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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. How should we look at these Joe Biden nominees so far? Are they diverse in ways that matter or are they too old school in ways that matter to the left or the right?

Washington Post National Security reporter John Hudson has an article with an interesting headline. Biden's nominees have pushed policies that Trump used to fuel his rise. Let's start there as John Hudson joins us Washington Post National Security reporter, focusing on the State Department and diplomacy. John, thanks for doing this. Welcome to WNYC.

John Hudson: Great to be with you.

Brian: As you write, these nominees have in the past pushed trade deals, aimed to sign international treaties and advocated for foreign wars, positions that forced Democrats to do a lot of soul searching over how they misread voters after Trump won in 2016.

Considering who he's choosing here, did Biden not do much soul searching these last four years, if these folks are his picks?

John: Well, I think it's fair to say that Biden believes that he won and he won decisively, and he separates his campaign from the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, who were pushing for a big significant change.

He says, "Look, I'm going to put the people in that I wanted." As we noted, a lot of those people, John Kerry, architect of the Iran nuclear deal of Paris climate Accords. These are things that Democrats are proud of and these are things that Trump attacked relentlessly.

In some ways, it's not surprising that Democrats are looking to salvage many of the things that Trump undid during that era. In some ways, we like to refer to this as the revenge of the establishment. These are very seasoned people that Biden has brought on that are part of his team that are coming back into the fore.

Brian: Let's go down some of the Obama policies that Trump reversed, some of them that you just mentioned and see if you think we turn back the clock to 2016 or do something different. You mentioned that some of these nominees helped negotiate the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. Do we just rejoin those now? Is it that simple?

John: That's a great question. The answer is it is kind of that simple when it comes to Paris. This can easily be re-entered and with not a lot of difficulties. A lot of these commitments that the nations made in the Paris climate Accords are self policed and so it's not that difficult for the United States to re-enter.

The Iran nuclear deal is extremely difficult to re-enter. Just think of if you were in the perspective of the Iranians, you had made a deal after several years of the Obama administration. According to international observers, you had abided by that deal. A new President comes in and completely rips it up and re-imposes all of these crushing economic sanctions, devastating your economy.

In response, Iran has then gone beyond the nuclear restrictions of that program. It's going to be very difficult to regain the trust that was lost after that. That's going to be a huge uphill battle for the Biden administration.

Brian: On the Iran deal, it actually did pretty well by most accounts at stopping their nuclear weapons program, which was the point, but critics said loosening the sanctions gave them a lot of money to wreak more military havoc in the region in other ways that hurt the US and the Arab Gulf States and Israel.

Does the Biden team except that that happened in a way that would lead them to approach Iran differently than before Trump pulled out?

John: I think they're completely united on that topic. I know that some people in Biden land hear that argument and completely reject it when it comes to gave the Iranians more money to do damage.

What they mean by that is, Iran's behavior did not improve after Trump pulled out of the Iran deal. It actually worsened. There were more attacks on US personnel in the middle East, particularly Iraq. The reality is because this is asymmetrical warfare. It's not particularly expensive. It is true the Trump administration completely destroyed in many ways the Iranian economy.

There's no doubt about that, but it didn't stop Iran from wreaking havoc. That said, there are other Biden officials who believe that yes, any new deals should do more to restrain Iran in ways that the original nuclear deal did not restrain them. That's things like regional behavior, their missile program, not their nuclear program. Some Biden folks are more ambitious and want to do more, whether they can actually do that is far from clear.

Brian: Let's go to the issue of war and peace. Here's Republican Senator Rand Paul on Fox yesterday on these nominees in general.

Rand Paul: On foreign policy, I am very worried about that there will be a big shift, and it's back to those who believe that we should militarily intervene abroad in a big way.

Brian: Paul mentioned as he went on in that comment, Secretary of State Nominee Anthony Blinken as a supporter of the Iraq war, if that's true people on the left might question, whether he's too old school interventionist too. They may have a right/left merged with somebody like Ron Paul on being skeptical of this team and Blinken in particular. Do you know his record in that respect?

John: Yes. Tony Blinken, he has spent the last 20 years as being Biden's point person on foreign policy. Blinken has thought more about Biden's foreign policy than Biden has thought about his own foreign policy. That has been his main job.

As we all know, Biden was a supporter of the Iraq war at a time he was being staffed by Blinken. He has since come around to being very critical of that. There are some areas were actually Blinken was more hawkish than his boss.

