Even though there was virtually no debate on foreign policy during the recent presidential campaign, there has been considerable discussion of what President Joe Biden’s national security team might look like. The general consensus is that the top levels of the government will be largely drawn from officials who previously served in the Obama administration…
One of the most consequential appointments that a new president must make is director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Unfortunately, this appointment is usually made late in the transition process, getting insufficient attention and typically ending up with a mediocre selection. Presidents have named liberals (Ted Sorenson and Tony Lake) who couldn’t survive the…
We are now told that President-elect Joe Biden may name none other than Hillary Clinton to be his ambassador to the United Nations. This bombshell, a calculated leak by an unnamed “person familiar with the chatter” inside the Biden transition team, was delivered 14 paragraphs into The Washington Post’s report on how swiftly and successfully…
When it became apparent that Joe Biden is to be the next president of the United States, no matter the petulant protestations of the present incumbent, who is best forgotten, there was cautious optimism that there might be resetting of relations with various countries, but unless he has had a radical rethink, it may in…
Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. Those individuals are generally described as neoconservatives but the label is itself…
Analysts are still grappling with the fallout from the US election. Trumpism proved a far more enduring and alluring phenomenon than most media pundits expected. Defying predictions, Trump improved his share of the overall vote compared to his 2016 win, and he surprised even his own team by increasing his share of minority voters and…
