President-Elect spent 8 years with them…
They’ll be back……
And they will have to put things back together after Trump and Pompeo left American Foreign Policy and the State Dept. a mess….
Will McConnell stand in the way of Susan Rice….Again ?
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s national security team is likely to be largely staffed by former Obama Situation Room regulars prepared to restore foreign policy principles discarded by President Trump.
An Obama redux would be a source of enormous relief to establishment insiders, who are desperate to see seasoned hands regain control of national security. But that likelihood is also causing disquiet among some younger, more liberal Democrats impatient with their party’s pre-Trump national security instincts, which they consider badly outdated.
It is of course Mr. Biden who will direct policy: As a former vice president and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, he needs expert foreign policy advice far less than his recent predecessors. But he will also be consumed in his early months by the coronavirus and his economic agenda, potentially giving his top appointees unusual influence.
They are almost certain to include Antony Blinken, a deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser under Mr. Obama who previously worked for Mr. Biden in the Senate; Avril Haines, a deputy at Mr. Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency and on his National Security Council; Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s last national security adviser; and Michèle Flournoy, the Pentagon’s top policy official under Mr. Obama.
“I think virtually everybody who gets named will have served under Obama,” said James Mann, the author of books about foreign policy advisers to Mr. Obama and former President George W. Bush….
image….Credit…Stephen Crowley/The New York Times