POMPEO’S RNC APPEARANCE IS EMBLEMATIC OF HIS TENURE AS SECRETARY OF STATE
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech to the Republican National Convention was short but revealing: He touted President Trump’s “bold initiatives in nearly every corner of the world.” But he couldn’t cite many concrete achievements produced by Trump’s flashy, disruptive personal diplomacy.
Pompeo’s address to the GOP faithful disdained the traditional dictums about not mixing politics and foreign policy. And his embrace of the president came from the distinctly unconventional setting of Jerusalem, a transcendent symbol for fellow evangelical Christians in the Republican base.
The Jerusalem location for Pompeo’s convention address was perhaps its most striking aspect, and an example of his daily interweaving of politics, foreign policy and religion. He may be the most overtly religious secretary of state in our modern history. His wife, Susan, said last month in introducing him to an Iowa audience that although he’s seen as “calculating and strategic,” his life has been entirely shaped by “the hand of God.”
Pompeo had been dinged for addressing the convention at all, but this criticism has been overblown: Secretaries of state often contribute to presidential re-election politics. In any event, his short speech was hardly a full-throated political roar.
He was in Jerusalem on a Middle East tour that, in addition to Israel, included Bahrain and Oman, the two Arab nations most likely to follow the United Arab Emirates in normalizing relations with the Jewish state. Any progress on that front — or in drawing Saudi Arabia toward a symbolic handshake — would be the biggest political gift Pompeo could deliver to the president.
Even by Pompeo’s account, however, the record of presidential success so far is thin. Pompeo invoked China, for example, but in the absence of a trade deal or any of the other gains Trump had wanted in 2017, his list of accomplishments was largely negative.
On North Korea, ballyhooed by Trump two years ago as a breakthrough, Pompeo reported only a modest achievement: “The president has lowered the temperature and, against all odds, got the North Korean leadership to the table.”
Pompeo ignored the fallout from Trump’s erratic diplomacy. “Because of President Trump, NATO is stronger,” he contended. NATO allies may be paying more for collective defense, which is a plus, but many analysts see a sharp deterioration in trust and confidence among key NATO allies.
Pompeo wisely didn’t attempt to parse the relationship with Russia, which continues to assault U.S. interests around the world — even as Trump advertises his desire for better relations and describes evidence of Russian intelligence assaults as a “hoax.”
The Middle East was the final example of progress that Pompeo cited, but here, again, the record is problematic. Pompeo touted the drone attacks that killed Qasem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. But Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran hasn’t brought Tehran to the negotiating table, as Trump predicted it would. And he has abandoned the Syrian Kurdish forces that were the United States’ key ally against the Islamic State.
Pompeo mentioned one genuine Middle East breakthrough: the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. But that’s hardly the Palestinian-Israeli peace “deal of the century” that Trump once imagined.
Pompeo is probably the most talented — and certainly the most politically ambitious — member of Trump’s Cabinet. The Pompeo paradox is that he often seems to know what’s right, even if he ends up doing the opposite.
One intriguing question after Pompeo’s brief convention speech is whether he will be along for the ride in a second term if Trump is reelected — knowing better now the limits of his ability to influence this president.
Trump’s foreign policy record is one of unfinished business. On all the major issues — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea — the future policy options are a mystery. Pompeo is a loyal acolyte. But even he couldn’t find many successes to praise Tuesday night. Surely he suspects that he could do better.