Blinken was supportive of the Libya intervention. He also thought we should have been more engaged on Syria. You're absolutely right to point out that some members of the progressive left, not super excited about some of these picks when they see hawkishness on the foreign policy side and you could envision a right/left union when it comes to skepticism about interventionism.

That said, some of these-- Blinken has spoken to this topic and said that, we're in a new era and he does see winding down military engagements in some areas, especially when it comes to large amounts of troops abroad as a necessity in the era of massive interventions involved in ground troops is over.

Brian: Listeners, anybody have any questions or early comments on the emerging Joe Biden national security team, or other picks as well, but it's pretty much the foreign policy and national security team that's been rolled out as job one here, maybe you saw some of that event yesterday on television.

We'll play a few clips as we go some of the nominees, but John Hudson, Washington Post reporter covering national security has the big picture. Questions or comments welcome here. (646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280 or tweet at Brian Lehrer.

I'm trying to key on the policies that these people represent, or the challenges on these big policies that you all know about that they may reverse, that Trump had reversed from the previous years, or they may not, or may find easier or harder to do it on.

Another one, John you're right that some of Biden's nominees advocated for the Trans Pacific Partnership, the big 12 country trade deal, mostly with Asian nations, but not including China, people forget that.

Obama was for that and the point was to secure US economic leadership versus China in the Pacific rim. In 2016, Trump was against it and Bernie Sanders was against it for different reasons, and it fell apart. Does Biden go back to some kind of TPP?

John: This is an area where I think there has been the most soul searching on the part of the Biden team and those around him. It's hard for me to see them going back to TPP. It's obviously less popular in Congress and both elements in the Democratic party and the Republican party free trade.

The idea of free trade has taken a big hit in recent years. Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, who he announced this week has actually written a lot about his sort of come to Jesus moment on these large, massive multilateral free trade agreements.

Jake Sullivan was a supporter of TPP, but he's written extensively, and it's worth checking out for people who really want to get into the weeds and the nerdiness of this emergent team. He wrote a piece for Carnegie that talks about the need for a foreign policy that works for the middle class.

A large part of that paper is a critique of trade deals that give incentives for companies to pull out of communities, cause unemployment, and Democrats who have not, they've always responded to this problem by offering, works programs that train-- They train factory workers for jobs of the future, but really often offer too little too late in Sullivan's viewpoint.

There has been a lot of reflection on the part of the Biden team about big trade deals. I think that's going to be one of the areas where they're going to proceed potentially, with more caution than they'd had in the Obama era.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. This is on getting back into the Paris Accords and other climate things. Of course, one of the big announcements was John Kerry, who's going to have a big foreign and domestic policy role, I guess, in climate, to be the first cabinet-level person who's charged specifically is climate policy. Alan in Brooklyn has a question or a comment about that. Alan, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Alan: Good morning. Thanks, again, Brian, for your great work. The trade and climate issues might pull Biden in two different directions. Although he wants to be more favorable to American workers, he also wants to move the ball on climate and Europeans, even if they like Biden better as a person and a policymaker, they might feel that as a nation, we've used more than our fair share of fossil fuels and created more than our fair share of the carbon problem worldwide.

They may push for things that have been discussed in the way of climate tariffs to offset the benefit we've had from excessive use in the past. Even if we are moving in the right direction now, I'm wondering if you think the climate thing is likely to come up from Europe, and how you think Biden will handle it?

Brian: John, you have a take on that? That's interesting.

John: Yes, that is fascinating. I think it's hard to say at this point. There's probably people smarter than I that know how the Europeans and the Americans are going to deal with this.

All what I've seen personally from working and reporting on embassy row here in Washington is the Europeans, for them, climate change is genuinely an issue that the voters care about in Europe, and that the politicians actually do care about in terms of demonstrating progress. It's a really more visceral and more deeply felt in Europe.

What I have heard is just pretty much, almost unadulterated excitement when it comes to Biden's victory here, and especially what he's done on climate, the appointment of Kerry. They have worked with Kerry for so long.

In having Kerry get this seat on the National Security Council, that's something that's never been done before. That means that Kerry is not just going to be there to talk about climate but he's there for many national security meetings where climate isn't the only focus.

He's going to have a big role. He's expected to travel a lot for that role, and he's probably going to be meeting at the heads of state level. How they work out the various details that the listener mentioned, that's a great question, and I think a lot of it is just to be seen, but they're going to start I think with somewhat of a honeymoon when it comes to the European allies.

