“China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system – all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to,” Blinken is defined to say, according to excerpts from his speech shared in advance with reporters.
Most of Blinken’s speech, at least according to the excerpts, consists of promises made repeatedly during the 2020 presidential campaign and since Biden won the November election.
This includes the promise to end the coronavirus pandemic; to make climate change a primary focus; to elevate diplomacy while maintaining military supremacy; exhibit global leadership while cooperating with foreign allies; invest in technology; to improve the US immigration system; to fight corruption; and defend human rights.
Blinken will recognize that the world today is different from 2017, when Donald Trump took over the presidency, or even from 2009, when many current Biden government officials worked for then President Barack Obama.
“We are not simply picking up where we left off. We are looking at the world with new eyes ”, Blinken is expected to say.
This includes more consideration of the ways in which foreign policy, domestic policy and trade issues are intertwined. The Biden government will weigh in on how its changes abroad affect American workers, Blinken promises.
“Some of us have already advocated free trade agreements because we believed that Americans would widely share economic gains and that those agreements would shape the global economy the way we wanted,” said Blinken. “But we haven’t done enough to enforce the agreements that were already in place or to help more workers and small businesses to fully benefit from them. And we don’t deal with the fact that government programs designed to alleviate problems related to trade were not good enough. “
“Our approach will now be different,” he will add. “We will fight for all American jobs and for the rights, protections and interests of all American workers.”
Blinken also plans to target another favorite Biden theme: the need to strengthen democracy, because the concept itself is “under threat”.
“The more we and all democracies can show the world what we can offer – not just for our people, but also for each other – the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell – that the best way to meet our needs and fundamental people’s hopes, ”he must say.
The excerpts do not specifically mention the January 6 uprising on the United States Capitol, but Blinken, however, suggests that work on democracy starts at home and says the United States should lead by example.
He rejects, however, some previous US attempts to promote democracy abroad.
“We will not promote democracy through expensive military interventions or by trying to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force,” he must say. “We have tried these tactics in the past. As well-intentioned as they are, they didn’t work. They gave a bad name to ‘promoting democracy’ and lost the confidence of the American people ”.