State, Dems call out Cruz over holds ahead of key Russian talks

The State Department and Senate Democrats are calling out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for holding up confirmation votes on key members of President Biden’s national security team.

They are particularly criticizing Cruz for his hold on Bonnie Jenkins, who Biden nominated as under secretary of State for arms control and international security affairs.

U.S. and Russian officials are expected to meet on July 28 for the first Strategic Stability Dialogue on nuclear nonproliferation talks, which was announced during Biden’s first face-to-face summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month.

“[Jenkins] will be the senior official participating in those talks and it's critical that we have a Senate-confirmed leader... with that huge responsibility, in advance of these historic talks with Russia,” a State Department official said.

Jenkins is one of a dozen State nominees that the department says Cruz is blocking — leaving it empty of senior officials involved with critical national security issues.

The dozen officials blocked so far include another under secretary position in addition to Jenkins, five assistant secretaries and six ambassadors.

“Senator Cruz has said he is blocking all of them,” a State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Hill.

“We're in regular contact with Senator Cruz to try to get him to negotiate a way out of this blanket hold and so far we have not made any progress with him,” the official continued.

I can easily see why Cruz is concerned about her appointment.

Bonnie Jenkins is the founder and executive director of the Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation (WCAPS), a nonprofit organization established in 2017. She is also the chair of the Committee on Radioactive Sources: Applications and Alternative Technologies of the National Academies of Sciences.

In 2017, Jenkins was a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. From 2009 to 2017, she was an ambassador at the U.S. Department of State, where she served as coordinator for threat reduction programs in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. She served as the U.S. representative to the 30-nation G-7 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction and chaired the Global Partnership in 2012. Jenkins was the Department of State’s lead to the four Nuclear Security Summits that took place from 2010 to 2016.

She is recognized as an expert by some in the areas of arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. She is not, and has never been, a student of the countering of the use of weapons. Biden is sending her over to take the lead in a proliferation and disarmament process starting with Putin. Russia has never complied with the disarming promises they have made any more than we have since the talks started and the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991 that was initiated by Reagan in 1981.

Russia has failed every treaty and new ones have been reenacted with every president since Reagan. And Biden wants to send a diplomat over to try to talk them into doing something they have never had any intention of doing..

Russia, also, supplies weapons throughout the world to countries like Africa, alone:
Algeria, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, Angola, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Mozambique and Egypt, All are recipients of transport and combat choppers, anti tank and SAMs, fighter ground attack aircraft, tanks and anti ship missiles.

With her background, does anyone but Biden think she can handle this problem and the other lying and ignoring of policies by middle eastern countries and terrorist groups?

Wy69

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