All the US President’s men and women

The incoming US national security and foreign policy team looks, on paper, to be one of the most experienced in history. How it translates into outcomes is to be seen

As Joe Biden takes office as the next President of the United States (US), his national security and foreign policy team has already taken shape. Biden’s longtime advisers — Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan — will assume the critical roles of secretary of state and national security adviser, respectively. Retired general Lloyd Austin has been nominated as secretary of defence. Former secretary of state, John Kerry, is to be senior envoy on climate; former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Avril Haines, has been nominated for director of National Intelligence (DNI); former ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, will head the US Agency for International Development; former deputy secretary of state, Bill Burns, has been named director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and former assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, will assume a special role as Indo-pacific coordinator at the White House.

Others named to key policy positions at the departments of state (such as Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland) and defence (Kathleen Hicks and Colin Kahl), as well as in the National Security Council staff, are longstanding foreign policy professionals, many with prior working relations with Biden. Key economic and technology policy jobs — critical for international relations today — have also been filled by serious players, such as former chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, as secretary of the treasury.

Although some of these positions are subject to confirmation by the Senate, the incoming US national security and foreign policy team looks, on paper, to be one of the most experienced in history.

A common criticism of Washington policy insiders is that impressive resumes have not always translated into successful outcomes. What does the experience of the past four presidencies tell us about the challenges and predicaments facing an incoming US national security team when it comes to personnel and personalities?

The Biden administration will certainly avoid many of the personality-related pitfalls of its predecessor. Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned within weeks due to a scandal and his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had fraught relations with the foreign service bureaucracy and eventually the president himself. Retired and serving military officers who held key positions — such as secretary of defence, James Mattis, and national security adviser HR Mcmaster — also left office unceremoniously following policy disagreements with Trump on Syria and Afghanistan.

By prioritising political loyalists and dismissing critics, the Trump administration left important senior positions vacant for long periods of time. Policy inevitably suffered. (Somehow, those managing ties with India were able to survive the turmoil, with relatively positive implications for bilateral relations.)

Looking farther back, Biden’s advisers are also likely to avoid the experience of the first Bill Clinton administration in 1993. Despite Clinton’s background and penchant for international affairs, his initial priorities as president were domestic. In his first two years in office, he rarely met his CIA director (then the senior-most intelligence official) and his first secretary of defence, Les Aspin, resigned after only a year following the military debacle in Somalia. It was only in his second term, under a stronger set of principals, that Clinton was able to focus on foreign policy.

The experience of the George W Bush administration in 2001 offers a different set of lessons. At the outset, senior Bush administration officials boasted enviable CVS: Vice-president Dick Cheney had been secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld had held the same position 25 years earlier, secretary of state Colin Powell had been national Security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had a strong background in both academia and government.

But in the aftermath of 9/11, these officials were so certain in their own convictions that they stumbled into a costly war in Iraq, with only Powell striking a dissenting tone. Immense experience, it turned out, may have been useful for resolve and implementation, but proved a weakness in recognising and reconciling to new realities.

Finally, there was the experience of the Barack Obama administration after 2009. Obama initially assembled a “team of rivals”, a heavyweight group of principals drawn from the ranks of erstwhile competitors (Hillary Clinton), Republicans (Robert Gates), and senior military officers (Jim Jones). Many Democratic policy stalwarts, such as Richard Holbrooke, had to make do with smaller fiefdoms.

Policy often suffered as competing priorities and personalities clashed. Ambitious projects such as outreach to the Islamic world and nuclear disarmament were eventually shelved, as was any talk of a grand bargain with China. But, in time, a core group of Obama loyalists and technocrats managed to push through important initiatives on Iran, trade, and the climate crisis, although many were reversed by Trump.

Biden’s national security team will almost certainly avoid both the chaos of the Trump administration and the neglect of the early Clinton years, despite the immediate priorities related to Covid-19 and the domestic economy. The incoming team also does not suffer from the cliquishness of the early George W Bush administration.

One challenge will relate to managing a topheavy national security apparatus with contrasting personalities and priorities. However, the presence of a core group of Biden advisers in key agencies suggests that coordination may be better than 12 years ago.