Best of the best still make mistakes
President-elect Biden has started to name his national security team: Tony Blinken as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN Ambassador. Not clear what is holding up Secretary of Defense, but it is likely to be of the same ilk: these are rational, disciplined people with deep experience well-known and well-accepted throughout the foreign policy establishment in Washington. All worked in the Obama Administration.
And all have made their share of mistakes. Tony has admitted to mistakes in Syria. I’d say the withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 was done with insufficient political preparation. I remember briefing Jake at one point on Libya, underlining that the Administration needed to be ready for a major post-Qaddafi state-building effort. That didn’t happen. My one interaction with Avril Haines was more felicitous, as I agreed with much of what she said. I don’t know Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, but I’m sure she like the others has had her share of bad moments. You can’t have a 35-year Foreign Service career without making a few mistakes, some of which might turn out to be big.
But in the aftermath of Donald Trump, we don’t need perfect to make gigantic improvements. His Administration has been a disaster for America’s role in the world. He offended most of our European allies as well as all of Africa, China defeated him in the tariff war and attracted most of Asia to join its free trade circle, he has pulled the rug out from under his own able negotiator in Afghanistan and weakened the US in Iraq, and Russian President Putin is smiling all the way to the Kremlin about America’s withdrawal from important arms control agreements.
Any decision that rises to the top level in the US government is difficult in one way or another. So this new team will no doubt make its share of mistakes after it takes office in January. But they will be disciplined, not erratic, deliberative rather than impulsive, knowledgeable rather than abysmally ignorant, rational rather than biased. They will draw on a lot of expertise both inside the American bureaucracy and outside, in this country and abroad. They will consult with allies but be prepared to lead on the main issues of our time, including the China challenge, Russia’s roguish behavior, the reality of climate change, and the need to maintain strategic arms controls.
There is of course the risk among people who know each other well and have worked together previously of group-think. But I can tell you from having testified in front of Senator Biden a number of times that he is not inclined in that direction. He asks probing questions and doesn’t accept pat answers. He too has made mistakes: he believed George W. Bush when the President said he needed a war powers resolution to make Saddam Hussein back down and not in order to go to war in Iraq. But that is a far cry from deciding to ignore a deadly virus that then kills hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Jake and Tony are committed to a foreign policy that more constructively and visibly benefits middle class Americans. That to me is a worthy perspective. They will surely make mistakes along the way, but regaining popular support has to be one of the first priorities after the calamitous ruin of MAGA, which turned quickly into make America generally alone. One of my correspondents suggested Biden should just aim for MASA: make America serious again. The national security team he is assembling certainly fits that objective.
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