Let me explain why I am both critical and very concerned about Biden foreign policy people with an example. Samantha Power is top flight reporter documenting genocide. Her work her truly the best there is on the topic. However, as a policy maker seeking to implement 1/n
Solutions to the problems her work documents is nothing less than abject failure. This is not a critique of her personally or her concern about those topics which she has chronicled amazingly but gets to the problem of how we seek to solve those problems. After Bill Clinton 2/n
I realized that character had little impact on the quality of decisions people made in office. Really great people can make good or bad decisions and really bad people can make good or bad decisions. I do not doubt her sincerity or earnestness at all. As a foreign policy 3/n
Maker her record, and the record of all Biden foreign policy personnel, is littered with absolute failure time and time again on every issue of consequence. Much of the distinction can be laid at the feet of one fundamental assumption about how the world works. 4/n
They are unwilling to enforce agreements or impose costs believing that people will see the light and they can be persuaded. Obama people will mention things like Asia pivot and agreements that were reached glossing over the fact that nothing happened and agreements were 5/n
Broken soon after signing. Team Trump has achieved no real positive outcomes yet but they have clearly demonstrated to Beijing that the old pattern of allowing them to skate on cheating and bad behavior will not be tolerated. What I worry about with Team Concession is not 6/n
Their feel goods or earnestness but their willingness to impose decisions that impose costs either externally on China (or others) or domestically. There is no costless solution to China. To date, they have proven a great team for producing well intentioned white papers 7/n
That lack substance or willingness to impose costs to meet the challenge. Their rhetoric in an election year means nothing. Their willingness to impose costs if in office is everything. Given their links to Chinese money, I do not hold out a lot of hope.
