Biden’s UN envoy pick a morale boost for diplomats

Bloomberg

When Linda Thomas-Greenfield was held at gunpoint on a diplomatic assignment in Rwanda in 1994, she tried her best to look calm as she explained to a “glazed-eyed young man” that she wasn’t the woman he was told to kill.
“I was afraid, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t panic,” Thomas-Greenfield, now one of America’s most experienced diplomats and President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for United Nations ambassador, later recalled in a TED Talk. The Tutsi woman who was the intended target was among hundreds of
thousands killed during the genocide that year.
Some 26 years after that
harrowing experience, Thomas-Greenfield will soon be preparing for her Senate confirmation hearing, leaning on her experience across four continents, including State Department assignments in Jamaica, Nigeria, Switzerland and Pakistan, as well as in Washington as assistant secretary of state for African affairs.
After four years of “America First” messaging from President Donald Trump and Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Michael Pompeo, Thomas-Greenfield’s appointment is a clear signal of a return to traditional diplomacy and to cooperation over confrontation at the UN. It’s also a vote of confidence in career diplomats whose influence has been diminished.
“America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back,” Thomas-Greenfield said as Biden introduced his foreign policy team.
Raised in Louisiana, Thomas-Greenfield was the oldest of eight children and was bused to a segregated school as a child. Her father dropped out of school in the third grade,
and her mother had an eighth-grade education. She attended Louisiana State University, where she faced harassment and discrimination from students and faculty members, according to a person close to her.
The 67-year-old Thomas-Greenfield, who would be one of the highest-ranking Black officials in Biden’s administration, said that she taps into her Louisiana roots to conduct “gumbo diplomacy.”
“Wherever I was posted around the world, I’d invite people of different backgrounds and beliefs to help me make a roux and chop onions for the Holy Trinity, and make homemade gumbo,” she said. “It was my way of breaking down barriers, connecting with people.”
Biden plans to give his UN envoy the full Cabinet status that current Ambassador Kelly Craft lacks, but the job at world body won’t be easy.
Under Trump, the US took
on other members of the organisation on issues from reimposing sanctions on Iran to quitting
the World Health Organization, a move Biden has pledged
to reverse.
“Her appointment will be seen at the UN as a sign that Washington will re-engage with the world and that the Biden administration will not be staffed with individuals who are antagonistic to the organisation,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.