Biden picks professionals for foreign policy team

US president-elect Joe Biden is signaling a return to a tradition upheld by previous Democratic and Republican presidents prior to 2017 with his choice of diplomatic experts to lead the US foreign policy team.

Former deputy secretary of state Tony Blinken will be Biden's nominee to lead the US State Department, while former State Department policy planning chief Jake Sullivan will become the White House national security adviser. Biden plans to appoint former secretary of state John Kerry, who led negotiations on the Paris climate accord, as a special presidential envoy on climate change.

Blinken began his career at the State Department under former president Bill Clinton, served on Biden's staff when he was Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman in 2002-08, returning to government service under former president Barack Obama. Sullivan also worked on Biden's national security staff when he served vice-president under Obama.

"We have no time to lose when it comes to our national security and foreign policy," Biden said today. "I need a team ready on day one to help me reclaim America's seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face and advance our security, prosperity and values."

Blinken and Sullivan have outlined a vision of renewed US engagement in international affairs, while at the same time noting the importance of improving the US domestic political and economic advantages that they say have been damaged by four years of President Donald Trump's leadership.

"We need to invest in our own competitiveness," Blinken says. "That means making some very fundamental reorientation of resources and priorities when it comes to investing in American infrastructure, American education, the health care system, our workers and their competitiveness."

A Biden foreign policy as outlined by Blinken and Sullivan will seek to refocus on the Asia-Pacific region to meeting a rising challenge from China, strengthen US alliances in Europe and the western hemisphere while drawing down the US presence in the Middle East.

In Sullivan's words, previous Democratic and Republican administrations — including the Obama team where he served — have made the mistake of prioritizing the military component of foreign policy at the expense of diplomacy.

"For the last 25 years, we have looked at problems in the Middle East and basically said, ‘Let us put together a military operation to produce an outcome,'" Sullivan said. "The result has not been very good for US policy towards the Middle East."

The first priority for the incoming Biden team in the Middle East will be to de-escalate tensions with Tehran by returning the US to the Iran nuclear deal — while launching a review of US-Saudi relations. Both Blinken and Sullivan have argued that the US ought to resume its compliance with the Iran deal, including oil sanctions relief, so long as Tehran resumes compliance. The approach is different from arguments by some Democratic experts and Trump officials that the new administration ought to use what they perceive as new leverage as a result of sanctions introduced since 2018.

The incoming team has to contend with a determination by the outgoing administration to sabotage Biden's pledged engagement with Iran, including by encouraging Israel and Saudi Arabia to challenge the new approach. "This administration is in office for a couple more months, and the administration will continue to pursue its policies for a couple more months," a senior State Department official said today.

China and climate change

The Biden team says it is ready to break with Trump's inconsistent approach toward China while continuing a tough policy toward Beijing.

"I think you would see a Biden administration, having reestablished a relative strength in the relationship, then be able to engage China and work with China, in areas where our interests clearly overlap, whether it is again, contending with climate change, dealing with global health and pandemics," Blinken said.

While climate change is an area of potential cooperation with China, it is a top priority on its own for Biden, signified by his choice of Kerry to coordinate US efforts. Biden says he plans to return the US to the Paris climate accord following the US withdrawal on 4 November.

"America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is," Kerry said today. "I am proud to partner with the president-elect, our allies and the young leaders of the climate movement to take on this crisis as the president's climate envoy."

By Haik Gugarats