Dartmouth Professor to Lead the New Democratic Foreign Policy, the Same as the Old One

With the “sleepily-reassuring” appointment of Jake Sullivan as President Biden’s National Security Advisor, neoliberal foreign policy is poised to receive a grand renovation in Washington, and the former Dartmouth professor will lead the charge. 

At 44, this Winter 2019 Montgomery Fellow and later Magro Family Distinguished Visitor in International Affairs for three terms has built a brand as a policy wunderkind.

His sterling political resume would make even 38-year-old Mayor Pete Buttigieg, soon-to-be Secretary of Transportation, blush. Raised in Minnesota, he grew up under the influence of two working parents; his father taught communications at the University of Minnesota, and his mother advised students as a guidance counselor. 

On paper, Jake Sullivan feels natural for the role of National Security Advisor. After all, Ivy League graduates with Supreme Court clerkships and Capitol Hill experience have staffed the West Wing since time immemorial.

In high school, Sullivan reigned as a debate champion, head of the student council, and the “Most Likely to Succeed.” He earned both his BA and JD at Yale, accepting the Rhodes and Truman scholarships after turning down a Marshall. Sullivan clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer before aiding Senator Amy Klobuchar. Time Magazine named him to their 40 New Civic Leaders Under 40 in the long-ago of 2010.

On paper, Jake Sullivan feels natural for the role of National Security Advisor. After all, Ivy League graduates with Supreme Court clerkships and Capitol Hill experience have staffed the West Wing since time immemorial. Nevertheless, as the Biden administration formulates its foreign policy, those who are skeptical of the President’s promise to “advance the security, prosperity, and values of the United States” must ask the question: Who exactly is Jake Sullivan?

As Director of Policy Planning to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sullivan traveled with the former First Lady to 112 countries. According to a 2013 article in Yahoo News, he “shaped policy in Libya, Syria, and Myanmar” but distinguished himself most for his instrumental role in facilitating the Obama Administration’s overtures toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Jetting off five times in secret to meet with Iranian officials in Oman, Sullivan bulldozed a pathway for the 2013 Joint Plan of Action which won Iran decreased economic sanctions and for its 2015 successor, the now-revoked Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Sullivan has taken credit for the JCPOA in the past, remarking in May of 2018 that “I helped negotiate [the deal], including by opening the secret back channel…that jump-started the diplomacy.”

The JCPOA, which failed to receive enough Congressional support to warrant a floor vote, faced huge opposition from both prominent Republicans and Democrats, uniting the likes of Alan Dershowitz with Ted Cruz. 

The mere fact that, in 2018, Jake Sullivan would take credit for the disaster of the JCPOA should worry United States allies and all those opposed to Iranian nuclear development…Sullivan’s influence as National Security Advisor could mean more than just similar, shoddily negotiated foreign deals in the future.

The Agreement unfroze up to $120 billion in Iranian assets, stopped American sanctions against foreign companies doing business in the Islamic Republic, and included a sunset clause under which restrictions on uranium-enrichment and plutonium-reprocessing would expire in 10-15 years. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu famously called the JCPOA “a bad mistake of historic proportions,” citing excessive concessions to the Islamic Republic. “Iran will get a jackpot,” Netanyahu argued, “Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons.”

The mere fact that, in 2018, Jake Sullivan would take credit for the disaster of the JCPOA should worry United States allies and all those opposed to Iranian nuclear development. However, Sullivan’s influence as National Security Advisor could mean more than just similar, shoddily negotiated foreign deals in the future. 78-year-old President Biden, Sullivan’s svengali in international affairs, has already initiated a full-scale deconstruction of the Trump administration’s foreign policy achievements and the implementation of an agenda far more aggressive than President Obama’s.

In geopolitics, the President’s campaign website imagines a glorious restoration to the way things were before January 20, 2017.

“Donald Trump’s erratic policies and failure to uphold basic democratic principles have surrendered our position in the world, undermined our democratic alliances, weakened our ability to mobilize others to meet these challenges, and threatened our security and our future,” the website says. In response, President Biden vows to “repair the damage” and “chart a fundamentally different course.” 

Most troublingly, the President not only promises to “re-enter the [Iran Deal]” if the Islamic Republic “returns to compliance” but also suggests “using hard-nosed diplomacy and support from our allies to strengthen and extend it.” Those who consider such an idea a Democratic fantasy should think twice. Through the power of executive agreement, Biden could do exactly what his former boss President Obama did: bypass Congressional opposition, disregard the concerns of our nation’s strongest Mideastern ally, and benefit the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. After all, President Trump revoked the deal with the stroke of a pen. Why wouldn’t President Biden restore and lengthen it the same?

