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The dealmaker-in-chief

Nicholas Burns

Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013 | 2 a.m.

When Sen. John Kerry is confirmed as secretary of state this month, he will encounter a number of complex tests as America’s top diplomat. The first is his challenging inbox, which includes the Afghanistan war, Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats, an increasingly violent Middle East, the lingering euro debt crisis, and China’s challenge to American power in Asia. It may well be the most daunting agenda a secretary of state has faced in a generation. Kerry also will inherit a bruised State Department reeling from the Benghazi attacks and the tough Accountability Review Board judgment of “systemic failures” in ...

Nicholas Burns is a professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He wrote this for the Boston Globe.

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By CarmineD (Carmine DiFazio)

Jan. 5, 2013

10:01 a.m.

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Kerry should not be considered and confirmed until Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress about Benghazi. Period. End of story.

CarmineD