Blinken makes impassioned case for American diplomacy

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stand at a podium in front of a blue backdrop; part of an American flag is visible over his right shoulder - Blinken makes the case for American diplomacy in Johns Hopkins SAIS address - Secretary of state delivers remarks as part of the Brzezinski Lecture Series and was the inaugural speaker in the main auditorium at the new Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke passionately and pointedly about the power and purpose of American diplomacy at a key inflection point in world history during remarks delivered Wednesday at the new Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. "One era is ending," Blinken said, "a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future." Blinken spoke as part of the Brzezinski Lecture Series, hosted by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and named for Zbigniew Brzezinski, a national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and longtime professor of foreign policy at SAIS who died in 2017 . The lecture series honors his legacy as a scholar, policy adviser, and statesman by bringing the world's most preeminent thinkers to Johns Hopkins SAIS to address the growing international challenges of our time. Today, we find ourselves "at the end of the post-Cold War era.. that ushered in remarkable progress," Blinken said. "Several of the core assumptions that shaped our approach to the post-Cold War era no longer hold, [and] decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian..