Kurt Campbell, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs under the Obama administration and was a primary designer of Obama’s “Pivot to Asia,” meant to isolate China economically and militarily, has been picked to be the Biden Administration’s Asia Czar at the NSC. Campbell co-founded the neocon Center for a New American Security in 2007 with Michele Flournoy, a China hawk who was considered a possible Defense Secretary for Biden, and will likely get some other position.
Campbell will work under Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSC chief, with whom Campbell has authored several articles (“Competition Without Catastrophe—How America Can Both Challenge and Coexist With China,” Foreign Affairs, Sept-Oct 2019). He wrote in a recent Foreign Affairs that
