Tag: Biden transition
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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Stevenson’s army, November 20
Look how bad aircraft readiness rates have been, as reported by GAO.
A think tank reports on Japanese efforts to influence US policies
FP says Ethiopia risks becoming the new Yugoslavia..
Kori Schake warns against an attack on Iran.
Politico says Senate Republicans may approve Biden cabinet.
AP report on NDAA negotiations misses key context. It correctly notes that the bill contains a 3% military pay raise, but that in fact is the only reason an authorization bill is necessary. [Permanent law would give a smaller raise.] It fails to note that a presidential veto because of base names would be no real problem. Every other time the NDAA has been vetoed, a revised version has been quickly passed, deleting the criticized provisions.
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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His grip is loosening, but his cult is strong
The signs are few and far between. Republican members of an election board in Michigan that had divided on certifying results in Biden’s favor reversed itself and did so last night. Senator McConnell has criticized the Administration’s plan for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Other Republican senators are keeping quiet on the many court challenges and the validity of the election results. Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer, embarrassed himself in a Pennsylvania courtroom when he was unable to cite specific examples of election fraud.
Trump himself is pulling out all the stops. He claimed in a tweet that more people voted in Milwaukee than were registered to vote there. That lie was easily debunked. He fired his own appointee in charge of election security, because that official contradicted the President’s claim that there was widespread fraud. Trump is spreading rumors of his intention to run again in 2024, a prospect belied both by his poor physical condition and the likelihood he’ll spend the next four years and more in court trying to fend off lawsuits and Internal Revenue Service charges. He continues to ignore the elephant in the room: an epidemic that has now killed more than 250,000 Americans on his watch and is accelerating rapidly. Another 50,000 or so will likely die before Trump leaves office.
Still, the fan base remains strong. His voters overwhelmingly believe Biden did not legitimately win and that Trump should not concede. They like his effort to contest the election results in court, an effort that has so far produced no significant change in the vote totals and more than two dozen judicial losses. While quite a few Republican governors and mayors are issuing orders to compel people to wear masks, Trump’s loyalists–even some in intensive care units infected with Covid-19–claim the virus doesn’t exist or isn’t worse than the flu. They remain intent on their freedom not to wear a mask. It’s almost as if there is an epidemic of self-delusion, which is carried not by a virus but by a adherence to the cult of a failed president.
Biden meanwhile is building up his administration, staying calm but clear about the virus as his first priority. He will be lucky: the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that have proven highly effective will be available in millions of doses about the time he takes office January 20. But it will still be six months or more before most of the population can be vaccinated. The Trumpians will resist and likely label the vaccines Biden hoaxes. The irony of course is that they are partly the result of Trump’s own early decision to pour government money into developing and producing them. He convinced people that the virus was a hoax but also spent billions to inoculate the country against it.
Contradiction and incoherence were never obstacles for Trump and his followers. They simply don’t care about consistency, logic, or science. Their main preoccupation is with their own identity as real Americans, by which they mean white Christians. Yes, there appear to have been some shifts in voting toward Trump among white women, Latinos and black males. But his cult remains overwhelmingly white and male. They are however in demographic decline and increasingly will, as Lindsay Graham has avowed openly, have trouble winning elections if everyone is allowed to vote. Still, there is no sign that the Republican Party is preparing to reconsider its white nationalist course. Trump’s cult remains strong, even if his grip on power is loosening.
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