Under the new structure, the dominance of Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell is growing, while the board supervised by Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk will be more limited, said several current and former officials.
The changes basically change the structure of the Obama-era NSC, where the Middle East board was much larger than it is now and the Asian portfolio was managed by a handful of younger employees. Obama’s second term presented a violent attack of threats to national security and priorities coming from the Middle East, the Islamic State and the nuclear deal with Iran to the conflicts in Libya and Syria and the resulting migration crisis in Europe.
But Biden and his team now believe that the biggest security challenges will arise from the so-called competition of great powers between the United States, China and Russia, say current and former national security officials, and are changing their resources accordingly.
“What we have seen in recent years is that China is becoming more authoritarian at home and more assertive abroad,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday. “And Beijing is now challenging our security, prosperity and values in significant ways that require a new approach from the United States. “
Biden’s team also wants to avoid another mire in the Middle East and strengthen central alliances in Asia and Europe that, they said, were neglected or rejected by former President Donald Trump, noted current and former employees.
“Given the structure of the NSC team, I think they are determined to maintain their affirmative priorities, rather than being sucked into the Middle East,” said a former Obama official. Sullivan’s professional creed – making foreign policy work for the American middle class – is also a factor, given the enormous interests that the United States and Asia have in each other’s economic prosperity.
“Transferring policy resources from the Middle East to Asia is a better reflection of America’s economic realities,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East expert at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Asia’s policy is directly relevant to American farmers, corporations and technology companies in a way that the Middle East is not, especially given America’s domestic energy resources,” noted Sadjadpour. “After two painful decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is also little popular bipartisan support to do more in the Middle East.”
The new priorities have become clear since the Biden team’s initial contact with key European and Asian allies. Sullivan’s first calls, the day after Biden’s inauguration, went to his counterparts in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan, according to NSC readings of the conversations, and he also spoke to Korea’s national security adviser. from the South. Biden’s first calls were to the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, and he spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga this week (he also made an angry call with Russian President Vladimir Putin). Although Sullivan has spoken to his counterparts in Afghanistan and Israel, Biden has not yet spoken to the leaders of those countries, according to a review of the White House readings.
As it stands now, the Middle East portfolio will be managed by McGurk and a senior director below him, Barbara Leaf. The Indo-Pacific portfolio overseen by Campbell, however, has three senior directors – Laura Rosenberger as senior director for China, Sumona Guha as senior director for South Asia and Andrea Kendall-Taylor as senior director for Russia and Central Asia. In Obama’s NSC, the Chinese portfolio was not at the level of “senior director”, and the Asian portfolio did not have a comprehensive coordinator, noted a former employee.
“This is basically a continuation of the Asia pivot, perhaps without saying much publicly,” said the former Obama official, referring to the expansion of the new NSC in the Asia portfolio.
In 2011, Obama publicly declared that he instructed his national security team “to make our presence and missions in Asia Pacific a top priority” by signaling that the United States needed to rebalance its focus away from Europe and the Middle East after neglecting face China’s rapid rise. The move became known as the “pivot for Asia” after then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that the US was “at a pivot point” while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended.
Campbell, who now leads the Indo-Pacific portfolio, was one of the main drivers of the new strategy as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs during the Obama administration. But its success was mixed and was viewed with skepticism by the Middle East and European allies.
The former official said that the silent restructuring – without fanfare or big proclamations of a new foreign policy direction – therefore seemed deliberate. “We saw the answer when Obama spoke publicly about the ‘pivot for Asia’,” he said. “We probably received less credit in Asia than blowback in the Middle East. It is better to just do it than just talk about it. “
The apparent change is not limited to the NSC. Asian experts are being seeded throughout the new administration, including the Department of Defense, where former Biden aide Ely Ratner was chosen as the main aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for China and Kelly Magsamen, who served as chief deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia and Pacific Security Affairs until 2017, was appointed Austin’s chief of staff.
Austin, a former commander of Centcom, is aware that the Biden government wants to shift the Pentagon’s emphasis to the east. “Globally, I understand that Asia should be the focus of our effort,” said Austin during his confirmation hearing. “China poses the most significant threat in the future because China is on the rise.”
One of Austin’s first actions in his new role was to install three special advisers on important issues – China, the Covid-19 pandemic and climate. The Middle East was notably absent.
At the State Department, Asia-Pacific expert Mira Rapp-Hooper was appointed senior adviser for China in Policy Planning and at the United Nations, Jeffrey Prescott, who served as deputy national security advisor and senior advisor for Asia at the then vice President Biden, he was appointed deputy ambassador.
The reinforced emphasis on Asia comes after a 2020 presidential campaign that was strongly highlighted in China, with Trump and Biden working to flank each other over who would be tougher with Beijing.
“China represents a special challenge,” Biden wrote in an article for Foreign Policy magazine last year, about how he would “rescue” US foreign policy after Trump. “I spent many hours with their leaders and I understand what we are up against.”
There is much that Biden can control, however. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not anticipate the Iraq war or the Arab Spring, for example, when they were setting their foreign policy priorities for the first term.
“Every foreign policy agenda starts with a pivot for Asia and ends with divots in the Middle East,” noted a foreign policy expert. “You may not be interested in the war, but the war is interested in you. It is not surprising to me that this is how they are starting, but things are eminently unpredictable. “