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Reflecting on his time in the Obama White House, Sullivan said he believes more could have been done there too to put the average American on the Situation Room agenda on a regular basis. . And he paused for a long time when asked how the rise of Trump and Trumpism had affected his worldview, putting him more in tune, for example, with the populist tide at home that he might have missed in himself. focusing on international nuclear negotiations, peace agreements and trade. treated.
“When you spend years in government working on the deal with Iran, or working on the Asia-Pacific rebalancing, or working on issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, it’s not that you completely lose sight of what’s going on on the home front – but you focus more on other things, ”Sullivan said. “I think the 2016 campaign had an impact on my thinking, but it wasn’t just about Trump. This was the heated debate Democrats had in the primary. It was a recognition, as I left national security and started a domestic political conversation, how so much of our country felt its government was not working for them.
Sullivan warns that he doesn’t think such economic anxiety was the sole driver of Trump’s victory in 2016, which he says was also fueled by calls for identity and isolationism. But the campaign gave him a “crash course”, he said, on the importance of bringing issues of inequality, dislocation and disconnection between workers and their government to “all the tables of the House. Blanche – including in the situation room ”.
So what will a National Security Council headed by Sullivan look like? It won’t be too big or micromanaging, insists Sullivan – critics who harassed Obama’s NSC, accused of violating the prerogatives of Cabinet agencies, whether by setting troop levels or insisting on sign individual drone strikes.
“I consider my job to be primarily to support and strengthen the work of the broader national security team in service of the president-elect’s mission and strategy,” he said. “My goal is to have a process capable of giving sufficient direction, but then empowering departments and agencies to be at the forefront of getting that done.
“It is unlikely to be confined to traditional structures,” former Obama NSC official Salman Ahmed said. “He has long argued convincingly that these issues do not fit perfectly into the bureaucratic lens.”
The early years of Obama’s NSC were often tense, especially under retired General Jim Jones, an outsider who often clashed with the coterie of political aides around the president and resigned just before his mid-term from 2010.
Among the many challenges Sullivan will immediately face, knowing that colleagues like the new White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain will not be one of them. “I would say that no two people know each other better, have worked more closely, overlap more or have a better working relationship on day one than any Chief of Staff / Advisor to. national security before them, ”Reines said.
“They all worked together at a lower level in the Obama administration,” said another former Obama White House official. “They are all friends – they are neither strangers nor rivals, and at the very least are all known products to each other.
One could argue that this could make the team islander, prone to the kind of group thinking that can lead to mistakes and missed opportunities. Mike Pompeo, the outgoing Secretary of State, has previously made fun of his successors for allegedly living in “a somewhat fantastic world” and for practicing “multilateralism in order to spend time with your pals at a cool cocktail ”.
Former Obama White House official said pre-existing relationships within Biden’s team would make them effective – unlike the early days of the Trump presidency, which was rife with rivalries, competing media leaks , stabbing and constant turnover of staff.
Despite all of Sullivan’s innate caution, he seems inclined to abruptly break away from the emphasis his predecessors placed on a traditional definition of American national security: tanks and missiles, great summits and spy satellites.
The “primary focus” of the Biden NSC’s work, at least initially, will be to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and restructure the NSC to make public health an ongoing national security priority, Sullivan said. China will also be put on notice, he added.
“The way you make sure this doesn’t happen again is to send a very clear message to China that the United States and the rest of the world will not accept a situation where we don’t have a effective public health surveillance system, with an international dimension, in China and around the world in the future, ”Sullivan said. A key theme Sullivan returns to repeatedly is restoring alliances and partnerships that have been overlooked or rejected under Trump.
“Contrary to the policy of the past few years, we will be able to rally the rest of the world behind us” on key foreign and national security policy issues, such as pressuring Iran to come back into compliance. the nuclear deal so that the United States can resume negotiations, Sullivan said.
He is equally optimistic about one of his noblest goals: “to rally our allies to combat corruption and kleptocracy, and to hold authoritarian capitalism systems accountable for greater transparency and participation in a system based on rules.
This effort will have to start at home – as has been well documented, the kleptocratic regimes of the world rely heavily on money laundering networks that typically extend into western centers of global finance like New York and London, aided by lax incorporation rules in places like Delaware.
But as a former Obama administration official said, the most difficult task for Biden and by extension Sullivan will be cleaning up the “broken glass” left by the Trump administration, with an international community that has grown weary. the boost provoked by American policy. dramas.
“It’s a different world now,” said Ambassador Dennis Ross, a seasoned diplomat who worked with Sullivan in the Obama White House. “But Jake brings much needed personal experience and connections.”
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