display

"America First" was Donald Trump's battle cry.

In truth, however, Trump meant: "America only".

While the outgoing administration attacked even the closest allies and withdrew from international organizations and treaties, future Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken stands for exactly the opposite.

Blinken, 58, was Deputy Foreign Minister from 2015 to 2017 and has been advising Biden for almost two decades, for example as a national security advisor.

The future head of the State Department will radically turn back the foreign policy of his predecessor Mike Pompeo in his home.

Pompeo, a loyal ally of Trump, always took to the field against international treaties and amalgamations.

In his legendary speech in Brussels at the end of 2018, Pompeo said that multilateralism is "too often seen as an end in itself today".

The Biden administration will return to the multilateralism that has shaped American politics for decades and vice versa.

Washington will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Agreement.

The membership of the USA in the World Health Organization WHO and the UN cultural organization Unesco, which was terminated by Trump, will be resumed.

With bidding and blinking, an exit from NATO, about which Trump had argued internally, is out of the question.

On Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg congratulated Biden on his election victory.

Blinken does not necessarily make the US State Department a convenient partner for close allies like Germany on every issue.

But in the future, European politicians and diplomats will be able to talk to the State Department about politics again - instead of speculating about how the President's mood for the day may be and what he is up to next.

Incidentally, Blinken grew up partly in France and speaks fluent French.

In recent years he has maintained contacts with representatives of the German federal government.

display

Unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden plays it safe.

For foreign and domestic policy, he has mostly nominated experienced personalities, old companions: men and women who already held key positions during his time as Vice President under Barack Obama (2009 to 2017).

His first nominations are a “who's who” of Obama's people.

So no experiments!

Very different from the - administratively inexperienced non-politician - Trump, who heaved some political nobody into ministerial offices and fired them several times after a few months.

Biden relies on experience - and Obama's people

Are you betting that Biden's staff wear will be less than the Trump's?

Critics of the elected president will argue that Biden has appointed people from the "establishment".

But did you seriously expect anything else from a man who has been making politics in Washington for almost half a century (Senate election 1972)?

Anthony Blinken, the future Secretary of State, has worked in the White House as well as in the State Department.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, 68, the future ambassador to the United Nations, can even look back on 35 years in the Foreign Service, has worked as a diplomat on four continents, including the UN in Geneva.

Incidentally, with her, Biden is also formally reversing Trump's policy: the post of US ambassador to the UN will in future have cabinet rank again.

A small but subtle symbolic difference to Trump, who only liked the UN while he was allowed to speak in front of the General Assembly (and was laughed at once).

A veteran of American foreign policy is also the future climate commissioner John Kerry, 76. The diplomat's son was once foreign minister under Barack Obama, before that, from 1985, sat in the Senate for over two decades - together with Joe Biden.

By the way, Kerry, not Trump or Pompeo, had once pushed NATO's two percent target.

The Biden administration should also remind Germany of these obligations.

John Kerry has a very special connection to Berlin: He maintains a friendship with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, with whom he had, among other things, discussed the Iran Agreement and the war in Ukraine in several hours of meetings.

display

As a longtime Senator (1973 to 2009), Joe Biden knows about the power of the Senate.

The second chamber of Congress has the right to approve the men and women nominated for key government positions.

The Republicans still have a wafer-thin majority in the Senate, as they did better than expected in the November 3rd election.

No Republican, not even Trump, spoke of fraud in the Senate elections.

With the January 5 runoff elections in Georgia, the Democrats could theoretically reach a 50:50 stalemate in the Senate, with the vote of elected Vice President Kamala Harris, 56, decisive.

No shift to the left - signal to the Republicans

But here, too, Biden plays it safe, nominated personalities who can hope for a place at least for some Republicans.

In this respect, Biden does not have a completely free hand.

He always has to think about the voting behavior of the Senate, and does not want to start the government business with weeks of trembling.

It is therefore significant that Biden has not yet earmarked Susan Rice, 55, for any position.

Rice was once Obama's National Security Advisor and previously an Ambassador to the United Nations.

Among other things, Rice had helped push the Iran Agreement and the Paris Climate Agreement.

But Biden knows how little the Republicans think of Rice.

You once accused her of initially downplaying the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

After the corresponding severe criticism from the Republicans in the Senate, Rice withdrew her application for the office of Secretary of State proposed by Obama.

Biden wants to avoid such a disgrace.

It remains to be seen whether the elected president will bring himself to propose a decidedly left-wing Democrat for a key ministry.

But whether the left senators Bernie Sanders, 78, or Elizabeth Warren, 71, have a chance in a Republican-dominated Senate?

Quite uncertain.

display

Warren would like to be Treasury Secretary, as she has indicated for the past few weeks.

Biden, however, relies on former US Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen for this post, as the "Wall Street Journal" first reported.

Biden was still pending confirmation, and Yellen also refused to comment.

Yellen, 74, is also well known and networked in Washington.

From 2014 to 2018 she headed the Fed.

Yellen once worked as an economist at Harvard University, then at other universities.

President Bill Clinton appointed her an advisor.

The Senate confirmed her as the first woman to head the Fed with a two-thirds majority after she was nominated by President Obama.

The most colorful cabinet in America

During the election campaign, Joe Biden repeatedly announced that he would set up a cabinet "that looks like America".

In the spring he once said: "Men, women, homosexuals, heterosexuals, middle, the whole range, blacks, whites, Asians".

His government should look like "the country, because everyone brings a slightly different perspective".

So it is quite possible that among the somewhat older, white, Irish-born Catholic Biden, the diversity at the top of the country will be greater than ever before.

Kamala Harris will be the first woman and first black to serve as vice president.

Alejandro Mayorkas, 60, nominated by Biden as Minister of Homeland Security on Monday, also has a special symbolic meaning: For the first time, a Latino and an immigrant will head this extremely powerful ministry.

Mayorkas was born in Havana, Cuba.

He was a baby when his parents came with him to the United States as political refugees.

Mayorkas had been Vice Minister of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2016.

Avril Haines, 51, will be the first woman to head the intelligence services ("Director of National Intelligence", DNI).

Your job will be to coordinate the various US intelligence agencies.

Haines was Obama's advisor, most recently as Deputy National Security Advisor.

The future UN ambassador Thomas Greenfield represents the African American community.

With 43-year-old Jake Sullivan, Biden has nominated an unusually young National Security Advisor in the White House.

Sullivan, a close confidante of ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was already in the State Department and from 2013 served as a national security advisor to Biden as vice president.

Biden strides resolutely towards the White House

The incumbent President Donald Trump ("I won the election") may romp around, seek legal action, sometimes drop it and, above all, ask his supporters for donations for his over-indebted campaign - Biden is not deterred.

The elected president has 306 seats on the electoral body, Trump 232. The widespread conspiracy theories and the actions of Trump's lawyers are increasingly meeting with resistance.

"Embarrassing" is Trump's legal team, so the Republican, ex-governor and Trump friend Chris Christie.

Biden nominated Ron Klain, 59, to be Chief of Staff in the White House early on.

The transition team of the elected president is working, even if it has still not got the usual access of the incumbent government.

The inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2021 has long been prepared.

Biden's team expects Trump will not attend.

That would be a historic novelty, albeit in the style of Trump.

But the regret about this prospect has so far been limited.