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WASHINGTON – U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s elections to the top foreign policy and national security posts in his administration sent a clear message: The days of America First are over and the United States will take over again. of world leadership.
“America is back. We are at the head of the table once again,” Biden said in an interview with NBC, aired hours after he introduced six senior officials he wants into his cabinet on Tuesday (November 25), the highest among them being his nominee for Secretary of State Tony Blinken.
His elections, due to be confirmed by the Senate next year, will build coalitions and work with allies to combat terrorism and extremism, deal with the climate crisis and combat nuclear proliferation and other threats, Biden said.
They include Jake Sullivan, a former Biden advisor when he was vice president of the National Security Advisor; former diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield for Ambassador to the United Nations, and former United States Secretary of State John Kerry for Presidential Special Envoy on Climate, who if confirmed would be the first U.S. climate change czar to full time.
Biden also unveiled his nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, who would be the first woman to lead the intelligence community, and his nominee for Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who would be the first Latino and immigrant. in leading the department. .
“It is a team that reflects the fact that America is back. Ready to lead the world, not retreat from it. Ready to face our adversaries, not reject our allies. And ready to defend our values,” Biden said in the media appearance in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
“They represent my fundamental belief that America is stronger when it works with its allies.”
Their selection reflects a return to a more traditional multilateralism, but Biden was also careful to point out in his interview with NBC that his administration would not be “a third term for Obama,” noting that the world they faced now was different from 2009. 2017, when he served as vice president during the presidency of Barack Obama.
Political observers said the selection made it clear that Biden would be a liberal internationalist president, a departure from the more isolationist foreign policy of incumbent Donald Trump.
Stanford University professor Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, noted on Twitter that US foreign policy has historically been shaped by two debates: isolationism versus internationalism and realism versus liberalism.
Isolationists avoid entangled alliances and tend to view free trade as unfair, while skeptical of international institutions as restrictions on American power.
In contrast, internationalists view alliances as enhancing US security, free trade as beneficial to the US economy, and international institutions as strengthening US power.
“Trump was an extremist in these two political debates: an extreme isolationist (America First) and an extreme realist (he did nothing to promote human rights and democratic values),” Professor McFaul tweeted.
“Biden made it clear today that he is an internationalist and a ‘liberal’ … someone who will bring values back to American foreign policy. He is the opposite of Trump. And so are Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan,” he added.
The return to multilateralism will be welcomed by parts of the military and Republican establishment that have rejected Trump’s America First policy. These include top officials who served under Republican presidents, including under Trump himself.
In a Foreign Relations commentary on Monday (November 23), former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, along with other co-authors, wrote that “America First” effectively meant “America alone” and urged the administration Biden to reverse it.
They wrote: “We hope you will quickly review the national security strategy to remove ‘America First’ from its content, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served America so well for decades.”
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