Joe Biden has tapped former Sec of State John Kerry to be his asst. on Climate Change on the International level….
In my first comments on this I expressed concerns on this….
Kerry is BIG guy who has his own ideas about things ….
He also has contacts that the incoming Biden Sec of State does not have…..
Below is a pieces that urges incoming President-Elect to be careful how far he lets a climate control Kerry into the administrations Foreign Policy , especially with China, who has risen above Russia as a economic and military power seeking to eclipse America around the world….And seems ready to use anything it can to further its goals….
Competition with China will likely be the most difficult foreign-policy issue that President-elect Joe Biden will face. What he decides to lead with and the precise mix of areas in which he engages and confronts Beijing are critically important. This is why Biden’s choice of John Kerry as a special presidential envoy on climate change might create a problem for the incoming president on China policy.
Biden appointed Kerry, an old friend and trusted ally who came within a hair’s breadth of being elected president in 2004, and empowered him with an expansive mandate on an issue that touches virtually every other area in domestic and foreign policy. This appointment also gives him membership on the cabinet and the National Security Council, and authorization to use a military aircraft for his diplomacy. However, Biden does not yet appear to have defined the limits of Kerry’s role and explained how it will be integrated into the broader strategy. This has some of Biden’s other advisers worried.
According to three people familiar with Kerry’s thinking, Kerry believes that cooperation with China is the key to progress on climate change and that climate is by far the most important issue in the relationship between the United States and China. Kerry thinks the U.S. president should use his political capital to press Beijing on this subject. Yes, the United States should stand firm when it disagrees with Beijing, as he believes it did during his tenure as secretary of state, but everything else, including geopolitical competition with China, is of secondary importance to this overarching threat. As he put it in an interviewwith ProPublica before the election, “China is about to bring 21 gigawatts of coal fired power online. India is poised to do slightly less, but similarly huge amounts. That’s going to kill us. That’s going to kill the efforts to deal with climate.” For Kerry, a deal with China is the key….
…
For Beijing, the advantage is that climate-change negotiations will dilute America’s ability to compete strategically, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. I spoke with several Biden-Harris advisers, on condition of anonymity so they could speak freely, who expressed real concern over how this will play out. A former Obama administration official told me, “China’s diplomacy is a constant search for leverage, and Kerry will deliver a load of it in a wheelbarrow right to their front door every day.”…
….
Biden needs to make clear as early as possible that he supports the notion that cooperation on climate change must be separated from the rest of the relationship so progress can continue regardless of other differences between the United States and China. If he does not give this guidance, it will allow Kerry to assume that he has permission to pursue his own path. Biden should then lay down crystal-clear guidelines for how his administration will engage directly with China and what subjects Kerry will be permitted to discuss with Beijing. Blinken and Sullivan should talk about the competitive aspects of climate policy to ensure that this issue is not neglected. Most importantly, Biden needs a control mechanism, such as giving Chief of Staff Ron Klain authority to enforce these guidelines….
image…Foreign Affairs….
Note….
The political infighting knives are out for the guy already, eh?