Shakeup on Obama Foreign Policy Team: Susan Rice to be named National Security Adviser

Samantha Power, Susan Rice, President Obama

Susan Rice will depart as US Ambassador to the United Nations and head over to the White House where she will have direct access to the President, as National Security Adviser. Rice will replace Tom Donilon who is leaving the post, after serving on the Obama Foreign Policy team for more than four-years. Replacing Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations will be Samantha Power. Though I'm still a little bitter with Rice for her withdrawal from consideration for Secretary of State, I think that this may prove to be a good move for her. Rice gets to bypass Senate confirmation for this position. 




From The Washington Post:

National security adviser Thomas E. Donilon will resign his post, White House officials said Wednesday, and will be replaced by U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, a close confidant of President Obama with deep foreign policy experience who is disliked by Republicans buthad been widely expected to move into the job.

White House officials said Donilon’s resignation will take effect early next month. Aseasoned Washington insider, Donilon has held senior national security posts in the administration since Obama took office, rising from the principal deputy national security adviser to his current job.

But his reputation for protecting Obama politically has caused friction with other agencies over the years, beginning in the fall of 2009, when he advocated for a far smaller deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan than the Pentagon had requested.

Executing the administration’s shift to a stronger focus on Asia in its foreign policyhas been one of Donilon’s primary policy initiatives; his resignation is timed to follow the summit meeting he helped organize between Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping this weekend.

Rice has long been among Obama’s most trusted foreign policy advisers, and her move from the United Nations has been expected since she withdrew her name from consideration as secretary of state late last year.

Rice withdrew amid criticism of her role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Republicans on Capitol Hill accused Rice of misleading the public over the nature of the attack in an attempt to protect Obama from criticism during a difficult re-election campaign.

The Senate does not need to confirm her as national security adviser.

The news of Donilon’s resignation was first reported by the New York Times.

White House officials said Obama will nominate Samantha Power to replace Rice at the United Nations. Power, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “A Problem from Hell” on the U.S. response to genocide, served as a senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the National Security Council during Obama’s first term.

Her much-anticipated nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations will require Senate confirmation.