US Senate Confirms Biden UN Nominee Thomas-Greenfield

By Staff, Agencies

The US Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Joe Biden’s nominee, veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, adding a key member to his national security team nearly a month after her confirmation hearing.

The 100-member Senate backed Thomas-Greenfield by 78 to 20 to be Washington’s representative at the world body and a member of Biden’s Cabinet, comfortably exceeding the simple majority needed. All of the no votes came from Republicans.

Thomas-Greenfield, 68, is a 35-year veteran of the Foreign Service who has served on four continents, most notably in Africa.

During her confirmation speech in the Senate last month, she condemned the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions [BDS] movement.

Republicans who opposed her nomination focused on a 2019 speech at Savannah State University's Confucius Institute, one of China's overseas language and cultural centers.

Thomas-Greenfield said she gave the speech out of esteem for the university, a historically Black institution in Georgia, and in hopes that more people of color would join the US Foreign Service -- not because of the Confucius Institute.

"Truthfully, I wish I had not accepted the specific invitation. And I came away from the experience frankly alarmed at the way the Confucius Institute was engaging with the Black community in Georgia," she said.

Thomas-Greenfield further added that Washington should pay back arrears to UN operations and peacekeeping, estimated at around $1.3 billion.

"We need to pay our bills to have a seat at the table, and our leadership is needed at the table," she said.

At her confirmation hearing in late January, she stressed the importance of US re-engagement with the 193-member United Nations in order to challenge efforts by China to “drive an authoritarian agenda.”

China has been working to gain greater global influence in a challenge to traditional US leadership, often by providing loans to developing nations in Africa and elsewhere that tie them closer to the Beijing government.

Tension between the two superpowers hit a boiling point at the United Nations last year over the coronavirus pandemic, as then-President Donald Trump pulled the US back from international organizations as part of his “America First” foreign policy agenda.