Month: November 2020
The nightmare is over, now the hard work begins
I spent an hour this morning on Zoom with Italian colleagues at the Institute of International Affairs (IAI) talking about the American election and its consequences for foreign policy. Here are the points I prepared for them,
most of them all too obvious I’m afraid:
- While Biden is better informed and experienced on foreign policy than any president in decades, his most immediate priorities will be domestic: first and foremost stopping Covid-19 infections and moving as quickly as possible to revive the American economy, which is still in bad shape, and fix our social cleavages, which are severe.
- That said, he is putting in place a formidable foreign policy team: Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Avril Haines and Linda Thomas-Greenfield are among our finest. Janet Yellen at Treasury will make an excellent counterpart on the economic side.
- Jake and Tony are both strongly committed to a revived domestic economy and solutions to America’s social challenges as prerequisites for a strong international role. You can expect them to be less transactional but just as aggressive as Trump on trade and investment issues, where America will need to satisfy more of the demands of its domestic producers.
- Missing so far from the Biden team is the Secretary of Defense. I’d still bet on Michele Fluornoy, but I admit I have little idea why she hasn’t been named yet. Defense industry ties may be the reason.
- Whoever gets Defense, Biden will seek to reinvigorate trans-Atlantic ties. He has a basically positive attitude towards NATO and America’s allies, whom he views as force multipliers whose basic values are aligned with ours.
- He is not opposed, as Trump was, to the European Union. I doubt he will prioritize a free trade agreement with the UK and might even try to revive the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, or something like it.
- Willingness of the US to return to the JCPOA will help his effort to renew the Alliance, but it will require reciprocal Iranian willingness to return to the status quo ante. I’m not convinced Tehran will be willing before the June presidential election, and maybe not even after.
- Biden will want to cooperate quickly with Europe in responding to Russia’s regional challenges in the Baltics, the Balkans, and especially Ukraine, though he will be hampered on Ukraine by the allegations against his son Hunter.
- The US will return, likely on Day 1, to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which I trust will be a welcome move in Europe.
- The big looming problem for both the US and Europe is how to meet China’s global economic and political challenge. Biden will want to pursue both cooperation and competition with China.
- He is not interested in a new cold war, but he will be far more committed globally to democratic values and human rights than Trump has been. He will not be sword dancing in Riyadh, encouraging President Xi to imprison Uighurs, or staying silent about repression in Hong Kong.
- Renewed American support for human rights and democracy will unsettle relations not only with China but also with the Gulf, Israel, Brazil, and possibly with Hungary and Poland.
- Biden will not be able to restore everything to where things stood four years ago. He’ll need to prioritize.
- But I think all those who want to see American global leadership based on a rational assessment of both values and interests will feel a lot better about things on January 21 than they did on November 2. The nightmare is over, but the hard work is just beginning.
In addition to foreign policy, the Italians pressed me on the future of the Republican Party and reports that black men and Hispanics shifted towards Trump. I responded more or less this way:
- The numbers are still iffy, but at least some of the shift among Hispanics was due to mostly white Venezuelans and Cubans who fled socialist countries and were frightened when Trump told them Biden was a socialist. Some Latinos in Texas appear to have shifted as well, possibly due to the employment impact of border wall construction.
- The Republican Party now has a choice to make between continuing as a right-wing extremist and racist party or reverting to right-of-center social and economic conservatism. Trump will try to keep the party on the former track and can boast of an enormous turnout of voters, and relative victories in the House races, to help him. So far, only Senator Romney seems courageous enough to point in the direction of more conventional conservatism. We’ll have to wait and see which direction Republicans choose.
On the domestic side, I also emphasized the importance of the January 5 Senate run-off elections in Georgia, which will determine how far Biden can go on the legislative front.
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Stevenson’s army, November 24
NYT reports on China’s tactics to set the rules for the globalized economy.
CRS has new report on China’s RCEP.
WSJ says Trump plans new actions against China.
Since Biden has not yet made a SecDef appointment, FP notes previous clashes between Biden & Michele Flournoy.
Last spring I alerted everybody to the “strategic consulting” firm [they say they stop short of lobbying — or having to register] founded by Tony Blinken & Flournoy. Politico has a new story.
Atlantic runs a 2 year old piece by the new NSA Jake Sullivan.
Prof Mahnken urges new types of operational training.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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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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Stevenson’s army, November 23
WaPo had the news first, now everybody discusses Biden’s choices for SecState, NSA and UN Ambassador.