Brian: On the Paris Climate Accord, though, Trump argued that even if human behavior is warming the planet, the Paris Accord was still a bad deal for the United States because it required too much of us that would cause economic disruption and too little of China, our main economic competitor because China gets designated developing country, which means it has less stringent standards for a number of years. How true is that and is it something Biden and Kerry and their people also think is a problem?

John: Yes. I think they acknowledge that there's a lot more work to do with China and not all of it was completed with Paris. They certainly fundamentally believe that it is a better building block, to begin with, and to make progress, as opposed to just pulling out of the Paris Climate deal and really isolating the United States on the world stage when it comes to the environment and combating climate change.

If the US is out of that, it doesn't have a lot of standing to coerce and judge the Chinese and trying to bring their standards up to the places where it is elsewhere. They feel the opportunities to cooperate with China is significant and they place that above many other aspects of the US-China relationship which, as you know, have really plummeted to historic lows and in the areas of security and an absolutely in biohazards and pandemic response.

Brian: Let's take another phone call. Here's Daniel at West Point.Daniel, you're on WNYC with John Hudson, national security reporter for The Washington Post. Hi, there?

Daniel: Hi, good morning. My question is, already the new advisors to President Biden interested in limiting Presidential power. One of the things I've noticed it seems like the President has been able to pull out of climate accords and adjust what we've given to Europe and NATO and things of that nature.

I'm curious if anybody is interested in pulling Congress in and making this more codified and limiting Presidential power in general? I'll take my comments off air. Thank you so much.

Brian: Thank you very much. John, another interesting question.

John: I think that is a great question. I would say, basically, not. No one that was named this week for the various positions has a particularly strong record when it comes to real strong limitations on executive power.

The counter-arguments that you would make, I would say are when Obama was considering retaliating against the Assad regime after the chemical attacks during his time in the administration. John Kerry was someone who went to the Hill and asked for congressional authorization when it came to moving forward.

To be honest, it was more about congressional consultation. Personally, Kerry also wanted a more activist role in Syria than President Obama did. The big issue when it comes to executive power that a lot of people have thought about is really war powers.

The idea that we are still in Afghanistan, we are still in Iraq, and in many ways, we are still launching counterterrorism operations based on the same 2001 AUMF that was passed by Congress after 9/11. That's a huge executive power issue.

There are people in the Democratic establishment who have pushed forcefully for a re-examination on war powers. None of the people that President-Elect Biden announced this week are people that you would describe as the forefront on those efforts.

Brian: Interesting. Yes. Every President seems to go through their thing with the other party on executive power. Bush called himself the unitary executive, and that got challenged in court with his war powers and even the torture policies.

Obama got so roundly ripped by the Republicans when he was so frustrated with the Republican Congress, and he couldn't get anything through and he issued those orders like DACA on immigration, and the power plant limitations with respect to climate as executive orders, and those got challenged at the Supreme Court.

Trump, of course, thought he was king. Every president goes through this in some way, and we'll see how Biden does and interesting that you say he's not setting himself up with respect to foreign policy anyway, to be more restrained in terms of executive power. Rita in Somerset, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rita?

Rita: Yes. Hi, Brian. My comment is while I approve all the-- I don't know much about them, but they seem to be people who are experienced, and I think that's what we need to replace all the people whom Trump appointed and the damage that they've done.

The other point that I would like to make is that maybe they shouldn't be too much in a rush to issue H-1 visas or expand immigration policy right now because I think people are hurting, the unemployment rate is pretty high, and I think that trying to get in foreign workers, may not be such a good idea.

I am an immigrant myself, but I feel at this point in time, I think, an America first policy in terms of employment should be a better thing.

Brian: Thank you very much. John, this raises besides the particular issue that Rita brought up the whole big topic of immigration, which obviously Trump rose to power on and try to restrict both legal immigration, as well as illegal immigration or overstaying, all those categories in any way that he possibly could. How much does that go back to 2016?

John: I think the most significant way things go back to 2016 is when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers. He radically transformed that situation where Obama was bringing in about 120,000 people in the refugee program every year, and that was drastically reduced to under 10,000 in the Trump era.

