At the ceremony in Paris, Mr. Blinken cited a lesson he learned from his stepfather: “We have to remain eternally vigilant, because humanity’s striving for the best can sometimes be overcome by its capacity for the worst.”
But the world served up an especially ugly parade of horrors as Mr. Blinken took charge of the State Department: strife and atrocities in Yemen, Syria, Haiti, Ethiopia, Armenia, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, where the secretary declared this month that combatants were carrying out a genocide.
Bearing a flawlessly polite and self-effacing demeanor, Mr. Blinken spent countless hours trying to resolve and prevent conflict. But for better or worse, his legacy rests not on forging grand peace treaties — those traditional diplomatic prizes eluded him — but on his role in two wars that often cast him in very different lights.
Drawing the Line Against Russia
Mr. Blinken’s first test, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, was widely seen as a fiasco.
The Taliban’s swift takeover of Kabul caught the State Department by surprise, forcing a chaotic evacuation of American citizens and Afghan allies. Some Republican lawmakers demanded that Mr. Blinken resign.
His moment came when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