Restoring the disastrous agreement will surely place high on the administration’s policy agenda. The National Security Advisor mentioned the issue last May in a Foreign Policy article, calling a revived deal part of “America’s Opportunity in the Middle East.” In the article, Sullivan even outlines what the Biden administration’s diplomacy with the Iranian Mullahs might look like: “a phased approach that delivers nuclear progress up front and creates space to address regional challenges over time,” the “salvage” of the JCPOA, and the eventual negotiation of a follow-up agreement. The administration has a plan to dismantle the Republican victories of the last four years, and Sullivan stands ready to execute it on the world stage.

In a January 2019 talk at Dartmouth, Sullivan laid out his views on China in greater detail, saying, “When I came into the [Obama] administration, I felt I was a bit more hawkish on China. Now, I feel like the ultimate dove on China.”

When one examines the President’s proposals, Sullivan’s influence emerges everywhere. Biden’s opaque stances towards Chinese economic and political competition sound suspiciously like the strategy Sullivan delineated in Fall of 2019, where the United States “will need to be prepared to live with…[China]…as a major power” and seek “some degree of cooperation” instead of “neo-containment” or confrontation against the totalitarian state.

In a January 2019 talk at Dartmouth, Sullivan laid out his views on China in greater detail, saying that “the corrective” view of China as a Soviet-style geopolitical adversary “has gone way too far.” “You can’t build a strategy the way that we did in the Cold War vis-à-vis China,” he explained. 

Perhaps Sullivan does not want the United States to build a strategy to counter the world’s last Communist power. “When I came into the [Obama] administration, I felt I was a bit more hawkish on China,” Sullivan said, “Now, I feel like the ultimate dove on China.”

The President’s promise to “invest in American workers” echoes the ambitions his advisor outlined in June of 2018. In a Democracy Journal article, Sullivan exhorts the Democratic Party to return to its roots as the party of “energetic government action,” of the “social trampoline” instead of the “social safety net,” of repealing Republican tax cuts (such as 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), and of “anti-monopoly action” against “national and international platforms.”

The Biden-Harris Campaign’s rhetoric suggests that Sullivan has played a larger role in crafting the Biden administration’s vision than revealed publicly. The President’s repeated calls for “big,” “bold” Democratic policymaking seem to mimic Sullivan’s words in Democracy Journal.

Further, in the January/February 2019 issue of The Atlantic, Sullivan deployed the term “build back better” to describe his vision of American exceptionalism after Trump. In July of 2020, candidate Biden released his Roosevelt-esque economic plan of the same name. The phrase later appeared in the Democratic Party Platform, comprised part of the theme to Night Three of the Democratic National Convention, and served as the URL to the President’s official transition website. Indeed, the Biden agenda and the Sullivan vision for American foreign policy often seem indistinguishable from the other.

If Sullivan has indeed exercised more influence over the Biden agenda than the media has reported, then what does his appointment mean for America?

For the political class, perhaps a return to the good old days.

Like the Democratic wunderkinds who came before him, Jake Sullivan wants to serve the American people in the American government yet will weigh the world’s interests equally, or even more heavily, than his country’s. 

In his Foreign Policy article “America’s Opportunity in the Middle East,” Sullivan claimed to advocate for a fresh approach to the Middle East by increasing diplomacy but driving down military investments. Nevertheless, near the end of his piece, he writes that “a reasonably sized U.S. [armed forces] presence can help forestall crises that would necessitate the return of a larger one.” Despite promising a new “opportunity” in the region, Sullivan pushes for the option that every president since Bush has chosen for the Middle East: continuing military involvement while making vague attempts at negotiating our way out of the same commitments. 

As he told the Yale Daily News in March of 2016, his geopolitics is one where “U.S. interests and values are protected, but where the interests and values of our friends and of people across the world are also protected.” Like the Democratic wunderkinds who came before him, Jake Sullivan wants to serve the American people in the American government yet will weigh the world’s interests equally, or even more heavily, than his country’s. 

Despite his populistic allusions to New Deal-ism, there is simply nothing revolutionary about Jake Sullivan or the policy he might pursue as National Security Advisor. He can talk about restoring the middle class, which he names the “touchstone of everything” for domestic policy, or constructing a new foreign policy that revitalizes the post-war international order. But Jake Sullivan’s time as National Security Advisor will not change a thing in how America leads the world.

It was a former Yale Law graduate and Rhodes Scholar from a distinctly normal upbringing who spoke about middle America then signed a free trade agreement that gouged out its economic lifeforce. Similar it will be with Jake Sullivan of Minnesota, son of a professor and guidance counselor, as he rebuilds disastrous ‘achievements’ such as the Iran Deal or catalyzes the Biden administration’s “hard-nosed diplomacy.” America, her people, and her standing will suffer, just as they suffered under other administrations’ ‘resets’ and ‘revitalized world orders.’

On January 20th, the American people and world met the new Democratic President and Vice President, the new Democratic administration, the new Democratic advisors and portfolio czars like Jake Sullivan, and witnessed the beginnings of a new Democratic foreign policy, virtually indistinguishable from the old one. And then as now, the talking heads called it progress.