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From left to right: Former Under Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Former Vice President Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor and Former Vice Minister of Defense Michelle Flunoy. Photo Donga DBKey foreign and security advisers in the Joe Biden administration who will influence policy on the Korean Peninsula include Anthony Blinken, former Under Secretary of the State Department, former Vice President Jake Sullivan, former Vice President of Homeland Security and former Vice Minister. of Defense Michelle Flunoy. Most of them were figures who held key positions in the Barack Obama administration. With Biden elected, he will continue to fight and wield greater influence.
● Biden Security Brain Big 3, ‘Blinken-Sullivan-Flunoy’
Among them, the person closest to Korea is former undersecretary of state Blinken, who is mentioned as a candidate for secretary of state or national security adviser to the White House. Former Deputy Minister Blinken took the lead in tightening sanctions against North Korea in 2016, when North Korea’s nuclear crisis escalated due to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. In this process, he worked closely with Korea, including five high-level strategic consultations with the Blue House Security Office from February 2016 to January of the following year. When he visited Korea, the appearance of enjoying Korean food like samgyetang and sundubu jjigae caught his eye.
Representative Cho Tae-yong, who was former Vice Minister Blinken’s counterpart in the high-level strategic discussions at the time, said: “(Blinken) will use negotiation and lobbying strategies and consider policies toward North Korea that focus on denuclearization. , not just in words. Said. Another key diplomacy and security brain for the Biden administration is Jake Sullivan, former vice president of national security. He is known to have worked as a key member of the staff of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served as the head of the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning and was a Democratic candidate in the presidential election four years ago, and contacted frequently with the Korean embassy in the United States. A diplomatic official said, “The vice president’s national security adviser has no clear counterpart within the Korean government.” In an interview with the diplomatic magazine The Diplomat in 2018, Sullivan said, “The Trump administration led the international community to strengthen sanctions against North Korea while seeking a diplomatic method in some positive ways.” Have a general strategy for this. “The United States is being too dogmatic.”
Former Deputy Defense Minister Michelle Flunoy, who is on the verge of Defense Minister, also has a deep relationship with Korea. Since 2009, he has served as Vice Minister for three years, visiting Korea and making frequent contact with the relevant authorities, and working as Clinton’s staff at the time of the 2016 presidential election, visiting Korea and meeting with all Foreign Ministers. , Defense and Unification of the Korean government at that time. He showed. Even after the Trump administration took office, he visited Korea as director of the New American Security Center (CNAS), a think tank that he co-founded, to discuss North Korea’s nuclear issue with high-ranking diplomatic officials.
● Think tanks like Brookings-Carnegie-CNAS should also pay attention.
Other key figures in the Biden administration who will be in charge of the situation on the Korean Peninsula and relations between the US and the Republic of Korea are CNAS Vice President Eli Ratner and the President of the Park Brookings Research Institute. from Korea, Jim Shaw, Senior Fellow of the Carnegie International Peace Foundation and Senior Fellow of Van Jackson CNAS. do. In the case of the Deputy Director of the Ratner Center, it is noted that he can go to the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific or the Assistant Director in charge of Asia in the Office of the Office of Homeland Security. It is possible that Eden’s administration will make itself heard.
Some are figures from the Trump administration, but even in the Democratic Party, US Under Secretary of State Stephen Beggan and special representative for North Korea policy, and Joseph Yoon, former US ambassador to North Korea, who was appointed during Obama’s second term and served as special representative for North Korean politics until the early days of the Trump administration. It is expected to have an impact on the establishment of North Korean policy within the administration.
As such, most of the people who are considered the central diplomatic and security brains of the Biden administration belong to the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie International Peace Foundation, and the CNAS. . Representative Cho Tae-yong predicted that “CNAS graduates can be employed on a large scale in the Biden administration.”
Some observers say it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a politician other than an orthodox diplomatic official is selected by the US Secretary of State. Federal Senator Chris Koons, a member of the East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US Senate, He is mentioned in the Secretary of State as a politician. “It’s not that John Kerry or Hillary Clinton served as secretaries of state because there was no diplomatic expert during Obama,” said Woojung-yeop, director of the US Research Center at the Sejong Institute.
Reporter Kijae Han [email protected]
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