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Dispatches

1) Katie Rogers, “Jake Sullivan’s ‘Quieter’ Middle East Comments Did Not Age Well; The national security adviser has drawn criticism for recent public remarks. Biden officials pushed back on the idea that Mr. Sullivan was offering a lasting view on Middle East conflicts,” New York Times, October 26, 2023;

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Analysis

Excerpt from Rogers’ article:

Not all of Mr. Sullivan’s critics are on the right.

Brett Bruen, who served as director of global engagement in the Obama White House, said Mr. Sullivan was driven by “a myopic focus on some diplomatic deliverable over a real strategy.”
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Jake’s brilliant, but he’s never spent any significant amount of time in any of these places,” said Mr. Bruen, who called for Mr. Sullivan’s firing after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, when 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans were killed.

Still, he praised Mr. Sullivan, an alumni of the Obama administration and a former close adviser to Hillary Clinton, as a foreign policy talent who helped lead an “impressive” U.S. response to the attack on Israeli civilians.

As for Mr. Biden’s experience in the region, Mr. Bruen said “experience can also be a liability when you’re looking at the world the way it was a couple of decades ago, not the way it is now.”

He added: “And Jake doesn’t disabuse him of that.”

The Trenchant Observer

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