poland. Because Xi and his wolf warriors were certainly listening carefully, will Blinken’s mistake precipitate communist China’s “reunification” with Taiwan and a potential bloodbath that could rival the Korean War? The ghosts of the Korean War dead are whispering their concerns.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.
