Lulu Garcia-Navarro
NY Times, Jan. 4, 2024
“Normalization with Saudi Arabia, that can happen tomorrow based on the work that we’ve done, the investments we’ve made, once there is an end to the conflict in Gaza and an agreement on a credible pathway forward for the Palestinians. All of that work is there. That’s what we’ll be handing over.”
Four years ago, after the tumultuous first Trump administration, President Biden came into office promising to rebuild old alliances and defend democracy. The man tasked with doing that on the world stage was Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a longtime diplomat who had worked with Biden for two decades. The message to America’s allies and enemies alike was that a new era of stability was at hand.
Instead, Blinken was beset by an escalating series of international crises almost from the beginning. The self-imposed wounds of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal were quickly followed by the generational challenge of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Hamas’s savage attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent scorched-earth war in Gaza plunged the region into crisis and destabilized the political climate in America. …SOURCE