Biden will wield expert US foreign policy team
President-elect Joe Biden is assembling an experienced foreign policy outfit
On December 8, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he would nominate retired General Lloyd Austin as US defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Austin will be the first African-American in that post. His selection is strongly supported by minority rights groups, partly because his military career immunises him from any claims of tokenism. This comes as Biden is announcing his wider national security team.
What next
Biden has assembled an experienced national security team, though gaps in that team’s experience will be evident including over Asia. Some nominees could struggle to be confirmed, though others do not require Senate confirmation. The team’s experience will help Biden’s national security and foreign policy hit the ground running in 2021.
Subsidiary Impacts
- It will be far easier to confirm Biden nominees if the Democrats hold the Senate.
- Biden’s attention will be arrested by COVID-19 and the US economy.
- Biden will increase the focus on non-traditional security threats including climate change and disease.
Analysis
Austin's selection completes the top tier of Biden's national security team, including Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Jake Sullivan as national security advisor, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence (DNI) and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as US ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet-level position.
Relatedly, Alejandro Mayorkas is Biden's nominee for secretary of homeland security. Nominees for some positions require Senate confirmation, including the DNI and the secretaries. Other positions, including national security advisor, do not. Former Secretary of State John Kerry will return as 'global climate czar' and will not require Senate confirmation.
Biden will focus next on filling the second tier in national security and foreign policy, selecting his picks for CIA director and USAID administrator. For US trade representative, Biden will reportedly pick Katherine Tai, a Chinese-American who worked for the US trade representative's office as counsel and is currently the House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee's chief trade counsel.
An experienced team
As a whole, Biden's proposed national security team are experienced professionals rather than political appointees. Biden has worked with most of them in Congress or as US vice-president. He can therefore launch his foreign policy quickly, at a time when his focus will be COVID-19 and the US economy.
Several of Biden's picks have specific experience that will enable him to tackle immediate national security issues:
- Sullivan was legal advisor to the Obama administration (2009-17) in its negotiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which will help Biden move away from the Trump administration's all-sanctions approach to Tehran.
- Kerry helped negotiate US entry into the Paris climate change agreement and can now support a US return under Biden.
- As a former commanding general of US forces in Iraq and former commander of the US Central Command, Austin is well positioned to handle the difficult issue of Trump's drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Biden has assembled an experienced foreign policy team
Diversity dividend?
The proposed national security team also reflects some of the diversity that Biden promised in his cabinet. Austin and Thomas-Greenfield are African-American, Haines is the first woman nominated as DNI and Mayorkas is the first Latino homeland security secretary nominee.
The downsides of experience
Some of the advantages that Biden's national security team will bring to his administration may also be the issues that draw fire from the administration's opponents. If the Senate remains in Republican hands after January 5, 2021, these issues could endanger some Senate confirmations of Biden picks (see UNITED STATES: Georgia run-offs will be key for policy - December 8, 2020).
Blinken and Austin are associated with US policy in Iraq and Syria during President Barack Obama's second term. Their confirmations will likely revive Republican charges that Obama enabled the rise of Islamic State by miscalculating the impact of drawing down troops in Iraq and mismanaging policy towards Syria.
Some of Biden's nominees face tough Senate scrutiny
Haines' past battles with Congress when she was CIA deputy director could complicate her confirmation as DNI. In 2014, she refused to discipline CIA officers who were accused of breaking into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff.
Civil-military issues
Although Austin is well respected within the military and on Capitol Hill, his nomination raises thorny issues of civil-military dynamics. The most prominent of these is the need for both houses of Congress to grant him a waiver to serve as defense secretary, a civilian position.
Current law requires that a former military official cannot serve in the Pentagon until they are seven years out of the armed forces. Austin retired in 2016. Congress intended the waiver to be a rarity; only two former military leaders have been granted one: General George Marshall, secretary of defense and secretary of state for President Harry Truman (1945-53), and General Jim Mattis, former defense secretary under incumbent President Donald Trump.
Republicans will be caught in a double-standard if they refuse a waiver for Austin (they still could) while some Democrats may be reluctant to approve a waiver on principle. Austin is likely to be confirmed, but he will receive scrutiny for two other reasons:
Industry ties
Like Mark Esper, Trump's most-recent former defense secretary, Austin will come to the role having recently served on the board of Raytheon Technologies, a major defence contractor. This invokes the potential for a conflict of interest and will likely limit Austin's role in the procurement process.
Fulfilling the role
Although Austin is known for arguing for principled positions within the Pentagon, when he was commander of Central Command he was noted for his reluctance to speak publicly about military policy.
The defense secretary is the US military's public face and its representative and defender in the policy process. Austin will likely delegate much of his public role to high-ranking subordinates; some in Biden's camp fear that this could create national security policy confusion, if Austin's reticence continues and is interpreted as a lack of support for policy decisions.
Positives
The most important factor may be the symbolic value of the first-ever Black defense secretary; African-Americans have long had a disproportionate presence in the US military, at 17% compared with 13% of the US population currently.
Policy focus
Through his COVID-19 policy, Biden will realign the national security apparatus to make public health a permanent priority, with the National Security Council being the conduit between the foreign and domestic policy agencies.
The Pentagon will also play a prominent role in implementing the Biden administration's vaccine programme. Relatedly, Kerry's role as climate change czar will underscore Biden's view that non-traditional security threats are co-equal to traditional ones.
Biden will probably increase focus on non-traditional security threats
Despite the collective experience in Biden's national security team announced so far, the team lacks expertise in Asian affairs. This could have a negative impact on US-China relations. Blinken is a Europeanist while Sullivan has expertise on Iran, Austin on the Middle East and Thomas-Greenfield on Africa.
However, the national security team's long experience with one another could help avert the usual rivalry between the State Department and the National Security Council. This will be important as Biden attempts to rebuild agencies that were run down and demoralised in the Trump administration.
The team could face early tests if foreign powers test the Biden administration's resolve quickly (see UNITED STATES: Biden would face early tests of resolve - August 26, 2020).
