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SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good morning.
My fellow Americans, five weeks ago I was sworn in as your Secretary of State. My job is to represent
the United States to the world, to fight for the interests and values of the American people.
When President Biden asked me to serve, he made sure that I understood that my job is to deliver
for you – to make your lives more secure, create opportunity for you and your families,
and tackle the global crises that are increasingly shaping your futures.
I take this responsibility very seriously. And an
important part of the job is speaking to you about what we're doing and why.
Later today, President Biden will share what's called the “interim strategic guidance”
on our national security and foreign policy.
It gives initial direction to our national security agencies so that they can get to
work right away while we keep developing a more in-depth national security strategy
over the next several months. The interim guidance lays out the global landscape as the Biden
administration sees it, explains the priorities of our foreign policy – and specifically how we will
renew America's strength to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of our time.
So for this – my first major speech as Secretary – I'm going to walk through – walk
you through how American diplomacy will carry out the President's strategy.
If we do our jobs right, you'll be able to check our work – to see the links between
what we're doing around the world and the goals and values I'll lay out today.
I know that foreign policy can sometimes feel disconnected from our daily lives.
It's either all about major threats – like pandemics, terrorism – or it fades from view.
That's in part because it's often about people and events
on the other side of the world, and it's about things you don't see – like
crises stopped before they start, or negotiations that happen out of sight.
But it's also because those of us who conduct foreign policy haven't always done a good job
connecting it to the needs and aspirations of the American people.
As a result, for some time now Americans have been asking tough but fair questions
about what we're doing, how we're leading – indeed, whether we should be leading at all.
With this in mind, we've set the foreign policy priorities for the Biden administration
by asking a few simple questions:
What will our foreign policy mean for American workers and their families?
What do we need to do around the world to make us stronger here at home?
And what do we need to do at home to make us stronger in the world?
The answers to these questions aren't the same as they were in 2017 or 2009. Yes,
many of us serving in the Biden administration also proudly served President Obama – including
President Biden. And we did a great deal of good work to restore America's leadership in the world;
to achieve hard-won diplomatic breakthroughs, like the deal that stopped Iran from producing
a nuclear weapon; and to bring the world together to tackle climate change.
Our foreign policy fit the moment, as any good strategy should.
But this is a different time, so our strategy and approach are different.
We're not simply picking up where we left off, as if the past four years didn't happen.
We're looking at the world with fresh eyes.
Having said that, while the times have changed, some principles are enduring.
One is that American leadership and engagement matter.
We're hearing this now from our friends. They're glad we're back.
Whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself. When the U.S. pulls back,
one of two things is likely to happen: either another country tries to take our place,
but not in a way that advances our interests and values; or, maybe just as bad, no one steps up,
and then we get chaos and all the dangers it creates. Either way, that's not good for America.
Another enduring principle is that we need countries to cooperate,
now more than ever. Not a single global challenge that affects your lives can be
met by any one nation acting alone – not even one as powerful as the United States.
And there is no wall high enough or strong enough to hold back the changes transforming our world.
That's where the institution I'm privileged to lead comes in.
It's the role of the State Department – and America's diplomats and development
workers – to engage around the world and build that cooperation.
President Biden has pledged to lead with diplomacy
because it's the best way to deal with today's challenges.
At the same time, we'll make sure that we continue to have the world's most powerful armed forces.
Our ability to be effective diplomats depends in no small measure on the strength of our military.
And in everything we do, we'll look not only to make progress on short-term problems,
but also to address their root causes and lay the groundwork
for our long-term strength. As the President says, to not only build back, but build back better.
So here's our plan.
First, we will stop COVID-19 and strengthen global health security.
The pandemic has defined lives – our lives – for more than a year. To beat it back,
we need governments, scientists, businesses, and communities around the world working together.
None of us will be fully safe until the majority of the world is immune because as long as the
virus is replicating, it could mutate into new strains that find their way back to America.
So we need to work closely with partners to keep the global vaccination effort moving forward.
At the same time, we need to make sure we learn the right lessons and make the right investments
in global health security, including tools to predict,
prevent, and stop pandemics, and a firm global commitment to share
accurate and timely information, so that a crisis like this never happens again.
Second, we will turn around the economic crisis and build a more stable, inclusive global economy.
The pandemic has caused unemployment to surge around the world.
Nearly every country on earth is now in a recession. The pandemic also laid bare
inequalities that have defined life for millions of Americans for a long time. So we've got a
double challenge: to protect Americans from a lengthy downturn, and to make sure the global
economy delivers security and opportunity for as many Americans as possible in the long term.
