The first advice-and-consent selections posted

 

The Biden-Harris transition announced three Senate-confirmation level foreign affairs selections recently:  Antony Blinken as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as Ambassador to the United Nations.  All three look decently qualified and have significant experience in the foreign affairs playground.

Stop. Put a hold on the snickers about my word choice. I took an undergraduate course in international law several decades ago.  In our discussion of the “self-enforcement” of international law (a classic doctrine under which aggrieved states may inflict various reprisals against other nations  thought to have breached their legal obligations toward the nation of the first part), the professor remarked that if we wished to see the self-enforcement mechanism in its purest state we should go to a playground and observe 5-year-olds in the sandbox.

My concern with the Biden selectees is that, despite Ivy League law degrees in the first two resumes, they may not be as effective as those 5-year-olds at enforcing their own rights and insisting that others honor their obligations.  As we move leftward through the ranks of Democratic Party foreign policy thinkers, we will be finding that more and more of the players will be drawn from that subset of the intelligentsia that spells America with a “K” and believes our international posture should be multi-lateral, collaborative, and apologetic. These topside appointments need to be regarded with that in mind.

The meager publication records that are quickly sourced on-line (yes, I mean Wikipedia) are not definitive for any of these three selectees.  Blinken, apparently while in law school, wrote a book that used the Siberian pipeline explored the pitfalls of reprisals and how even non-armed-force measures can have unintended consequences. Fortunately, the book is out of stock at Amazon so I’ll feel no obligation to read the whole thing.  Other publications show a predilection for policy on values, perceptions, and ideas; what Morgenthau would call policies of prestige compared with policies of realism.

The available citations for Sullivan and Thomas-Greenfield are sparser, although Sullivan wrote an article on evolving notions of American exceptionalism for The Atlantic that I have bookmarked.  Thomas-Greenfield has spent more time at the diplomatic coalface than the other two combined.  In general, these seem to be sound appointments.  But let’s be alert to the leanings of the rest of the foreign policy elite as they are identified and nominated.