With a foreign policy team that includes a veteran Canada hand and a mission to revive US diplomacy, the Biden presidency promises a return to bilateral normalcy.

President-Elect Joe Biden, with Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken, who knows a thing or two about Canada/AP 

Lisa Van Dusen

November 25, 2020

The most obvious takeaway for Canada from Tuesday’s unveiling of President-Elect Joe Biden’s foreign policy team was the same takeaway that surely registered in capitals across the G7 if not the G20: It was all so normal.

“America is back,” Biden said as he rolled out his senior foreign policy and national security team, echoing Justin Trudeau’s tag line from 2015.

“Together, these public servants will restore America globally, its global leadership and its moral leadership,” Biden said at the Queen Theater theatre in what will be the “weekend White House” dateline of this presidency; Wilmington, Delaware. “It’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.”

The event wasn’t just normal in the sense of Washington’s Democratic foreign policy brain trust being far closer in sensibility and worldview than the previous administration’s doctrine of unpredictability to Canada’s internationalist posture as a multilaterally engaged middle power. It was normal in the sense that, apparently, nobody felt compelled to pledge their allegiance to Biden’s marvellousness and everyone seemed to be there freely and without coercion or reservation.

After four years during which an American retreat from the world stage actually began to sound dreamy, the initial thrust of Biden’s foreign policy doctrine is that, to paraphrase Gerald Ford in the wake of Richard Nixon’s retreat to San Clemente, “Our long international nightmare is over.”

For Canada, that means no more mean tweets launched aboard Air Force One from Canadian airspace after a G7. No more weaponized trade in the form of retaliatory tariffs against an imaginary Canadian threat. In broader bilateral terms, no more sleeping with one eye open. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has identified trade as his biggest worry on the Canada-US file moving forward, just taking delivery of a Biden administration’s position on “Buy American” in a coherent dialogue rather than in an all-caps tweet would be progress.

Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris will lead a foreign policy team that reflects a radical shift back to sanity, integrity and truth in policy terms and mirrors the diversity of America. It includes the first woman director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, who was deputy director of the C.I.A. from 2013 to 2015. It also includes Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino and first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an African American career diplomat, is the new ambassador to the United Nations. Jake Sullivan, who advised the Obama administration during the Iran nuclear negotiations, is national security adviser.

After four years during which the State Department was first isolated under ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson — whose most crucial, not insignificant contribution to diplomacy was to publicly identify his boss as a f****ing moron — and then purged under Mike Pompeo, America’s return to diplomacy will be an unequivocal plus for Canada.

Most interestingly for Canada, the new secretary of state is Antony Blinken, the respected, boyish, Washington foreign policy hand who served as deputy national security advisor in the Obama White House and during the second Clinton term as Senior Director for European and Canadian Affairs on the NSC. While Canada has changed somewhat since he left that post in 2001, the fact that he ever had the word “Canadian” in his title is an excellent start. Blinken, 58, grew up in France as the stepson of the prominent international lawyer and Holocaust survivor Samuel Pisar, and speaks French fluently. He also fronts a wonk rock band called Ablinken (you have to read it out loud), which has two singles — including “Lip Service”, which doesn’t seem to be about talking points — on Spotify.

Biden has signaled to allies that sane America is back and to adversaries that reversing the damage done by Trump to American influence and credibility is a major strategic goal of this administration. After four years during which the State Department was first isolated under ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson — whose most crucial, not insignificant contribution to diplomacy was to publicly identify his boss as a f****ing moron — and then purged under Mike Pompeo, America’s return to diplomacy will be an unequivocal plus for Canada.

A major element of that shift is the appointment of former Secretary of State John Kerry as special envoy for climate change, a position Biden has included on the NSC to underscore its strategic importance, with Kerry’s resumé highlighting its diplomatic urgency. (Here’s Elizabeth May’s Policy Online piece on the Kerry appointment: John Kerry’s Fifth Act is Good for Climate Policy).

Most memorably on Tuesday, the Biden foreign policy team made a point of relating personal stories clarifying this hinge of history as a matter of values. Blinken told the story of his stepfather’s escape, as a child, from a Nazi death march. “From his hiding place, he heard a deep rumbling sound. It was a tank. But instead of the iron cross, he saw painted on its side a five-pointed white star,” Blinken said. “He ran to the tank. The hatch opened. An African-American GI looked down at him.”

“He got down on his knees and said the only three words he knew in English that his mother had taught him before the war: God bless America.”

With that as a statement of America’s view of its place in the world, things are already looking up.

Lisa Van Dusen is associate editor of Policy Magazine and a columnist for The Hill Times. She was Washington bureau chief for Sun Media, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News, and an editor at AP in New York and UPI in Washington.