Thomas-Greenfield OK’d
The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s choice to lead U.S. diplomacy at the United Nations on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s choice to lead U.S. diplomacy at the United Nations on Tuesday. Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s confirmation reflected the Biden administration’s determination to reengage with the world body and former President Donald Trump’s diplomacy that often left the U.S. isolated internationally.
Senators voted 78-20 to confirm Thomas-Greenfield to the post, which will be a Cabinet-level position.
Also Tuesday, the Senate voted 92-7 to confirm Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary, his second run at the Cabinet post. The former Iowa governor spent eight years leading the department for former President Barack Obama’s administration.
In his testimony, Vilsack endorsed boosting climatefriendly agricultural industries such as the creation of biofuels, saying, “Agriculture is one of our first and best ways to get some wins (on climate change).”
With systemic racial inequity now a nationwide talking point, Vilsack also envisioned creating an “equity taskforce” inside the department. Its job, he said, would be to identify what he called “intentional or unintentional barriers” that prevent or discourage farmers of color from properly accessing federal assistance programs.
Thomas-Greenfield, a retired 35-year veteran of the foreign service who resigned during the Trump administration, will be the third African American, and the second Black woman, to hold the job. Her confirmation was hailed by Democrats and advocates of the United Nations, who had lamented the Trump administration’s unilateral
approach to international affairs.
“This confirmation sends a message that the United States is back and that our foreign service is back,” said Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., who chairs a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, global health and global human rights. “We as a country and as a world are safer with Linda Thomas-Greenfield serving as the United States ambassador to the United Nations.”
Republicans who opposed her said she was soft on China and would not stand up for U.S. principles at the United Nations.
Thomas-Greenfield had rejected those concerns during her confirmation hearing, telling senators that a 2019 speech she gave to the Chinesefunded Confucius Institute had been a mistake and was not intended to be an endorsement of Chinese government policies. In the speech, she had praised China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road global infrastructure program in Africa and called for “a win-win-win situation” where the U.S.
and China would promote good governance and the rule of law.
She told senators that China is a strategic adversary and that “their actions threaten our security, they threaten our values and they threaten our way of life, and they are a threat to their neighbors and they are a threat across the globe.”
She spoke of China’s diplomatic inroads during the Trump administration, which pursued an “America First” policy that weakened international alliances. She made clear there would be a change under Biden to reengage internationally and promote American values.
She stressed that U.S. leadership must be rooted in the country’s values — “support for democracy, respect for universal human rights, and the promotion of peace and security.” She said effective diplomacy means developing “robust relationships,” finding common ground and managing differences, and “doing genuine, old-fashioned, people-to-people diplomacy.”