President Joe Biden is using the waning weeks of his presidency to tout his road maps on national security and the economy, along with overt warnings to help his successor avoid pitfalls.
On Wednesday, his administration issued a new national security document for the incoming administration. It aims at countering what the Biden administration sees as growing cooperation among China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, dubbed by the administration as the new “axis of upheaval,” or alternatively, the “quartet of chaos.”
A day earlier, Biden appeared at a prominent Washington think tank to discuss his economic success and remind President-elect Donald Trump of the global value of a strong and stable U.S. economy.
At that event, he raised his customarily whisper-soft voice — which he said was throttled by a cold — to make a point.
“If we’re not leading the world, who does?” he asked.
‘Quartet of chaos’
The classified national security document aims to “provide a road map for the U.S. government to tackle this challenge moving forward,” said an administration official, who was not named as is common practice in briefing reporters.
Its exact contents are not publicly available because White House officials say it lays out classified military and technical details. But officials outlined four goals: improving cooperation among U.S. government agencies; faster sharing of information among allies; improving preparation; and using diplomatic and economic tools, like sanctions, to maximum effect.
Officials stressed that they began work on this document well before the presidential election.
“We see this as something we're bequeathing that will hopefully be helpful,” said one of the two unnamed officials who briefed reporters. “And, you know, they're totally free, obviously, to do their own NSM [National Security Memorandum] if they want to do it in a different way."
U.S. intelligence officials recently testified that for now, the quartet has yet to harmonize into a cohesive threat to U.S. security.
"They're not acting as a bloc," said Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, speaking earlier this month at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Motivations
The official outlined the motivations of each of the four actors. Russia’s main goal, the official said, is “to meet its wartime needs for materiel and manpower” on the battlefield in Ukraine, a conflict that officials say has accelerated this cooperation.
North Korea, the so-called Hermit Kingdom, seeks to diversify its alliances while weaning itself from China and sidestepping its mountain of sanctions.
Iran, also under the weight of heavy Western sanctions, seeks to bolster its economy.
And China, the heavyweight of the group that national security adviser Jake Sullivan recently identified as the single biggest foreign policy challenge to the U.S., poses the most complex challenge.
“China is in a little bit of an unusual position, though, because it's also, more than the others, economically interdependent with the rest of the world,” the official said. “And so, I think this realignment sort of raises for China the question about what kind of future it wants to see, and if it really wants to be all in with this grouping.”
So far, Trump has not responded publicly to these overtures.
Analyst Anna Borshchevskaya told VOA that Trump’s strategy for dealing with this threat is “unclear,” though his team has indicated that “they're looking to split Russia from China,” and Trump has vowed to swiftly end the conflict in Ukraine.
“Trump never actually articulated what his plan is,” said Borshchevskaya, a Russia analyst at the Washington Institute. “Even in the last several days, when he's started discussions about talks with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, he tweeted this intent and there's been reporting about an ongoing discussion about what a potential negotiation might look like. We still don't really know what the plan is.”
Little seen that's 'polarizing'
As for whether Trump’s administration will seriously consider Biden’s advice, she said, “he does have a tendency to change his mind, and again, we don't know what that might look like. But at this point, based on what I've seen, this document looks fairly bland. There's nothing that I see in it that is potentially polarizing, so it is possible that he might take that into consideration.”
The new administration’s transition teams have only this week begun to land at federal agencies that are tasked with this actual work, and getting up to speed takes time, said David Berteau, chief executive of the Professional Services Council and a veteran observer of eight presidential administration handoffs.
“We’ve all had our own taking new jobs in new organizations,” he said in a Tuesday interview aired on the Federal News Network. “Takes a while to figure them out — some agencies more than others. I would think the Pentagon is a little bit more of a labyrinth, although I have gotten lost in the Energy Department building as well.”