Biden has promised to reverse that, and I think we should expect to see that happen fairly quickly. I think it's probably also worth pointing out that in terms of border policies, immigration, things like that, the appointment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino to take control of DHS, in many ways for Democrats is seen as a really significant shift from the Trump era where in many ways, the members of the Latin American community in the United States felt maligned. That would be a big shift--

Brian: Let me jump right in here and play a clip of Alejandro Mayorkas, from the event yesterday, in which Biden introduced some of these cabinet nominees. This is not a name that people know, even though he's been in the Homeland security establishment for a good number of years, but get to know this voice folks, Alejandro Mayorkas, he's the nominee to be the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Alejandro Mayorkas: My father and mother brought me to this country to escape communism. They cherished our democracy and were intensely proud to become United States citizens, as was I.

I have carried that pride throughout my nearly 20 years of government service and throughout my life. My parents are not here to see this day. Mr. President elect, Madam Vice- President elect, please know that I will work day and night in the service of our nation, to ably lead the men and women of the United States department of Homeland security and to bring honor to my parents and to the trust you have placed in me to carry your vision for our country forward.

Brian: Alejandro Mayorkas, nominated by Joe Biden to be the next director-- Secretary I should say, cabinet level position, Secretary of Homeland Security. Here's one more nominated to be the first woman as Director of National Intelligence of Avril-- And you'll tell me how to pronounce this name John, is it of Avril? I've heard it of Avril and I've heard it of Avril. Do you know how she says her name?

John: Yes, it is a Avril among her friends and colleagues.

Brian: Avril Haines, here she is.

Avril: Mr. President-elect, you know that I have never shied away from speaking truth to power, and that will be my charge as Director of National Intelligence. I've worked for you for a long time, and I accept this nomination knowing that you would never want me to do otherwise, and that you value the perspective of the intelligence community and that you will do so even when what I have to say may be inconvenient or difficult, and I assure there will be those times.

Brian: Did Biden want to hear that from Avril Haines yesterday?

John: [chuckles] Well, I do think he prides himself in being someone who does not have the characteristics of Trump. He wants to hear different opinions. He's comfortable with get the give and take.

Everyone wants to say that they're open to having different opinions and being the ultimate decider in the end, whether that's the case, when the rubber hits the road, I think that's going to be another story.

Brian: Right. One more thing before you go, let's see, I have such a long menu of things and we don't have time for everything, China. China in particular. We've touched on it with respect to some topics, like climate and trade, but what about the larger issue of the US and China overall?

You have a quote of Biden in your articles saying China is stronger by every key metric than four years ago because of Trump's policies. We know that Trump had that, what I'll call a weird two-step that he did of embracing the authoritarian leader while vilifying the country and imposing tariffs but in general, of course, the centerpiece of his administration has been identifying China as an enemy and especially in the ways that it has gained economically while the US has stagnated and raising a populous base, on that.

Is China stronger by every key metric than four years ago because of Trump's policies? That's Biden statement, can that be ascertained through journalism?

John: I think it's more of a mixed bag. I do think that in many ways, China has gained ground during the Trump era, but in other ways, the administration's focus, really relentless focus on, pushing back against China when it comes to its place as the leader in 5G technology and really warning, Trump's secretary of state, pretty much everywhere he traveled around the world, would raise concerns about the spine potential that China has when it builds up your 5G infrastructure and pushing for alternatives.

In that respect, they did get some allies to support, maybe they got fewer allies than they could have if they hadn't alienated those allies on another range of issues that they did and there wasn't huge gains made on rebalancing the trade deficit with China, that is certainly an unfulfilled promise.

What a lot of the Biden folks say in terms of rationalizing that statement, that we're in a worst place when it comes to China, is that the best weapon that the United States has against China, is its alliance structure and because that has been shaken in some ways by the Trump administration, when it comes to East Asia and Europe, they weren't as a stronger footing.

As the closest aids for Biden have mentioned, they still believe 2021 is not going to be 2016. They can't just turn back the clock and have relations with China the way they were before, so much have shifted, the ground has really shifted since then.

Brian: John Hudson covers national security for the Washington Post. Really interesting stuff John. Thank you very much. A pointless nose to, not just the article that we started talking about at the top where you write about some of these Trump issues and is it so easy as to turn back the clock to 2016.

Folks, John has an article on The Washington Post website that would print out at 31 pages, according to my iPad, that goes down every nominee that's been announced, and that is likely and who they are and why they might matter. If you're really into the weeds on this, you can check that out. John Hudson, thank you very much.

John: Great to be with you.

 

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