The takeaways from Joe Biden’s presidential team

Joe Biden with former US Secretary of State John Kerry (left) (File image: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

It’s a measure of a nation’s power, when any details of a new presidential team are eagerly discussed across the globe. United States President-Elect Joe Biden’s choices, particularly the personas of the foreign and security policy team, will be examined from every angle, including in India, where the US has become a far more important partner than before.

From Antony Blinken as Secretary of State, the country’s top diplomat, and Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, and others including John Kerry as ‘Climate Tsar’, what is apparent is that the new appointees are those with a long experience of working together with a US President who started as a Senator at the age of 29.

Before gauging the new appointees, it’s as well to get some basic facts out of the way.

First, with a razor thin majority of 222 seats in the House to the required majority of 218, any Bills that are presented will aim to be bipartisan. In other words, radical changes are unlikely for the immediate future. The Democrats have been unable to flip the Senate, where the Republicans have proved their ability to retain their seats.

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Second, the world provides little leg room in foreign policy in particular. China is on the ascendant, and whether friendly or inimical, it is a power for the US to contend with. Europe’s importance is declining, particularly in a COVID-19-hit world, and in a geography where no major threat exists. That means all the action is likely to be in Asia, where the markets are, and where the threats lie.

Third, Asia is not brimming with democracies, and those that are, are prone to strong men, who will resent lectures on human rights and democracy.

Now, the team.

Blinken has been called Biden’s 'alter ego' given that he worked 20 years alongside him in various capacities, including NSA. He was there in the situation room when Osama bin Laden was killed — which means he can hardly be naïve about Pakistan’s duplicity.

He’s strong on human rights, and American values both of which will hopefully be shaped by the realities described above, and the fact that he was master strategist Strobe Talbott’s protégé. His pride in his grandfather who fled a pogrom in Russia and his mother from Hungary, should hopefully make him sympathetic to the plight of, among others, Indians hoping to make a new future in the US.

At a conversation at the Hudson Institute, he spoke of engagement with the world, and efforts taken to bring India on board as a major partner. Don’t forget that Biden was key to the India nuclear deal that was negotiated, voting in the Senate ‘in favour’. That period saw a series of other deals including the often overlooked Defence Trade and Technology Initiative, which removed hurdles to high-tech R&D in this area.

Blinken would have had a ring side seat to all this, which is good. But fresh tuition in the ways of the new Modi government would be needed, and may be difficult to imbibe for one accustomed to past, less forceful governments.

Jake Sullivan may well be called Blinken’s alter ego. He succeeded him to the NSA’s job when Biden was V-P, and was on Hillary Clinton’s staff. Both he and his boss subscribed to Harvard professor Joseph Nye’s concept of Smart Power which encompasses the use of both hard power as well as diplomacy. These were also the people who oversaw Obama’s ‘Pivot’ to Asia, which turned the Defence Department slowly towards threats (read China) in Asia.

In an earlier speech at a prominent think-tank, he mentioned China 56 times. But he’s also one of the school who thought China’s rise be encouraged “in a manner consistent with an open, fair, rules-based regional order”. Several years down the line, new realities — such as the fact that China attacks or is hostile to all its neighbours — will hopefully lead to a rethink.

New Delhi will have to bear with — or refuse — lectures on ‘democracy’ apparent in Biden’s phone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Human rights and Kashmir will be issues, but hopefully will be set aside against the reality of a rampaging China, and a realisation that India is the one country that has stood up to it.

‘Strong men’ may not be popular in a Democrat government, but Washington needs to understand that strength in policy cannot realistically be applied to only one theatre, and could extend equally to domestic policy that is, realistically, no business at all of the mandarins in the US.

Tara Kartha is former director, National Security Council Secretariat. Views are personal.