November 25, 2020

THIS WEEK IN DC - Trump pardons former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; Reema Dodin selected for Deputy Director of White House Office of Legislative Affairs; Coalitions forming around VP-elect Harris’ Senate seat replacement; Congress takes recess for Thanksgiving amid height of pandemic, without passing a stimulus bill.

 In This Issue 

• Feature Story: Implications of Antony Blinken as Secretary of State;
• Reema Dodin selected as Deputy Director of White House Office of Legislative Affairs;
• 35% of Muslims voted for Trump — join us next Wednesday as AP and CAIR National join us to break down the poll results. 

 Featured Issue 

Tony Blinken Selected as Biden’s pick for Secretary of State. Adam Beddawi analyzes the implications.

Earlier this week, President-Elect Joe Biden nominated Antony Blinken to be his administration’s new Secretary of State. What can we expect from a diplomatic operation helped by Blinken?  

Both Blinken and the President-Elect have committed to “fighting corruption, countering authoritarianism, and advancing human rights globally,” particularly “in Muslim-majority countries and countries with significant Muslim populations.” As Secretary of State, Blinken would be the man tasked with carrying out this campaign commitment. 

We need to consider the extent to which a Blinken-led State Department can follow through on these promises.

Read the full analysis

 This Week at MPAC'S DC Bureau 

The news that the MuslimPro app was sending user data to the U.S. Military through a third-party sent shockwaves through the American Muslim community. Adam Beddawi, our MPAC Policy Analyst, analyzes the issue from a policy perspective in The Morning Consult. 

Reema Dodin’s appointment as Deputy Director of White House Office of Legislative Affairs is a well-deserved and welcomed change which is helping to set the new normal for women in leadership. Iman Ali, our Policy and Programming Coordinator, explores the significance of this appointment.

The international community has remained silent despite last Thursday’s revelation of Australian special forces committing war crimes against Afghan civilians. Prema Rahman, our Human Security Program Manager, breaks down how this kind of violence is part of a larger cycle of dehumanizing Muslims.

35% of Muslims voted for Trump. Join us next week, as we break down the poll results with guests from the Associated Press and CAIR National. 

 Good to Know 

• Earlier this month, China and 15 Asia-Pacific nations announced the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest trade deal in modern world history. Brookings analyzed its implications here.
• Senator Feinstein is expected to step down as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman in the 117th Congress. Read more analysis from the Hill.

 This Week's Feature 

	By: Adam Beddawi, Policy Analyst   November 25, 2020

The implications of President Elect-Biden’s choice to have Antony Blinken serve as Secretary of State

Both Blinken and the President-Elect have committed to “fighting corruption, countering authoritarianism, and advancing human rights globally,” particularly “in Muslim-majority countries and countries with significant Muslim populations.” As Secretary of State, Blinken would be the man tasked with carrying out this campaign commitment. 

We need to consider the extent to which a Blinken-led State Department can follow through on these promises. At this point, it looks like a Biden administration will filter their commitment to advancing human rights through their broader diplomatic agenda. For example, in an interview with the US Hudson Institute, Blinken spoke about the need to “[crack] down on freedom of movement and freedom of speech in Kashmir” in the context of “engaging with a … vitally important [partner] like India.” This is part of the Biden campaign’s promised return to principled American diplomacy”, a path which runs through “[holding] the people and companies complicit in” the forced detention of Uyghur Muslims, restoring the rights for all in Kashmir, and “ending [the] ‘blank check’ for Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses in Yemen,” among other things. It also involves reversing a strategy on Syria which Blinken himself acknowledged as having “failed” since he led its charge as Obama’s deputy secretary of state and principal deputy national security adviser. This begs the question: will a Blinken-led State Department honor this commitment to human rights if it contradicts their broader diplomatic strategy? Their campaign promised to do so, and we promise to hold them to account. 

Furthermore, their promise to address “restrictions on dissent” in the global context must also be applied in the domestic realm, where the Pompeo-led State Department has limited civil rights protections for pro-Palestinian political expression and undermined their global position as peace brokers between Israel and Palestine. Secretary Pompeo and Blinken differ in many respects, but they are substantially aligned on the question of U.S. support for Israel. We are eager to engage, and work with, a relevantly different State Department under Blinken. 

In light of Biden’s commitments to turning over a new leaf, we are concerned by the reappearance of old diplomatic faultlines. 

For starters, Blinken is a longtime aide of Biden, having served time as the deputy national security adviser under Obama and a member of the national security establishment under the Clinton and Bush administrations. He was the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when then-Senator Biden was the Committee Chairman. Blinken and Biden go back, but so too does the United States’ poor record in these countries. The Biden campaign ran on having the solutions to these decades-long problems, and we will strive to be a partner in achieving them, knowing full well that a return to the same old is not an option. 

There is also a familiar fissure forming within the Democratic Party on the relationship between private weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. Just a few weeks ago, Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WA) co-signed a letter with Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), demanding that President-Elect Biden ensure that these public-private partnerships do not dictate fiscal appropriations and diplomatic strategy. However, during the Trump administration, Secretary Blinken sat on the board of WestExec Advisors, a “strategic advisory firm” that “used [board member] networks to build a large client base at the intersection of tech and defense.” Just last week, President- and Vice President-Elect Biden and Harris met with a Raytheon executive who was a fellow WestExec board member. We intend to work with the administration to ensure that these relationships do not signal a return to the Hawkishness that underwrote foreign policy and budget appropriations during the Obama administration. 

American Muslims must seriously consider Biden’s decision to nominate Antony Blinken to lead the State Department. Blinken is an old-school diplomat who has spent considerable time within the Obama and Biden orbits. Much of broader strokes of the Biden administration will appear better than those of the Trump administration, but many of the foreign affairs issues that matter to our community exist at the fringes. These may be small details in the context of geopolitical power struggles, but they matter to the millions of people who stand to be affected. 

On these, we will engage the Biden administration in order to ensure that they keep their campaign promises of considerable progress toward the advancement of human rights.

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