Who does President-elect Joe Biden plan to have on his foreign policy team? Here are the top four picks
In the middle of chaos in America’s power corridors, thanks to incumbent President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, it has been reported that President-elect Joe Biden has decided to announce names that he would pick to run his administration. He is set to unveil his first round of Cabinet picks on Tuesday, November 24. Amid other names, some that the veteran Democrat has reportedly zeroed in on to look after the foreign policy issues have caught wide attention on social media.
Antony Blinken as secretary of state
Bloomberg cited three people to report first that Biden is planning to announce the name of Antony Blinken -- one of his long-serving foreign policy advisers -- as the next secretary of state. Blinken, who has studied in Harvard University and Columbia Law School and practiced law in New York and Paris and made a contribution in favor of 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, has served as Biden’s national security adviser (NSA) (2009-13) when the latter was the vice president. He then became the deputy national security adviser (2013-15) and the deputy secretary of state (2015-17). Blinken, 58, is considered one of the leading candidates to bag the plum post in the Cabinet and lead the state department. His association with Biden goes back to the days when the latter was a senator from Delaware.
He worked as his staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before serving in Biden’s presidential campaign in 2008 and was also a member in the Barack Obama-Biden transition team. After the Obama days got over, Blinken co-founded a political strategy firm called WestExec Advisors with Michele Flournoy, a top Pentagon official in the Obama presidency.
Blinken is known to have robust global network and is expected to lead America’s mission to return to key international agreements like the Paris Climate Accord and Iran nuclear deal from which Trump pulled the US out. “The first thing is we have to dig out from a strategic deficit that President Trump has put us in,” Blinken told Bloomberg in a TV interview in July. “President Trump has helped China advance its own key strategic goals.”
Jake Sullivan as national security adviser
Biden is likely to announce the name of Jake Sullivan, formerly a close aide to Hillary Clinton who also worked as the NSA to Biden after Blinken (2013-14), deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning (2011-13) to the then secretary of state Clinton in the Obama presidency, as the next NSA, Bloomberg cited two persons familiar with the matter as saying. The 43-year-old, who studied at Yale and Oxford, played a key role in the Obama administration’s efforts towards making the nuclear deal with Iran and also chipped in as the chief foreign policy adviser to Clinton in her 2016 presidential campaign. Sullivan, who also played an important role in shaping the US’s foreign policies towards Libya, Syria and Myanmar, went on to join Macro Advisory Partners in January 2017.
In August this year, Sullivan spoke with Atlanta Council Executive Vice President Damon Wilson to express his viewpoint on how a future Biden administration would bring a change in America’s policy, putting emphasis on rebuilding the country’s domestic strength and its global partnerships while facing a tough competition from China and Russia. While he advised ways for the US to go ahead to set its foreign policy priorities right, also cautioned that given the odd challenges that the Trump years have seen to emerge, a Biden administration will have to put in some real hard work to bring the changes.
Michele Flournoy as secretary of defense
The Biden presidency, just like a first woman vice president, could also see the first woman chief of the Pentagon. Michele Flournoy, who is known to be a politically moderate veteran from the Pentagon, could be the pick of the next president. The 60-year-old Harvard and Oxford-educated has worked as the under-secretary of defense for policy under Obama between 2009 and 2012 and after the tumultuous years of Trump when the Pentagon saw as many as five male heads, Flournoy will be faced with a tremendous challenge to set things in order. Recently, Mark Esper faced Trump’s wrath as he was sacked for disagreeing with the commander-in-chief on sensitive issues like using the military to quell domestic protests. If chosen, Flournoy will face issues like shrinking the Pentagon’s budgets and reducing a potential military involvement in distributing the vaccine for the coronavirus. Flournoy could have made history as the first woman defense secretary had Clinton won the 2016 election, Associated Press reported. Her name had surfaced earlier as a front-runner for Biden’s cabinet, AP cited officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Flournoy, however, has a history of disagreeing with her future boss and that could create an issue for the incoming administration’s future approach to global security concerns. In the past, Biden and Flournoy were found to be at odds over issues related to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador:
Axios first reported that Biden is expected to name Linda Thomas-Greenfield as the next ambassador to the United Nations. According to it, the decision will be in sync with Biden’s pledge to pick a diverse Cabinet. “It's likely he will pick a woman or a person of color — or both — as his White House press secretary, and Democrats are urging him to nominate several Latinos to high-profile Cabinet positions,” Axios said.
Thomas-Greenfield is also a veteran diplomat who has served under both the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations. She served as the US ambassador to Liberia (2008-12) and then as the director-general of the US Foreign Service (2012-13). She then became the assistant secretary of state for African affairs -- a post she was in till March 2017, when Trump was already two months into office. She was behind leading the US’ policy towards sub-Saharan Africa when the Ebola outbreak happened in the continent.
The 68-year-old Thomas-Greenfield, who is a senior counselor at DC-based Albright Stonebridge Group -- a global strategy company of former secretary of state Madeleine Albright -- earned her Bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University and Master’s from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently on leave from the firm, as is shown on her page on its website. If she gets the plum post, Thomas-Greenfield will become the second woman of color to become the US ambassador to the UN after Susan Rice who served between 2009 and 2013.