Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons
WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, Politico yesterday profiled U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) at the Munich Security Conference, focusing on his role as a foreign policy leader in his own right and as a crucial link between world leaders, Congress, and President Biden. Senator Coons is “the closest thing to a direct presidential representative [on] Capitol Hill” thanks to his links to President Biden given their Delaware background and shared ethos of “The Delaware Way.” As Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, Senator Coons has become a foreign policy leader in the Senate as well, controlling the purse strings of diplomacy and influencing U.S. engagement with NATO, assistance for Ukraine, and efforts to outcompete and counter foreign adversaries like China.
Politico: What Chris Coons tells world leaders about Biden
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At both global conclaves, the powerful who gathered behind closed doors had no illusions about the important association that makes this Democratic lawmaker highly sought out and listened to. He’s one of President Joe Biden’s most influential global emissaries, someone who’s mentioned in the same breath as Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Though he may not hold executive power, he’s the closest thing to a direct presidential representative one can find from the ranks of Capitol Hill.
Coons has been Biden’s “other guy” abroad throughout this presidency. To watch the jovial Delawarean operate outside the U.S. is to see him embrace the role of proxy. At the Munich Security Conference this weekend, world leaders flocked to the 59-year-old lawmaker not only to get a sense of U.S. foreign policy — they could also speak to Vice President Kamala Harris or Blinken for that. They sought him out to get a sense of Biden, the man.
“What I bring to the table in talking to folks here, or who are world leaders, is I get one piece of who he is, which is the part that’s connected to Delaware,” Coons said in our interview. That ethos — “The Delaware Way,” Coons called it — is the same one that drives Biden’s style of negotiation: “You’ve got to get something if I’m going to get something.”
In the U.S. and around the world, Coons is talked about as a shadow secretary of State. It’s not just that Biden dispatches him to hotspots or expects to be briefed after the senator’s meetings at global fora. It’s also that Coons is always gladhanding with foreign dignitaries, whether in cramped hotel hallways or glitzy Alpine resorts. He has a gift for showmanship and a warm personal touch, lightly tapping someone when he wants to emphasize a point or he sees their attention slipping.
As a member of a congressional delegation here, Coons gave everyone from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to U.S. combatant commanders his reading of the president’s mindset entering the second year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The message was simple: Help Ukraine without risking America’s military readiness for future fights — namely should China invade Taiwan — and don’t plunge the U.S. into another foreign war.
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On Capitol Hill, Coons has another source of foreign policymaking power. He chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee’s panel on State and foreign aid funding and takes his control over [the] purse string role seriously.
“People think all the foreign officials come to him as the Biden whisperer, but really it’s because he writes the checks,” a Senate Democratic aide said.
The full article is available here.
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