Senate Foreign Relations Committee Staff Chief Tony Blinken Discusses Iraq

On Monday, April 30, the Majority Staff Director of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Antony Blinken, spoke at Institute headquarters in Washington, DC, about a way forward in Iraq.

Blinken, who serves as senior foreign policy adviser to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), explored the possible paths of action, variables, and potential outcomes in Iraq at this Aspen Roundtable Series, sponsored by the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund. "We are obsessed in Washington with a false choice," said Blinken, "which is between sticking with a failing war or getting out as soon as possible. I believe there is a third choice." Blinken continued by detailing the five-point "Biden- [Les] Gelb Plan for Iraq," which calls for a decentralized federal system in Iraq that gives Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites each local control — presided over by a central government that is responsible for common interests, such as border security and the distribution of oil revenues and reinforced by economic aid, involvement of Iraq's neighbors, and a UN Oversight Group. At the lunchtime event, Blinken, a former special assistant to President Clinton for Strategic Planning and Clinton's chief foreign policy speechwriter, fielded questions from around the roundtable detailing other provisions of the plan. The event was moderated by former US Senator Dick Clark (D-IA), the director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, and was attended by Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Ellen Laipson, president and CEO of the Henry L. Stimson Center; Princeton Lyman, Ralph Bunche Fellow in African Policy Programs at the Council on Foreign Relations; Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Ethiopian ambassador to the US Samuel Assefa; among others.