By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

Days before the Thanksgiving holiday, President-elect Joe Biden has been quick to select his national security team.  He chose Jake Sullivan to serve as national security adviser, Antony Blinken to be nominated for Secretary of State, Avril Haines will be the director of national intelligence, and John Kerry will take on the role of a Cabinet-level climate czar.

Biden’s national security team, places a premium on extensive government experience and proficiency differentiating those from the Trump administrations who hailed mainly from outside the normal academic or government apparatus.

This new national security selection places enormous trust back into the foreign policy bureaucracy from which the president-elect is most comfortable. This is a dramatic reversal from Trump who often distrusted career bureaucrats, believing they caused the most harm to America.  Trump often points to the close to twenty years of endless wars across the Middle East and the disastrous trade deals costing millions of lost manufacturing jobs across the country.

“Collectively, this team has secured some of the most defining national security and diplomatic achievements in recent memory — made possible through decades of experience working with our partners,” Biden said Tuesday as he unveiled his national security team.

Biden has surrounded himself with longtime Obama administration officials who have spent years together and will not need a sharp learning curve on threats posed to the U.S.

His pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, worked for Biden in the Senate for years, and held the posts of deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser. His choice for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was the deputy to that post under President Barack Obama. His nominee for treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, was chair of the Federal Reserve and chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. His incoming White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, was chief of staff to two vice presidents — Al Gore and Biden himself — and was the Obama administration’s Ebola czar.

Even his selection of a new created post of presidential climate envoy is former Senator and U.S. Secretary of State in the Obama administration John Kerry.

“The team is bringing competency and experience, which are two separate things but deeply interwoven,” said retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander Europe, who has worked with much of Biden’s new team. “There are deputies stepping up into full roles, seasoned hands returning to the job. They tend to be calm and centered and they won’t all fight over the ball.”

“They know their counterparts overseas and they know whom to pick up the phone and call,” said Stavridis. “It’s a completely different approach than what we saw with the Trump team — and I hesitate to call it a team because they didn’t work all that well together.”

Now that Biden has selected part of his national security team with the exception of his defense secretary with many speculating that he will choose former Obama defense official Michèle Flournoy. His Director of Central Intelligence looks to be former Obama administration national security adviser Tom Donilon.

Not are all pleased with Biden’s national security choices as Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio commented that “Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline.”

Almost all were directly or indirectly part of the Obama administration’s foreign policy which was given glowing results by the media but actual success was something far different.

Many foreign policy experts and especially those in the media state that Biden brings vast amounts of national security experience to the White house, unfortunately his actual record is far from spectacular.   Even former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in both the Bush and Obama administration stated that Biden had been wrong on every significant foreign policy event of the past forty years.

Recent examples of Biden’s failed foreign policy are by his voting against the Persian Gulf War, voted for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He failed to support the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq that stabilized the country, was appointed as the point person on Iraq by President Obama while he served as vice president, resulting in the premature withdrawal from Iraq which eventually led the U.S. return to the country to confront and defeat ISIS.

Many of those selected by Biden to critical national security positions, also were part of Biden’s mistakes. Such as supporting Biden’s vote for the Iraq war, against the surge of U.S. forces to stabilize Iraq, the premature pullout from the country, the mishandling of  the “Arab Spring” revolution that engulfed the Middle East region beginning in 2011.  This also included being part of the disastrous Syria policy, which culminated in the Obama’s administrations own capitulation of his own “redline” regarding the Syrian use of chemical weapons on its own people.

This capitulation by the Obama administration gave a greenlight for Russia to move into the Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, and the movement of Russian forces into Syria to stabilize the barbaric Assad regime.  This was also viewed by China as major sign of weakness by the United States and allowed Beijing to move with impunity into the South China Sea.

The question that needs to be asked of Biden and his new national security team is how do they view the threat from China? Biden stated during the campaign that Russia is our most pressing threat, but he was silent on China!

Most foreign policy experts believe China is our greatest threat not Russia. Is Biden’s national security team wrong again?

During Biden’s decade’s long service in Washington, he supported every trade and other agreements with China, to include supporting granting China most favored nation’s trade status, this lead to the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing resulting in leading to millions of jobs going overseas.

