 Biden State pick backs Trump's 'tougher approach' on China Washington (AFP) Jan 19, 2021 - Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to be secretary of state, said Tuesday he agreed with the tougher US stance on China under Donald Trump that the outgoing leader hailed in his farewell remarks. In confirmation hearings, Biden's nominees vowed to keep up pressure on China on trade and human rights, despite previous calls to see areas of cooperation. "I also believe that President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China," Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I disagree very much with the way he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one." His hearing came hours after the outgoing secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, declared formally that China was carrying out genocide against the Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking people. Trump hailed his stance on China in excerpts of a farewell address he said would be broadcast shortly. "We revitalized our alliances and rallied the nations of the world to stand up to China like never before," Trump said. Many would dispute that Trump revitalized alliances, with European leaders outraged by his often personal confrontations and the reputation of the US president falling to new lows in friendly countries. Trump, however, forged close ties with Israel and Gulf Arab powers.
|
President-elect Joe Biden's pick for intelligence chief said Tuesday she would remain apolitical and would seek to reestablish confidence with allied intelligence bodies, after the turmoil of the outgoing Trump administration.
Avril Haines, a former top CIA official nominated to be director of national intelligence (DNI), also said the US espionage community would step up its focus on China as a key threat.
"To safeguard the integrity of our intelligence community, the DNI must insist that, when it comes to intelligence, there is simply no place for politics -- ever," she told the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is vetting her nomination.
"The DNI must prioritize transparency, accountability, analytic rigor, facilitating oversight and diverse thinking -- not as afterthoughts, but as strategic imperatives that bolster our work and our institutions."
Haines' three DNI predecessors were dragged in to President Donald Trump's political battles, especially over his rejection of the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.
He repeatedly labeled the country's spies "the deep state" conspiring to undermine him, and sought to enlist some more politically supportive officials to bolster his fight against impeachment a year ago.
Haines, 51, was deputy director of the CIA and then deputy national security advisor in the 2009-2017 administration of president Barack Obama -- when Biden was vice president.
As the first woman in the DNI job, she would oversee and coordinate all 18 bodies of the US intelligence community, including the CIA, the National Security Agency and FBI counterintelligence, and would be responsible for the president's regular intel briefings.
She was presented to the committee by Dan Coats, Trump's first DNI who resisted politicization and tried to protect the community from interference until he was fired.
In the hearing, Haines echoed remarks from Biden's other national security and foreign policy nominees, saying China poses a formidable challenge.
"Our approach to China has to evolve, and essentially meet the reality of the particularly assertive and aggressive China that we see today," she said.
Asked if she could help in investigating the January 6 assault by Trump supporters on the US Capitol, she said the intelligence community is largely confined to foreign targets and cannot get involved in domestic law enforcement.
She promised senators she would release a still-classified report into Saudi Arabia's assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-resident Saudi journalist.
Related Links
Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com
Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com
|
|
Tweet |
|
|
|
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Google
