Biden’s team faces new cold war
By Joseph Bosco
US President Joe Biden’s national security team is sorting out what to salvage from the policies of former US president Donald Trump’s administration and what to resuscitate from prior approaches by Democrats.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Kurt Campbell, his coordinator for the Indo-Pacific region, previewed their strategic thinking in October’s
Foreign Affairs. They expressed predictable skepticism about the Trump team’s National Security Strategy (NSS), but also about the policies of administrations they served.
They wrote that foreign “policy frameworks beginning with the word ‘strategic’ often raise more questions than they answer. ‘Strategic patience’ [of former US president Barack Obama] reflects uncertainty about what to do and when. ‘Strategic ambiguity’ [of former US president Bill Clinton] reflects uncertainty about what to signal. And in this case, ‘strategic competition’ [Trump] reflects uncertainty about what that competition is over and what it means to win.”