“John Kerry has been tested — in war, in government, and in diplomacy. Time and again, he has proven his mettle,” Hillary Clinton commented in a statement to support the next U.S. Secretary of state.

CONSIDERING Hillary Clinton’s health issue, observers around the world were anxious to know whether Clinton would be able to deal with such a heavy workload or pass on her responsibilities to her successor earlier.

    When U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 21 nominated John Kerry as the next secretary of state, the veteran senator drew global attention for the second time. Initially, ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice — who withdrew from consideration last month — was preferred by many critics to the former presidential nominee, but most acknowledged that the familiar face is a “safe choice” to be America’s top diplomat.

    With Kerry standing at his side, Obama expressed confidence that the senator would win swift confirmation from his Senate colleagues.

    “As we turn the page on a decade of war, he understands that we’ve got to harness all elements of American power and ensure that they’re working together,” Obama said. “John’s earned the respect and confidence of leaders around the world. He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training.”

    Graduated from Yale and once enlisted in the U.S. Navy, the son of a diplomat and Obama’s unofficial envoy, Kerry spent hours walking around the palace in Kabul persuading Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to agree to a runoff election in fall 2009.

    In Pakistan, Kerry helped quell the anger after the U.S. incursion into the country to kill Osama bin Laden in May 2011. The uneasy ties between Washington and Islamabad will be a priority for Kerry at the State Department.

    “He knows most of the world leaders,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. “So when he goes into a country he will be a known quantity.”

    The five-term Massachusetts senator has spent his entire congressional career on the Foreign Relations Committee, the last six years as chairman. He has traveled extensively both as intrepid lawmaker and administration emissary.

    “There will always be a tension between the diplomatic imperative to get ‘outside the wire’ and the security standards that require our diplomats to work behind high walls,” he said. “Our challenge is to strike a balance between the necessity of the mission, available resources and tolerance for risk.”

    Kerry has stepped ahead of the administration on a handful of crises. He joined John McCain as an early proponent of a more aggressive policy toward Libya, pushing for using military forces to impose a “no-fly zone” over Libya as Moammar Gadhafi’s forces killed rebels and citizens.

    He was one of the early voices calling for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down as the revolution roiled the nation in 2011.

    That independent voice may be tempered once he takes over as the administration’s top diplomat.

    “He’s going to find what it’s like to be part of an administration,” said Senator Richard Burr. “John’s going to adapt to this well. I think he spent a lot of his time grooming to be a good secretary of state. ... I don’t see any downside to this nomination.”

    During his tenure, Kerry has pushed for reducing the number of nuclear weapons, shepherding a U.S.-Russia treaty through the Senate in December 2010, and has cast climate change as a national security threat, joining forces with Republicans on legislation that faced too many obstacles to win congressional passage.

    He has led delegations to Syria and met a few times with President Bashar Assad, now a pariah in U.S. eyes after months of civil war and bloodshed as the government looks to put down a popular uprising. Figuring out an end-game for the Middle East country would demand all of Kerry’s skills.

    Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, has forged a close working relationship with Obama and gave him the keynote speech assignment at the 2004 Democratic convention that boosted a then little-known Illinois state legislator onto the national stage, opening the way for his meteoric rise.

    Kerry played the role of Mitt Romney in Obama’s debate practice during the 2012 campaign, and afterwards Kerry joked that he would need an “exorcism” to get the Republican out of his system. “Nothing brings two people closer together than weeks of debate prep,” Obama stated to reporters, following Kerry’s nomination.

    The 69-year-old politician’s selection sets a pragmatic tone as Obama begins overhauling his national security team.

    Kerry looked on intently as Obama spoke, nodding occasionally. But the lawmaker known for sometimes long-winded speeches was not given a chance to address reporters at the White House.

    (SD-Agencies)

China ties

Kerry will be the leading Cabinet member charged with tackling pressing global issues, ranging from upheaval in the Middle East to Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West and winding down the war in Afghanistan.

    Among the challenges facing Kerry will be to improve ties between China and the United States, which have worsened since Washington’s rebalancing policy in the Asia-Pacific region, experts said.

    “China-U.S. ties have deteriorated through a series of high-profile measures by the United States aimed at rebalancing, especially the overemphasis of military action, which triggered great antipathy from China,” said Ruan Zongze, a U.S. studies researcher and the deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies.

    Kerry supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, to “balance China’s economic influence in the region” in a speech at the Center for American Progress before Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States in January 2011.

    “Some called this intensified U.S. engagement in Asia a hedging strategy, an insurance against the possibility of China emerging as a regional hegemony.

    “Frankly, I don’t care what we call it. I just think it makes sense that we ought to do it,” he said then. During the address he appealed for maintaining a cooperative attitude toward China, rather than one that treated China as an enemy or the cause of U.S. domestic problems.

    “If China succeeds in rebalancing its economy, then the global economy will benefit and so will we,” he said.

    “If China fails — or worse, if we cut ourselves off from China in a misguided attempt to ‘contain it’ as some have suggested — then we will all suffer. And even though we can’t call China an ally today, we simply cannot treat it as an enemy.”

    As the new secretary of state, and a supporter of the Asian rebalancing strategy, Kerry would be less aggressive than his predecessor Clinton, said Jin Canrong, an international affairs professor at Renmin University of China.