Soviet diplomats used to say that every four or eight years, U.S. policy went into "active suspension," meaning all functions remained intact but were not put into action. The reason was the two months between one president leaving office and the next taking over.
The interesting thing is that in the USA, the outgoing president is not in office after the elections and retains his powers until the moment his successor assumes office. So, it was one of those customary Anglo-Saxon rules that are inviolable until one day they are not. That's how George Bush 'Sr.', on December 5, 1992, a month and a half before his successor Bill Clinton took office, authorized a humanitarian military deployment in Somalia, where the state had disintegrated, and a million people were at risk of starvation.
The new president took office with 25,000 U.S. soldiers and another 12,000 from 28 countries (including Spain and Zimbabwe) in Somalia, with undefined objectives in a battlefield territory. Bush 'Sr.'s gift to Clinton resulted in several dozen soldiers and thousands of Somalis dead, a political failure, and reinforced Clinton's chronic aversion to foreign ground interventions. In return, movie lovers got the film Black Hawk Down, which marked Ridley Scott's commercial comeback, based on the bestseller by The Atlantic journalist and strong torture advocate Mark Bowden.
Over three decades later, the USA is in another eventful transition, following those of 2016 when it seemed like Trump replaced Obama the day after the elections, and 2020 when the then-president tried to steal the elections. This time, however, it's not just Trump. Biden's final presidential actions are making waves.
Some of them resemble what George Bush 'Sr.' did in Somalia. This includes authorizing Ukraine to use long-range ATCMS missiles against targets on Russian soil in the Kursk region, and the new regulations on exporting microprocessors to China.
But what has truly stirred up U.S. politics is Biden's pardon of his son Hunter. This, more than a political move, is a family favor, contrasting with the president's June statement that he wouldn't pardon his son. Of course, back then Joe Biden was the White House candidate, aiming to demonstrate higher ethical standards than his rival, Donald Trump, convicted of 34 criminal offenses, including sexual assault, document forgery, and tax evasion.
Common last-minute decisions
On Sunday, with 50 days left in the White House, Biden saw things differently. So, he pardoned his son, who was facing sentencing in the coming weeks in Delaware (for lying on an official questionnaire and stating he wasn't a drug addict when buying a firearm) and California (for tax evasion of $1.4 million). His decision has angered Republicans and centrist New York Times commentators, but it's actually quite common. In 2000, Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger, who had been on probation for drunk driving. In 1974, Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon, who hadn't even been formally charged.
Donald Trump also pardoned family members. In 2020, he pardoned Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, married to his daughter Ivanka. Charles, a lifelong Democrat and close friend of the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who, when visiting their New Jersey home, would sleep in Jared's bed), had served 18 months in prison for fraud in 2005 and 2006.
Kushner's trial was sensational because he paid a prostitute $25,000 from 20 years ago to seduce his brother-in-law, the main prosecution witness, and record them having sex. He then gave the video to his own sister. New York folklore says that Jared himself gave the video to his aunt at a family celebration as an unexpected and original gift, recommending she watch it alone because it would move her.
Now, Trump has nominated Charles Kushner for the ambassadorship to France, a position for which he has no experience, causing outrage among the French. He's not the only Trump relative with a role in the new government. His daughter Tiffany's father-in-law, Lebanese Christian businessman Massad Boulos, with extensive political experience in his country, has been appointed as a special advisor to the president for the Middle East. Another businessman set to play a prominent role in the future president's Middle East policy is Israeli-American developer Steve Witkoff, who sees the Israel-Palestine issue as a "real estate matter," according to The Wall Street Journal.
None of these appointments, however, have raised the concerns sparked by the nomination of Kash Patel for FBI director, replacing Chris Wray, ironically appointed by Trump in his first term and retained by Biden. Patel has worked as a federal prosecutor, congressional advisor, White House aide, and chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, qualifications poorly suited to lead the USA's largest police force with 7,000 members.
But Patel's main risk factor is his ideology. In 2020, when Trump appointed him as the Department of Defense chief of staff in the two months following his electoral defeat, Patel wrote a memo stating that the Armed Forces are not nonpartisan. This, in the context of Trump's attempts to falsify election results, suggests a clear tendency to use the military to defend political positions. Patel has also stated that when he comes to power, he will "go after you, the journalists," and pursue Trump's political enemies, especially those who worked with him in his first term and didn't show proper loyalty.