DOMINC GREEN: Antony Blinken’s soundtrack to failure.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state and first guitarist, has broken with the tired protocols of the past, faced the complexities of the multipolar twenty-first century world, and issued a Spotify playlist. This may be a better way of reaching new audiences than bombing them. But shouldn’t public figures be judged on their records, not their record collections?

“The thread that runs throughout my life is probably music,” Blinken told Rolling Stone last year as he meditated his mixtape. Hitler would probably have said the same about painting had Rolling Stone been around to profile the Viennese amateur who was turning the art world upside down. George Kennan would probably not have said the same, but then, Kennan was the career diplomat whose strategy of containment won the Cold War, not a self-publicizing amateur who can’t contain his own self-regard.

Blinken argues that music “transcends borders.”

Well, not all borders: After Taliban’s Takeover, Piano And Other Musical Instruments Destroyed In Afghanistan.

I’m sure they’re keen fans of Western modernist art, however: