As the incoming US president selects his top officials to represent Washington’s interests overseas, Foreign Editor David Pratt runs the rule over those appointed and what it might mean for American foreign policy 

“The blob” is back in town. That’s certainly the view of some top American political commentators right now. More of what the term “the blob” means and where it comes from in a moment, but for now suffice to say that what we’re talking about here is the United States foreign policy establishment. 

In a week that saw incoming president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris named Time magazine’s person – or persons – of the year for 2020, the eyes of America’s political pundits have been firmly fixed on the selection of those who will fill the other top senior posts in the new US administration. 

Keeping watch over who gets the tap on the shoulder from the US president always proves to be a vital duty for both American political analysts and their counterparts overseas. World leaders too sit up and take notice of the appointments, weighing up whom they might have to contend with in the coming months and years ahead. 

Even for us lesser mortals though perhaps less fixated with the nuances of global diplomacy, familiarising ourselves with these ‘new kids’ on the White House bloc, provides something of a steer on those likely to be making the headlines in future world news stories. 

And if the early signs are anything to go by with the coronavirus pandemic dragging on and Britain’s likely ‘no deal’ Brexit throwing trade into turmoil, not to mention rising tensions with China, Turkey and Russia, team Biden’s first year in office looks set to play a big part in those stories. 

But before we run the rule over the new runners and riders and what we might expect of them, let me go back to that term “the blob.” For it’s that very title say some US political observers that aptly sums up the chief characteristics of those that Biden has chosen to represent the US be it at the United Nations or sitting around negotiating tables with their security, defence and foreign affairs counterparts worldwide. 

It was White House reporter Alex Ward of the American news website Vox, who provided a timely reminder last week of the origins and significance of what on the face of it might appear an unseemly epithet. 

Ward recalled a 2016 New York Times magazine profile of Ben Rhodes, the man who was top aide to then President Barack Obama. In the interview Rhodes is said to have derisorily labelled America’s foreign policy establishment “the blob.” 

“With that term, now ubiquitous in Washington, DC, he sought to lambast both Democrats and Republicans who generally followed the same internationalist playbook since 1945, many of whom supported the Iraq War and trade deals that hurt the middle class, “ explained Ward in his Vox article. 

“It’s not that Rhodes disagreed with all their beliefs - the importance of US global leadership, free trade, democracy promotion, and protection of human rights - but he disparaged the blob’s insistence on continuing the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, minimising climate change, and ignoring other challenges like pandemics,” Ward added. 

Both Obama and Trump albeit for different reasons likewise stood against foreign policy traditionalists even if as Ward stresses, “those two presidents’ rejection of the blob wasn’t absolute”. But with Biden it’s a different story say some, insisting the blob is back for sure. 

Working on the assumption such an assertion is accurate, just who then exactly makes up the current blob in Biden’s administration and what evidence is there that they fit the description of foreign policy traditionalists? 

All the early clues came a few weeks ago when Biden announced his first six national security cabinet picks, with the president-elect promising to reboot traditional alliances and restore what he described as America’s “global ... and moral leadership.” 

While some Republican - and indeed Democrat - critics complained this was merely an attempt to return to the status quo of Obama’s presidency, or nothing more than an “Obama term three,” as one senior Republican congressional aide put it, Biden was at pains to insist his foreign policy approach will be different from that taken by his erstwhile boss. 

Some foreign policy experts however clearly buy into Biden’s assurance that he will do things differently from an Obama approach that one aide wryly described in 2011 as “leading from behind”. 

Others again read things differently maintaining Biden’s choice of classic blob types shows what we can really expect. So who are Biden’s chosen ones who will be advising the president on issues beyond America’s borders? Well, the first thing worth noting about the top three is that they are not that well-known beyond Washington even if they have been resident within the hierarchy of the US body politic for some time. 

First up we have fifty-eight-year-old Antony Blinken, a long-time aide who Biden has picked as his first secretary of state. That choice is sure to have real resonance here in Europe and especially during this troubled time of Brexit. 

In a recent profile, American political magazine Politico described Blinken’s ties to Europe as “lifelong, deep and personal” and him being a “fierce believer in the transatlantic alliance.” 

A fluent French speaker Blinken as a child moved to Paris after his parents divorced and his mother, Judith, married Polish-American Holocaust survivor and powerhouse lawyer Samuel Pisar. 

Once established in adult politics Blinken spent six years in the Senate as one of Biden’s top aides. 

In his roles in the National Security Council (NSC) under Obama and as deputy secretary of state, Blinken advocated for more robust US involvement in the Syria conflict, and notably broke with his boss, Biden, to support the armed intervention in Libya according to Politico. 