How would Biden’s national security team deal with China? Right away Biden will have to deal with an election of a new president at the World Trade Organization (WTO), who would he support? Would he leave the tariffs on China placed by the Trump administration and would he ensure that China adhere to the rules it agreed upon to entering the WTO. This includes ending subsidies to state-owned business, China never ended them and both the Bush and Obama administrations never held Beijing accountable which incidentally are the ones who consistently steal U.S. intellectual properties.

One of the campaign promises Biden mentioned he would do on his first day in office would have the U.S. re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement.  Throughout the campaign Biden was never asked how you get China to comply with the agreement.

Currently China is building hundreds of new heavily polluting coal plants every year and exporting these plants to other countries, all the while pledging it wants to be carbon-neutral by 2060.  The Paris Climate agreement allows China to begin its adherence in 2030, but the U.S. has to begin immediately.

Now that Kerry will be the point person on climate policy in the White House, how will his tenure be different since he negotiated the Paris Climate agreement? Would Biden submit the agreement to the Senate for approval?

Biden and his national security team believe in multi-national organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), one that the Trump administration pulled out of.  Biden has stated that he would re-join the organization, but never asked does this mean you would commit the U.S. to paying over $400 million to an organization that was parroting China’s talking points throughout the coronavirus pandemic resulting in the deaths of close to 270,000 Americans.

Would Biden’s national security team continue to support WHO President Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who consistently downplayed the coronavirus and continued to follow Beijing’s talking points to the leader and will Biden support him as president without any serious reforms of the organization?

The most contentious of all areas is the Middle East, as Biden will be the fourth American president to deal with this region and with it the ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How would Biden’s national security team be any different? Considering all of them were responsible for situation in the first place and decisions made, making things worse not better.

What strategy does Biden have for both Iraq and Afghanistan that is different from Trump? Democrats want the U.S. out of these endless wars, if Biden completely withdraws just like he did in 2010, what will prevent the reemergence of ISIS in Iraq, Al-Qaeda and other terror organizations in Afghanistan?

Throughout the campaign, Biden and his national security team have criticized Trump for pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and would have the U.S. re-join the agreement upon entering the White House.  Would Biden and his national security team recommend the end to all sanctions on Iran, Tehran has stated no negotiations until sanctions are lifted, does Biden lift the sanctions? What will prevent Iran from using this new revenue to fiancé its proxy terror groups across the Middle East; such as Hezbollah and Hamas?

This is what precisely happened when the nuclear agreement was signed by the Obama administration in 2015.  Also would Biden’s national security team recommend the continuation of Trump’s Middle East peace plan that resulted in peace deals between Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Sudan, and soon others? These were the first peace deals between Israel and Arab countries in decades.

Much has been made about the maligned foreign policy of the Trump administration, but rhetoric aside Trump is the first president since President Carter not to start any new wars. Biden and his national security team have been directly or indirectly involved in all five major wars the U.S. still engaged in. What will be different this time?

What direction does Biden’s national security team recommend we change since they were wrong the last time they were in charge of U.S. foreign policy?

The most controversial aspect of U.S. foreign policy is the perception that Trump has been weak on Russia, but facts show a far different situation, as the administration has been far tougher on Russia than the Obama-Biden administration ever was.

The national security team Biden has selected was part of the feckless foreign policy that acquiesced when Russia moved into the Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine, then was allowed with impunity to re-enter the Middle East to stabilize the brutal regime of President Assad.

What would this national security team do differently when they badly mishandled the situations before?

The final critique Biden and his national security team have made against Trump is that he has been far too harsh on our closest allies.  Would Biden’s national security team continue to push back on our European and other allies’ who place crippling tariffs on U.S. products? Would Biden fight back or do something entirely different?

How would Biden’s national security team continue to force our NATO allies to pay 2% of their GDP on defense, considering Trump now has more member countries contributing more for defense than ever before.  One intransigent country is Germany who consistently wants U.S. protection from Russia, but signed a lucrative energy deal during both the Bush and Obama administrations with a Russian energy company with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Why should America protect Europe when they won’t protect themselves, considering that the Obama-Biden administration called Europe “free riders,” enjoying the benefits of an international order safeguarded by the United States without contributing much to it?

What would this national security team do differently?

Would Biden and his national security team  replicate the failed foreign policy of the Obama administration considering all of them were part in crafting, hoping for a different result.

What I have learned in my thirty years in the Marines; hope is not a strategy!