Pompeo: A landmine-a-day before leaving

When defeated armies are retreating, they always lay mines behind them if they have time. The mines slow pursuit, they may inflict casualties on the victors, and they give the losers something purposeful to do amid panic and despair. That’s what Mike Pompeo has been doing just before time is called on his ideologically driven term as United States Secretary of State.

Pompeo started last Saturday by declaring that the U.S. State Department would end its restrictions on direct intergovernmental dealings with Taiwan, a policy in place since the U.S. transferred its diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (Roc-taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

“No more,” said Pompeo. “I am lifting all these self-imposed restrictions.” But they were not “selfimposed.” They were a key part of the 1979 deal that let the U.S. have its cake and eat it too: to go on protecting Taiwan’s de facto independence while formally accepting that Taiwan is legally a province of China.

So the United States agreed that there was only one China (without actually saying that Taiwan was not its legitimate government), while China agreed that “the American people” would continue to carry on “commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with the people of Taiwan.” They could talk and trade all they like; just no public, official contacts.

Then, 41 years later, Pompeo springs his little surprise. China exploded, of course, accusing Pompeo of “seeking to maliciously inflict a long-lasting scar on Chinau.s. ties.” Fair comment, but Pompeo’s real target was the incoming Biden administration, which will have to reverse this policy while the Republicans shower it with accusations of being “soft on China.”

Sunday: Another landmine. Pompeo designates Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organization. That means nobody can deal with them, so attempts to broker an end to the long and devastating war between the Houthis and the Saudi Arabian-backed, “internationally recognized” (but no more legitimate) government are now outlawed.

It wins more time for Saudi Arabia to go on bombing the place in the hope of restoring its candidate to power, but it makes it far harder to bring aid to the diseased and starving millions in most of the country (which is controlled by the Houthis, who are not terrorists). It will take the Biden administration some time to unpick this mess.

Monday: Pompeo puts Cuba back on the list of “state sponsors of terrorism.” It’s nothing of the sort, but this will please the older generation of Republican-voting Cuban refugees in South Florida, and the Republicans can call Biden a “Commie-lover” while he’s reversing it. Besides, it was Obama who took Cuba off that list, and all his works must be destroyed.

Tuesday: Pompeo announces that Iran is now the main home of al-qaida, the Islamist terrorist organization that planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States, and later created the “Islamic State” that devastated Iraq and Syria for a number of years.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Pompeo’s assertions “war-mongering lies,” which seems about right. They are certainly lies — nobody who knows the region believes that the Shia Muslim theocracy in Iran would have anything to do with the Sunni Muslim extremists of alqaida. In fact, al-qaida routinely murders Shias as heretics.

And they really are “war-mongering” lies, designed to sabotage Biden’s policy of rejoining the 2015 international deal that guarantees Iran will not build nuclear weapons. (Donald Trump abandoned it in 2018, presumably because it was Obama’s signature achievement in foreign policy.)

If the U.S. does not end its savage sanctions against Iran and recommit to the deal within months, it will finally collapse, and the risk of an eventual nuclear war in the Middle East will move from remote hypothesis to plausible prospect. But it lets Republicans accuse Biden of being soft on Iran and terrorism when he tries to fix it.

Come to think of it, “landmines” is the wrong image here, because landmines are hidden. Pompeo is setting slow-burning fires in plain sight, which is why a European foreign minister recently described him as a “political pyromaniac” — and this is his “scorched-earth” policy.

That’s the other, bigger thing that retreating armies often do. Burn it all down. If we can’t have it, nobody can. And Pompeo still has time to insult North Korea before he leaves the scene.

Pompeo is setting slow-burning fires in plain sight, which is why a European foreign minister recently described him as a ‘political pyromaniac’