Gregory Meeks elected Foreign Relations Committee chair

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Congressman Gregory Meeks, a Democrat who represents southwest Queens, Elmont, Inwood and north and south Valley Stream, the senior member  of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was elected to chair the committee. Meeks is the first African-American chair in the committee’s history.

“I am incredibly honored to be elected chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a committee that I have served on throughout my tenure of service in Congress,” he said in a news release. “There is extraordinary talent across the committee and Democratic caucus, and I look forward to working closely with members as we look ahead to a new era of U.S. global affairs.”

Meeks noted that the next session of Congress will oversee what he called an “historic shift” in the country’s foreign policy and there is much work to be done. He said that the nation will now “re-engage with a world” after what Meeks said was a “the marked absence of U.S. global leadership,” during the Trump Administration. Meeks also said that the nation must “rethink traditional approaches to foreign policy.”

It is not a return to what he said is normal but aiming to do things differently by broadening the country’s reach to what Meeks called “parts of the world we’ve historically overlooked.” And partnering again with European allies and building “new multilateral relationships in the Western Hemisphere and Africa.”    

“We can only address the systemic challenges posed by Moscow and Beijing with the help of like-minded friends,” he said in the release. “We will work to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iranian nuclear program) and World Health Organization, but we will also need to establish new coalitions to address the existential crisis of climate change and emerging threats.”

Meeks also said that to advocate for global human rights, the country must “lead by humble example with the weight of U.S. moral credibility.” Congress, he said, must exercise its constitutional authority and tighten the scope of using military force that have led to “ambiguous forever wars.”

“None of that work, however, can be completed without a considerable rebuilding of our Department of State,” he stated. “Diplomacy must be moved front and center as the primary tool for conducting U.S. foreign policy, no longer second to military action.  We will broaden the conversation, hearing testimony from organizations and non-traditional diplomats. We will press for greater diversity so our diplomatic corps looks more like the America it represents abroad, strengthening the initiatives that serve as a pipeline for diverse communities.”