In his column in the Washington Post Josh Rogin points out the obvious—the Biden foreign policy team is, basically, a rerun of the Obama foreign policy team:
The Biden administration’s foreign policy leadership team is looking more and more like the Obama-Biden foreign policy leadership team from 2016 — exactly like it, in fact. Can the same people develop new approaches for a world that looks starkly different from when they left government? We’d better hope so.
Multiple sources have confirmed to me — as first reported in Politico Tuesday — that the Biden transition team is preparing to announce a list of senior appointments and nominations for national security and foreign policy positions in the incoming administration. The announcement, to come as early as this week, will include Wendy Sherman as deputy secretary of state, Victoria Nuland as undersecretary of state for political affairs and Jon Finer as deputy national security adviser.
If those names sound familiar, it’s because these are all former senior Obama administration foreign policy officials. Sherman was undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2011 to 2015 and served as the lead U.S. negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal. Nuland, a retired career Foreign Service officer, served as the State Department’s top Europe and Russia official from 2013 until Trump’s inauguration. Finer, a former journalist, held various Obama administration national security posts, including working for Biden in the vice president’s office and later as Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s chief of staff.
These latest appointments reinforce the established pattern: resurrecting the Obama foreign policy team, albeit in different positions. Secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken moved up from deputy secretary of state. The designated national security adviser to President-elect Biden, Jake Sullivan, moved up from the role of national security adviser to Vice President Biden. Kerry is back on the National Security Council Principals Committee (which he served on when as Secretary of State), this time as a special envoy for climate change. Susan E. Rice is back in the West Wing as head of the Domestic Policy Council. Biden’s Defense Department appointments fit this pattern, as well.
I sincerely hope that we can get through the next four years without embroiling ourselves in more wars in the Middle East and North Africa and providing material support to people who hate us in the hope that they will create a more liberal social order.
My experience is that leopards do not, in fact, change their spots. I suspect, for example, that the Responsibility to Protect will rear its ugly head again.
I suppose the good news is that we’re running out of evil countries to invade. None left in North Africa and we’ve already invaded all our nominal enemies in the ME except Iran. But the Biden admin is not likely to want to go to war with Iran.
I’m more worried about eastern Europe and can see the Biden admin returning to the Obama, Bush, and Clinton policies there.
Strategically, Asia is where we should be putting most of our effort. Trying to piss in Russia’s Wheaties as we’ve done for the last 30 years would be dumb and destabilizing – instead, we really need to come up with a coherent strategy for East and South Asia, especially WRT to China. Trump was stupid and incoherent on this, but at least he brought the issue of Chinese mercantilism to the table.
So far the Biden team is talking in platitudes and hand-waving when it comes to Asia policy, which is somewhat to be expected until a new administration is actually in office, but I’m skeptical that Biden’s team will make any major changes given the establishment people he’s picked. The status quo isn’t sustainable and isn’t serving US interests long-term.
Something being “dumb and destabilizing” has been no impediment to our foreign policy decisions for decades.
The question is whether they’re more concerned about serving U. S. interests long-term or pursuing internationalist policies. I’m betting the latter.
From a position of overwhelming national strength and security US leaders may feel free to pursue internationalist policies.
China is hellbent on challenging that security and the priorities of our leaders will be forced to adapt, I pray in time.