How Trump Can Avoid Transition Traps Set By Biden

Transitions of presidential administrations are tricky, and all the more so when, as from Biden to Trump, control is passing from one political party to another. There is much change, and there is much effort to avoid change. From my experience in previous transitions, this is especially true for transitions that pass from a left-leaning government to a conservative-leaning government. The majority of the government’s employees identify more with the left than right—Harris won more than 90 percent of the vote in D.C., 74 percent in Montgomery County, Maryland; more than 65 percent in Fairfax County, Virginia. This is especially true as a conservative government that defines itself against the Washington establishment comes into power. So this particular transition, even more than most others, features a mad race by those loyal to the ideas of the previous administration to lock the new administration into policies of the outgoing administration.

There is a window of opportunity for the outgoing administration to do this during transition because before the new team can take over, its most senior members must be confirmed by the Senate. At the outset, the unconfirmed personal staff of the president — the national security Advisor or special assistants — are the only ones on board. Because of security clearance requirements and the fact that an official has no authority to hire employees before he himself holds a position, second-tier and deeper down political appointments are slow to be filled. As a result, even those few aides who are installed in the first days of the president’s terms still must rely on staff, bureaucracy, and in some cases even the appointees of the previous administration. An isolated president with a few lone staffers and no supporting bureaucracy is highly vulnerable to having policies and ideas foisted upon him unwillingly, unwittingly, or even somewhat dishonestly. I saw this in action myself in the transition in 2001. Indeed, as late as 2005, one major proliferation/arms control policy issue came up that demanded a fundamental policy reconsideration. When that was raised, the bureaucracy refused to allow the issue to be discussed because, it said, there had already been a final high-level policy decision. When? In early February 2001 — namely in the first weeks of the George W. Bush administration, before any staff below the cabinet level had come on board, and when even some cabinet members had not yet been confirmed.

There’s room for such bureaucratic finagling both in the final days of the departing administration and in the early days of the new one.

Avoiding this transition trap depends largely on savvy and determination of some of the top staff of the new administration who take office immediately on January 20 in positions that do not require confirmation. They will help set and monitor the implementation of policy on behalf of the president. But they are outnumbered by the permanent bureaucracy and the holdovers from the outgoing administration. As a result, these early staffers sometimes get overwhelmed, manipulated, and barreled over into fulfilling the policy set by the previous administration. That can functionally lock the incoming administration into the failed strategic concept of the outgoing administration.

The outgoing Biden administration has set such a “transition trap” in place for the incoming Trump administration when it comes to Middle East policy. Trump’s “America First” policy may be somewhat undefined, but he and his surrogates during the campaign promised a sharp departure from Biden’s administration and the entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy. One clear principle is to treat friends better than our enemies, because strong friends who project power both secure American interests and reduce their reliance on constant investment of American power. In terms of the Middle East, the most marked feature of this is strong support for Israel, and more respect to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain to protect themselves and defend against those who would challenge them.

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