To say President-elect Joe Biden has his work cut out for him when it comes to US foreign policy and national security would be …
To say President-elect Joe Biden has his work cut out for him when it comes to US foreign policy and national security would be a gross understatement. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all loom large, right alongside climate change and the still-worsening coronavirus pandemic. Yet with a persistently polarized American electorate and a possibly divided Congress, it will be hard for his administration to make significant progress on the biggest security challenges facing the United States. Whatever happens with the messy transition period leading up to Biden’s inauguration on January 20, the Republican Party’s obstructionism and Donald Trump’s decapitation of Pentagon leadership this week certainly will not help. There are, however, some easy wins that Biden’s administration could still conceivably secure within its first 100 days, without having to charge straight into major political headwinds. Despite the many obstacles Biden’s national security team will confront, there are nevertheless viable options to deliver quickly on Biden’s promise to « restore American leadership abroad » and repair international alliances. A Biden White House could better the odds for more stable US relations with the world by taking three simple steps in the first quarter of 2021 to demonstrate America’s recommitment to the defense of human rights and promotion of international legal norms. Not one will require a hard sell to Congress, and all three would likely receive broad bipartisan support across the foreign policy community in Washington. Public Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the Netherlands, August 28, 2018. Reuters Step One: Rescind Trump’s visa ban and sanctions that were levied against staff at the International Criminal Court, and appoint a respected jurist with management experience to head the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice. This is an easy one. The Trump administration’s decision to impose a travel ban on The Hague court’s top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and members of her staff is a stain on America’s long track record of support for international justice. The Rome Statute that established the ICC as the global court of last resort for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression grew directly out of the legal traditions established by American prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi officials in Germany after World War II. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke with that tradition by singling out Bensouda and members of her team and barring them from entering the United States. It was punishment from the Trump administration after the ICC granted Bensouda’s request to open a formal investigation into war crimes committed in Afghanistan by all sides, including American forces.
