One of the slogans of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign was “Make America normal again.” It’s about predictability and reliability after four years of the shake-up that the impulsive and arrogant 45th showman president has brought to the country. The composition of his administration suggests that Biden intends to return to a balanced, balanced policy based on a comprehensive understanding of national interests. Whether he will succeed is another question.
First of all, attention is drawn to the fact that the list of actors in the new administration does not include “radical progressives”, as the conservatives like to call the representatives of the left wing of the Democratic Party: Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did not receive personnel offers from Biden. Probably, if the president-elect was confident that the Democrats would get a majority in the Senate, they would have a chance. But the Republican-controlled Senate would not have approved these appointments. For the same reason, Susan Rice, who was on the shortlist of first vice presidential candidates and then secretary of state, ended up as senior adviser to the president on domestic policy, which does not require Senate approval. The appointment is somewhat paradoxical, since Rice has been involved in foreign policy all her life. During the second Obama administration, she served as the president’s national security adviser.
Jake Sullivan will now take over. He is 43 years old, but he already has an impressive track record. He graduated from Yale University and received his master’s degree from Oxford, and then became a JD. He worked as a clerk in the US Supreme Court, in a private law firm, and taught jurisprudence at the private Catholic University of St. Thomas in Menneapolis. He entered the civil service, rose to the position of director of political planning in the State Department, and then moved to the White House and became Vice President Biden’s national security adviser. Jake Sullivan took part in the negotiations on the most important problems and visited Moscow several times.
In an interview, he said the following about US-Russian relations: “The Trump administration must understand that at some basic levels the interests of the United States and Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin are opposed, and we must be clearly aware of this. The belief that Russia and the United States can somehow become excellent partners in a global project and look with one eye at some of the biggest problems of today will only lead to disappointment. And if we agree with the Russian point of view on these problems, this will entail a weakening of the United States, reduce its ability to defend our own national interests. “
Anthony Blinken will become Secretary of State in the Biden government. He is 58 years old. As a child, he lived for several years with his parents in Paris. He graduated from Harvard University and became a Juris Doctor at Columbia, pursued a private legal practice, and then spent more than 20 years in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He served as advisor to the vice president and later as first deputy national security adviser to the president. The last two years of Obama’s presidency, Tony Blinken worked as the first deputy secretary of state of the United States.
He told the story of his family more than once and repeated it at the presentation ceremony: “My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled from the pogroms in Russia and began a new life in America. His son, my father Donald Blinken, served in the United States Air Force during World War II and later became the United States Ambassador. He is an example for me and my hero. His wife, Vera Blinken, fled communist Hungary as a young girl and helped generations of new refugees to come to America. My mother, Judith Pisar, builds bridges between America and the world through art and culture. This is a person I admire. My other grandfather, Samuel Pisar, was one of 900 children at a school in Bialystok, Poland, and the only one to survive the Holocaust after four years in concentration camps. At the end of the war, during a death march in the forests of Bavaria, he escaped from a column of prisoners. From his hiding place, he heard a rumble. It was a tank, but instead of a Nazi cross, he saw a white five-pointed star on its side. He ran to the tank, a hatch opened in the tower, and an African American soldier looked at him from above. My grandfather knelt down and said the only English words his mother had taught him before the war: “God bless America.”
Avril Haynes will take over as director of National Intelligence in the Biden administration. She is 51 years old. In the past, she was the first deputy director of the CIA, and then was appointed the first deputy national security adviser to President Obama. Accepting the appointment, she warned Biden that she would not distort or suppress intelligence for political reasons: “Mr. President-elect, you know that I have never shied away from telling the authorities the truth. And that will be my responsibility as Director of National Intelligence. I have worked with you for a long time and I accept this assignment knowing that you will never want me to do otherwise and that you value the intelligence community’s perspective and will act that way even if what I say is awkward or unpleasant. … And I assure you that there will be such moments ”.
Finally, William Burns, the former US ambassador to Russia, will be appointed director of the CIA. He is a career diplomat with 33 years of experience. His last post was the post of the first deputy secretary of state. Burns’ civil service began under Bill Clinton. He has served in both the Bush Republican and Obama Democrat administrations. He calls his experience in Moscow “hard lessons.” 10 years ago, thanks to the leaked American diplomatic correspondence, he became famous all over the world for his detailed description of a Dagestan wedding, which was attended by Ramzan Kadyrov with his golden pistol. To the Western reader, Burns’s dispatch seemed a phantasmagoria, and the London Guardian wrote then that these pages were worthy of the pen of the great English satirist Evelyn Waugh. Along with Jake Sullivan, Burns conducted highly confidential talks with Iranian officials on a nuclear deal. A year ago, they published an article in which they called Trump’s Iranian policies risky and ill-fated.
Biden himself has extensive experience in international affairs. He has repeatedly criticized Russia for its attack on civil rights and freedoms. As vice president, he supported Georgia and Ukraine in their conflicts with Russia. For this, Biden is not liked in Moscow. Putin has already said that he does not expect any improvement or deterioration in relations from the new administration, because they have nowhere to deteriorate. At the same time, Russia hopes that after Biden takes office, it will be possible to extend the START-3 Treaty, which expires on February 5. Negotiations on this topic with the Trump administration are deadlocked. The Russian President said that he did not see “any crime” in the business activities of President Hunter Biden’s son in Ukraine. This can be seen as a gesture of goodwill towards Biden. And Biden is a system man. Negotiating with him is more difficult, but more reliable.
Biden’s foreign and national security appointees are a close-knit team. They have known each other for a long time and have similar views. In general, Biden is expected to return to constructive dialogue with allies, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Pacific Partnership, lower protectionist tariffs, and end the trade war with China, for which the American consumer is paying.
Biden intends to appoint Justice Merrick Garland as Minister of Justice. In March 2016, Barack Obama appointed him a member of the US Supreme Court to replace the deceased Antonin Scalia, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider this appointment before the election. Garland previously served as Deputy District Attorney for the District of Columbia, held senior positions in the Department of Justice, was a judge, and then Chief Justice of the District of Columbia Federal Court of Appeals. He has a reputation for being a centrist and is distinguished by an emphasized neutrality in matters of political importance. In appointing him, Biden emphasized that he did not discuss his son Hunter’s case with him.
Janet Yellen, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, will be the Treasury Secretary in Biden’s cabinet. What will happen to the economy? In December, for the first time in eight months, the country lost 140,000 jobs. The statistics of covid disease have improved slightly, but there is no need to talk about the victory over the virus. This is the reality that Biden and his team will have to deal with.
It is clear that no radical change in the situation for the better will happen in the near future. Biden has no magic wand. The main thing in his program is to support the middle class, which has suffered the most from the economic consequences of the pandemic. As far as taxes are concerned, there will be no overall increase. It will affect those who earn more than 400 thousand dollars a year: the tax rate for them will be raised from 37 to 39.6 percent. The tax on capital gains and dividends will be increased for those who receive more than one million a year. The tax on corporate income will also be increased from 21 to 28 percent. According to Biden’s plan, by 2030, one percent of the largest taxpayers will receive “clean”, that is, after taxes, 7.7 percent less than today. On average, the incomes of the population will decrease by 1.9 percent in 10 years. It is also expected to write off student debt for those who attended public colleges and whose annual income does not exceed $ 125,000.