The magazine profile corroborates what other observers also describe as Blinken’s recurring mantra on any foreign policy issue. At its most basic this boils down to the US working with its allies and within international treaties and organisations. Blinken himself stressed this very point in a speech back in 2016. 

“Put simply, the world is safer for the American people when we have friends, partners and allies,” Blinken emphasised. More recently he has dismissed the Trump administration’s plans to remove US troops from Germany as “foolish, spiteful, and a strategic loser... that weakens NATO, helps Vladimir Putin, and harms Germany, our most important ally in Europe.” 

Such remarks will doubtless be music to the ears of outgoing German chancellor Angela Merkel, no admirer of Trump and whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency under tremendous pressure on numerous fronts not least Brexit. 

Like Blinken, Biden’s other two top choices Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Jake Sullivan also bring allies and decades of experience to the White House, giving yet more ammunition to those who view the latest cast as a reforming of the blob. 

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, one of the most high-profile black female US diplomats who worked for years on African affairs, has been nominated to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations. 

Jake Sullivan meanwhile, a former state department official and Hillary Clinton aide who played a key role in negotiating the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, served as Biden's national security adviser when he was vice-president. 

Other key appointments too are figures that all have extensive experience at the highest levels of the US Federal Government with each of them also serving in the Obama Administration in which Biden was vice-president. 

Avril Haines for example the first woman in the post of Director of National Intelligence and former Deputy Director of the CIA and Deputy National Security Adviser. 

Then there is Alejandro Mayorkas now Secretary of Homeland Security, the first Latino and immigrant to hold the office and former Director of Homeland Security. 

Perhaps the only real familiar face to those of us outside the US is the appointment of John Kerry to the new post of Climate Change Envoy, a role which will bring him to Glasgow next year for the scheduled United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26. 

According to Scott Lucas, Professor of American Politics at the University of Birmingham, all these appointments by Biden represent “not just a signal” but “a spotlight shone for Governments, businesses, and NGO’s around the world of an America re-engaging, with competence, responsibility, and multilateralism.” 

But as Professor Lucas also makes clear even a return to competence and engagement does not guarantee smooth relations for team Biden within the US corridors of power. With damage still being wrought by Trump and his hard-core supporters, significant political repair work will be needed in a country still deeply polarised as all the while the Biden administration is likely to face obstacles in Congress. 

Though Biden’s appointments might mark a clean break with Trump’s war on the so-called “deep state” and individuals in government he regarded as working against his own agenda, their vast breadth of experience as foreign policy veterans will not endear them to all. 

Stephen M Walt is professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In an article written by him on Friday for the influential US based magazine Foreign Policy entitled: ‘Biden Sees the A- Team. I See the Blob,’ Walt made clear his scepticism of the president-elect’s latest top appointees. 

“For some observers, the new team is manna from heaven; just what the country needs after the incoherent, tweet-driven, and mostly ineffective chaos of the Trump/Pompeo era, wrote Walt. 

“At the same time, however, progressives and advocates of foreign-policy restraint have voiced greater misgivings,” Walt continued, outlining how some had pointed out that Biden and almost all of his top picks had openly supported the 2003 war in Iraq. 

Others went further too continued Walt citing Doug Bandow of the libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute who in an article for The American Conservative magazine warned last week that “The Blob Is back and It’s Ready for War.” 

Many observers however would firmly refute such an assessment, not least on the grounds that the Biden administration will have enough of its work cut out confronting domestic challenges Covid-19 among them. Far from rushing headlong towards any overseas showdowns, relationships with and trust from allies will need to be re-established. Things like US contributions to NATO through increased defence spending or a reworking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership being issues that are no closer to resolution. 

Then we have the political and economic car crash of the UK’s likely no deal Brexit and isolation from the EU which will put a spoke in the wheel of the Biden administration’s conception of multilateralism. 

And so you have it. On the one hand team Biden, seen by detractors as a return of the blob while welcomed by supporters with a sigh of relief as a sure-fire sign that as Biden himself said, “America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” 

Ultimately the bottom line here is that few of the pundits, myself included, speculating on what to expect from US foreign policy under Biden can say with any authority what the direction of travel will be. So much depends on the moves made by those other nations currently calling so many of the shots on international trade, security and diplomacy, China, Russia, Turkey immediately spring to mind. 

As Harvard University's Stephen Walt rightly says, “past attitudes and choices are suggestive but not dispositive: The question is not what they did in the past but rather what they do next year and beyond.” 

If indeed the blob is back in Washington town, it doesn’t necessarily bode ill. It only means we will witness a US foreign policy - warts and all - with which the world is already familiar. Whether one agrees or disagrees with such a prospect it’s almost certainly undeniable that there are those world leaders who would happily settle right now for that recognisable US policy face on the current chaotic world stage.