To do that, we need to pass the right policies at home, like the relief package the President
is pushing hard for right now, while working to manage the global economy so it truly benefits
the American people. And by that, I don't just mean a bigger GDP or a rising stock market;
for many American households, those measures don't mean much. I mean good jobs,
good incomes, and lower household costs for American workers and their families.
We're building on hard lessons learned. Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements
because we believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains that those – and
that those deals would shape the global economy in ways that we wanted. We had good reasons
to think those things. But we didn't do enough to understand who would be negatively affected
and what would be needed to adequately offset their pain, or to enforce agreements that were
already on the books and help more workers and small businesses fully benefit from them.
Our approach now will be different. We will fight for every American job and for the rights,
protections, and interests of all American workers. We will use every tool to stop
countries from stealing our intellectual property or manipulating their currencies to get an unfair
advantage. We will fight corruption, which stacks the deck against us. And our trade policies will
need to answer very clearly how they will grow the American middle class, create new and better jobs,
and benefit all Americans, not only those for whom the economy is already working.
Third, we will renew democracy, because it's under threat.
A new report from the independent watchdog group Freedom House is sobering. Authoritarianism and
nationalism are on the rise around the world. Governments are becoming less transparent and
have lost the trust of the people. Elections are increasingly flashpoints for violence.
Corruption is growing. And the pandemic has accelerated many of these trends.
But the erosion of democracy is not only happening in other places. It's also happening here in the
United States. Disinformation is rampant here. Structural racism and inequality make life worse
for millions. Our elected leaders were targeted in the violent siege of the Capitol just two months
ago. And more broadly, Americans are increasingly polarized – and the institutions that exist to
help us manage our differences, so our democracy can continue to function, are under strain.
Shoring up our democracy is a foreign policy imperative. Otherwise, we play right into
the hands of adversaries and competitors like Russia and China, who seize every opportunity
to sow doubts about the strength of our democracy. We shouldn't be making their jobs easier.
I take heart from the fact that we're dealing with our struggles out in the open.
And that sets us apart from many other countries. We don't ignore our failures and shortcomings or
try sweep them under the rug and pretend they don't exist. We confront them for
the world to see. It's painful. Sometimes it's ugly. But it's how we make progress.
Still, there's no question that our democracy is fragile. People around the world have seen that.
Many recognize in our challenges the challenges that they're facing. And now they're watching us
because they want to see whether our democracy is resilient,
whether we can rise to the challenge here at home. That will be the foundation for our legitimacy
in defending democracy around the world for years to come.
Why does that matter? Because strong democracies are more stable, more open, better partners to us,
more committed to human rights, less prone to conflict, and more dependable markets
for our goods and services. When democracies are weak, governments can't deliver for their people
or a country becomes so polarized that it's hard for anything to get done, they become
more vulnerable to extremist movements from the inside and to interference from the outside. And
they become less reliable partners to the United States. None of that is in our national interest.
The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver,
not only for our people, but also for each other,
the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that theirs is the better
way to meet people's fundamental needs and hopes. It's on us to prove them wrong.
So the question isn't if we will support democracy around the world, but how.
We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad
laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.
But we will not promote democracy through costly military interventions or by attempting to
overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in the past.
However well intentioned, they haven't worked. They've given democracy promotion
a bad name, and they've lost the confidence of the American people. We will do things differently.
Fourth, we will work to create a humane and effective immigration system.
Strong borders are fundamental to our national security, and laws are the bedrock of our
democracy. But we also need a diplomatic, and just plain decent, solution to the fact that
year after year, people from other countries risk everything to try to make it here.
We need to address the root causes that drive so many people
to flee their homes. And so we'll work closely with other countries,
especially our neighbors in Central America, to help them deliver better physical security
and economic opportunity so people don't feel like migrating is the only way out and up.
As we do this work, we will not lose sight of our core principles.
Cruelty, especially to children, is unacceptable. And turning our backs
on some of the most vulnerable people on earth is not who we should ever be.
One of the most important pieces of our national identity
is that we are a country of immigrants. We're made stronger by the fact that
hardworking people come here to go to school, start businesses, enrich our communities. We've
gotten away from that part of ourselves in the past few years. We've got to get back to it.
Fifth, we will revitalize our ties with our allies and partners.
Our alliances are what the military calls force multipliers. They're our unique asset. We get so
much more done with them than we could without them. So we're making a big push right now