 Joe Biden is promising return to normalcy in U.S. foreign policy following the turbulent Trump years. Biden's foreign policy agenda will place America back at the head of the table, working with our allies and our partners to mobilize global action on global threats. But be careful what you wish for. Saddam Hussein is still seeking the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction. Biden supported the wars in Iraq and Syria and the drone bombing campaign in Pakistan. In the 1990s, he cosponsored a bill with John McCain pushing the U.S. to bomb Kosovo. He advocated a troop surge in Afghanistan before he later opposed it. Trump broke with America's foreign policy establishment. It all began with a dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy. And though he talked a big game, great nations do not fight endless wars. And has even installed a Pentagon advisor in the waning months of his presidency to accelerate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, thousands of troops will likely remain there. And in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East at the end of his term. Biden, on the other hand, embodies the establishment view that the U.S. must police the world, because building and maintaining the post-World War II international order is what made America the indispensable, unquestionable leader of the free world and in turn protecting us. A Biden presidency might entail a return to the Obama era policies of aerial warfare, heavy reliance on drone strikes, and maybe even a willingness to enter multinational military conflicts without seeking congressional approval, such as the Libya intervention that toppled Mo Mar Gaddafi and later led to a bloody civil war. We came, we saw, he died. In Washington D.C. there's a saying, personnel is policy, and new administrations often draw from think tanks for both. Trump's more establishment personnel fought to constrain his non-interventionist impulses. There were high-profile resignations, and one outgoing diplomat even admitted to lying about troop levels in northern Syria after Trump had ordered a withdrawal. Biden is reportedly eyeing Susan Rice for Secretary of State. For Defense Secretary, Biden is rumored to be considering Michelle Flournoy, an Obama administration alumna who co-founded the Center for a New American Security, an influential think tank whose experts emphasize the need for more military preparedness against China and Russia, and a smaller but ongoing U.S. presence in the Middle East. In terms of a Biden foreign policy, we know who Joe Biden is. He's very much historically sort of ascribed to kind of liberal interventionism and this notion that the U.S. needs to take a big role in the international stage for the good of the world. Anil Shiline is a foreign policy analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, formed in December of 2019 with seed funding from the foundations of both progressive billionaire George Soros and libertarian billionaire Charles Koch. It's a different kind of foreign policy think tank that aims to cultivate a roster of foreign policy experts who can guide future administrations towards military restraint. It's named for the former American President, John Quincy Adams, who once said that America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. While it's a famous quote, I think parts of it has really been forgotten or neglected. It's not just because it would be very bad in the sense that we would be overextended and would lead to forever wars. It's also because of how it will change America internally, in which he says America can become the dictresses of the world. But in doing so, she will lose her own spirit and her own freedom. I think we have seen that as we have gone abroad and more and more wars, the security state at home has also become stronger and stronger. And many of the liberties that American people have traditionally seen as absolutely uncompromising have been compromised. Trita Parsey is the executive vice president at the Quincy Institute. The vast majority of think tanks in DC do not question the first principles of American foreign policy. Quincy is deliberately different in that sense because we believe that these endless wars that the United States has ended up in is a direct consequence of the US's grand strategy of primacy or global military domination. The Quincy Institute argues that the US should abandon that strategy of global military domination and accept the reality of multi-polarity or competing regional influences. The longer that the United States continues to behave in ways that were more possible when it truly was the world's only superpower, are just going to continue to sort of fritter away American resources, which really obviously need to be spent here at home. One of the institute's core tenets is that American foreign policy should derive directly from US interests rigorously defined. The United States needs to focus on protecting the territory of the United States itself and the people that are here. One of the major bad assumptions driving US foreign policy is the notion that the US presence in the Middle East makes the United States more safe. And this is fundamentally untrue. Biden plans to keep truce in Afghanistan indefinitely. You do think there should be some US presence that remains in Afghanistan? It has a very small presence to be able to determine whether or not. I mean a small footprint. What does that look like for America? It looks like several thousand people. She-Line says America doesn't need troops on the ground in the Middle East at all because a naval presence is sufficient to safeguard America's main strategic interests, which are keeping trade and travel routes open and preventing the rise of a regional hegemon that could threaten US national security. There's really no actor in the Middle East currently that would be able to take on that role. She says China has learned from US military misadventures and seems unlikely to get involved militarily in the Middle East. While Iran is too weak to become the dominant force and Russia operates through a series of self-serving, temporary partnerships. The US would do well to take a page out of Russia's book and to say, look Saudi Arabia you're not acting in a way that is supporting our interests. Maybe we will go talk to Iran and we shouldn't be so afraid to reach out to them. To stop Iran's path to nuclear weapons and missiles, I withdrew the United States from the terrible Iran nuclear deal. One aspect of Biden's foreign policy stance that the Quincy Institute agrees with is the President-elect's pledge to re-enter the Iran deal that Trump walked away from. The Iran deal was not only accomplished in a critical mission, it also created an environment where diplomacy was possible. But Trump, he walked away. I mean I thought the nuclear deal was actually very good because it prevented a war with Iran and prevented Iranians from being able to have a pathway to a nuclear bomb. Once Trump pulled out, Iran began enriching uranium at 10 times the rate allowed under the deal according to Parsi. She-line says that although Saudi Arabia and Israel have a stake in the US continuing to treat Iran as an enemy, it doesn't pose a significant threat to America. Iran's GDP is smaller than New Jersey. This ongoing animosity between the US and Iran doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. As US troops leave the Middle East, Parsi suggests America encouraged countries to form a regional security organization, but that it's crucial for the US not to take a leading role in it. This is the instinct a lot of people have in this town, that we whatever we do we have to be in the lead of it. It will take agency away from the regional countries and ultimately it's the regional countries that will benefit from the security architecture. Their incentives to move in this direction should be stronger than ours. While the Quincy Institute is unlikely to be the go-to foreign policy think tank of a Biden administration with its deep ties to the foreign policy establishment, Parsi says more politicians and bureaucrats will eventually come around to their vision for a more restrained foreign policy, quite possibly out of necessity. And that when it happens the Quincy Institute will have the personnel at the ready to make the pivot away from interventionism a reality. I'll be frank I think what we are calling for inevitably will happen because we are bleeding ourselves to death with these endless wars and at one point it's just not going to be possible for us to continue doing so. We want the shift to be a proactive shift that is done before we have weakened ourselves too much.