With CHARLIE HARPER

The impressive new US Embassy rising over downtown Nassau serves as a daily reminder to us of its parent, the American Department of State, which got a new leader on Tuesday when Antony Blinken was confirmed then by the US Senate.

While some news outlets are describing him as rising from the professional ranks at the State Department, he never served overseas.

That is not to suggest that Blinken is under-qualified for his new position.

Quite the opposite: Given that American foreign policy has been fundamentally developed and implemented in Washington since at least the Kennedy Administration in the 1960s, Blinken’s experience represents virtually a perfect apprenticeship for taking the helm of America’s “senior cabinet agency”.

Young diplomats in the State Department, as in foreign offices and ministries of foreign affairs around the world, are well advised to heed the venerable axiom that effective foreign policy springs from well enunciated national interest.

And that national interest originates most often in domestic politics and concerns.

There are many joys and satisfactions in living abroad in different societies, so recruitment into the professional diplomatic services is unlikely to suffer.

It’s just that making foreign policy is extraordinarily unlikely to be one of them, though we’ll come to a notable exception to that rule in a few paragraphs.

Blinken’s career is a textbook illustration of how to prepare to make foreign policy.

He got off to a good start. His father, a Wall Street banker and political fundraiser, was appointed as US Ambassador to Hungary during the Clinton Administration.

After an Ivy League education at Columbia and Harvard, the new Secretary of State helped his father raise money for 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis.

By 1994, as his father was taking the helm of the American Embassy in Budapest, young Blinken was named to a junior position at the National Security Council in Washington.

He thus began a classic “in and out” career that has become the template for Democratic and Republican foreign policy experts for decades.

When Democrats occupied the White House, Blinken held positions of increasingly senior responsibility on the White House staff. When the Dems were out of power under George W Bush, Blinken became an adviser and confidant of then-Senator Joe Biden. More recently, Blinken reportedly made millions as a consultant.

Back in 2008, after the election of Barack Obama, Blinken moved to the right hand of power in Washington, as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Special Adviser to then Vice-President Biden.

See how this works? It gets more interesting.

In 2014, Obama appointed Blinken as Deputy Secretary of State. The man he replaced was William Burns, the notable exception mentioned earlier. Burns, a career diplomat who knew how to play the domestic political game as well as anyone, did serve several tours overseas, including as US ambassador to Jordan and Russia.

Burns was announced earlier as Biden’s choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

What does all this portend for American foreign policy under the new President?

First, while the new administration including Blinken has criticized the blunt stridency of their enunciation and implementation, neither the Trump administration’s wary, hostile stance toward China nor its moving of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is expected to be overturned.

On the Middle East generally, the approach seems to be seeking to have the best of both worlds while supporting expanded diplomatic recognition of Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign state while continuing to promote a two-state solution that includes an independent Palestine.

Otherwise, the public adulation of Vladimir Putin will cease.

The importuning of Western European and other NATO allies to devote more money and resources to their own defence will continue, but much more discretely behind the scenes.

Publicly, support for NATO and other key alliances including the Organization for American States should continue to noticeably intensify. Relations with Britain and Canada should resume a more cordial and hopefully productive tone.

The audible sigh of relief in foreign capitals from Berlin to Beijing to Havana after the results of the November American election should be generally justified by the more modulated behaviour of the new US administration.

What does this all mean for The Bahamas?

Very likely, it means for us what it means for most of the world’s nations: little of headline significance, but potentially much around the edges of American policy.

For it is on the margins and in the shadows of US policy that our politicians and diplomats can best operate to our advantage.

And since American domestic politics only infrequently intrude on US-Bahamian relations, these realities offer to our own policymakers an opportunity for quiet advantage.

We can only wish them every success as we all watch American public health and its economy gradually return to normal levels and hopefully bring us along with them.

The greatest innings is over

One of the very greatest, most transformational figures in American or world sports history passed away last week.

Henry Aaron died at the age of 86.

“Hammerin’ Hank” is best known for breaking one of sport’s most enduring records with his 715th career home run for the Atlanta Braves in 1974. The man he surpassed, Babe Ruth, played five decades earlier in the Roaring Twenties that led to the Great Depression.

Issues of race in America looked and felt different in 1924 than they did in 1974.

Whether they were substantially different is a question that continues to be debated by historians.

It wasn’t debated by Henry Aaron. This proud, stolid, stoical man endured as much distasteful, reprehensible prejudice and racial hatred over the course of his storied Hall of Fame career as did Jackie Robinson, the comparably talented Dodgers infielder who is credited with breaking Major League Baseball’s notorious colour barrier in 1947.

There is an oft-repeated story that illustrates the awful bias Aaron overcame in ascending to the pantheon of the truly great in baseball history. At one point later in life, he donated almost all of his many historical memorabilia to the Baseball Hall of Fame in rural New York State.

Included were his 1957 World Series championship ring and the bat he used for his 3,000th hit. Aaron only kept one thing from his baseball career. He retained the large collection of hate mail he received over the years, particularly as he inexorably approached Babe Ruth’s iconic record, which Aaron then held for 33 years.

In the many richly-deserved tributes that dotted his obituaries, it was often recalled that Aaron’s team, the Atlanta Braves, had to hire special security to safeguard him as he threatened “the Babe’s” record. He often registered in hotels under an alias. His daughter was threatened with kidnapping.

The team received hundreds of letters with death threats. Aaron later said he became fearful even of the autograph-seekers who still populate the foul lines of major league ballparks before games and the players’ exits afterwards.

As a boy, Aaron lived in Mobile, Alabama in the terrifying shadow of the Ku Klux Klan, and rehearsed escape and evasion procedures with his mother during KKK demonstrations near their home.

In 2014, while an African-American served in the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, Aaron said this to an interviewer:

“I kept the hate mail to remind myself that we in America are not that far removed from when I was chasing (Babe Ruth’s) record. If you think that, you are fooling yourself. A lot of things have happened in this country, but we still have so far to go. There’s not a whole lot that has really changed.

“Sure, (America) has a Black President. But President Obama has his foot stuck in the mud from all the Republicans with the way he’s treated. What has changed?

“The biggest difference is that back then (in Mobile) they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.”

As we all watch the Senate Republicans sabotage Trump’s second trial for impeachment, it’s useful to recall that those senators all think they represent those who voted for them.

Was Hank Aaron right?