The president-elect has several veteran aides to choose from, even as some liberals complain about a return of the foreign policy “Blob.”
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more liberal Democrats impatient with their party’s pre-Trump national security instincts, which they consider badly outdated.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. While their collective résumés are impeccable by the standards of the Council on Foreign Relations, some party insiders and analysts say Mr. Biden’s team-in-waiting may be too cautious and conventionally minded at a moment when party insurgents and activists are challenging Democratic orthodoxy on subjects like Israel, military spending and counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and North Africa. To some they are representative of what Mr. Obama’s former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes famously derided as “The Blob” — a Washington foreign policy establishment too confident in American hegemony and too willing to resort to force. They also grumble about their corporate connections, noting that Mr. Blinken and Ms. Flournoy in 2017 founded the Washington consulting firm WestExec, whose slogan has been “Bringing the Situation Room to the Board Room.” Its roster of current and former employees is a who’s-who of likely Biden appointees that includes Ms. Haines, a former principal. “They’re bringing in the usual suspects. There are no new faces here,” said John Mearsheimer, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago and a frequent critic of Washington’s foreign policy elites. “And to the extent there are new faces and younger people, they sound just like the usual suspects.” Most of the people around Mr.