Trump exits Open Skies Treaty.
Netanyahu met not-so-secretly with MBS.
Brookings Fellow writes of the politics of Biden’s foreign policy.
Hollow Pentagon: 40% of top jobs lack confirmed officials.
Pollster acknowledges ultra low response rate.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Worst and best cases, neither all that great
Younger brother Jeremy Serwer writes:
We’re almost done.
That said, apparently our Constitution provides no prescription for next steps if a President refuses to step down and leave. In a nutshell, the Founders couldn’t imagine this happening, and/or felt that such a President would be impeached/tried/convicted out of office first.
Good piece in The Washington Post today on the issue:
So, a possible worst case scenario, IMHO:
- Enough states certify their Electors to keep Biden over 270
- Trump’s attempts to reverse Electors at the Electoral College fail: legal penalties prevent electors from turning
- A final appeal by the Trump Campaign to the Supreme Court
- Court rules in favor of Biden
- Trump still doesn’t concede
- Preparations proceed for the Inauguration on the Capitol steps (won’t be challenged as Trump would also need to be inaugurated if he thinks he won)
- On January 20, 2021 at noon Biden is either sworn in, or Trump manages to disrupt the Inauguration attempting to co-opt the swearing in ceremony
- EITHER WAY, as of a second after noon on January 20 Trump is no longer President, per the Constitution and the 20th Amendment
- In preparation, the Secret Service, the Capitol Police, and/or the US military is prepared to block Trump and maintain order. Their context for not supporting President Trump: none of these services will execute what their leadership identifies as an illegal order, and our statutes protect that position. Hard to believe there’s not a lot of discussion going on in those offices.
- Biden is inaugurated
- Trump could conceivably be taken from the White House/Oval Office by force
Hopefully, the more likely scenario:
Cooler heads in the Trump family (and/or close enough confidants that Trump will not fire due to what they may know – think VP Pence?), and/or pressure from Republicans in Congress not subject to near term re-election, convince him that he has lost, that he should concede (though he may not). While he may not attend the Inauguration nor assist/facilitate the transition, he steps back from disrupting it and prepares to leave the Oval Office and the White House residence. Best case, he finally concedes and does attend Biden’s Inauguration.
No matter what happens, our country will remain sharply divided over who should be President. There will be demonstrations, potentially violence, though this too will dissipate – PARTICULARLY if we begin to curb the pandemic, consequently restore the economy to a better normalcy, and further reduce the unemployment rate – and those not working and not included in that rate – begin to get jobs back. After all, how much demonstrating can you do if you have your job(s) back, need to be at work, and by so doing are not at risk of virus infection and potentially death?
Finally, some predictions that won’t go away for a bit:
- A poor transition (assuming the GSA head still refuses to support Biden’s transition efforts) results in varied chaos for the new administration, no matter how much they are attempting to fund and execute a transition without cooperation from the Trump Administration.
- Without preparatory knowledge of Operation Warp Speed details, therapeutic treatments, PPE supplies, and vaccine distribution could be delayed or disrupted.
- Other areas of the Biden Administration will be slow to gear up.
- We will not have heard the last from Donald Trump. The Donald and his Trump minions will remain loud via social media and our e-mail IN Boxes. If he stays healthy, and/or a charismatic replacement arises, the 4-year campaign to 2024 will remain a doozy.
- Hopefully, newspapers/cable/radio (e.g., “traditional” media) will stop covering him the way they do now.
- Biden maintains his recently stated position of not prosecuting former Presidents.
- Domestically, policing/race/equality issues return to the forefront, particularly if the pandemic remains extant through all or most of 2021.
- And, in January, a possible victory by Democrats in the Georgia Senate run-offs giving them a tie-breaking majority in the Senate. At this juncture, as likely as it is not; if it happens, my prior trifecta prediction of a Dem sweep comes to fruition – albeit, barely.
Of course, none of the above could be accurate or happen, though I believe some semblance of it will. Our system – even when it’s NOT defined or prescribed – will settle this, as it’s ultimately human beings that make things work. I believe the large majority of Americans are that type of human being.
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Stevenson’s army, November 21
The House Majority Leader says earmarks will return next year. [Hooray!][CRS has more background info.]
OMB used same tactic to cut WHO payments it used to block Ukraine aid.
NYT has good explainer of the programs being ended by Treasury despite support from Fed.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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