Pompeo, a hawkish pick, could give State Dept. new life
WASHINGTON — Mike Pompeo’s hawkish instincts may seem at odds with traditional diplomatic norms. But after 14 demoralizing months of budget cuts and staffing reductions for the State Department, his conservative political bent and closeness to President Donald Trump could breathe new vigor into an agency all too often sidelined on many of the nation’s most pressing national security matters.
Pompeo, the outgoing CIA chief, will bring a new, blunt-speaking style to the job of secretary of state, strikingly different from Rex Tillerson’s understated approach. Pompeo’s arrival in Foggy Bottom also promises far more aggressive stances on Iran and North Korea, and he’ll at least start with Trump’s full confidence — something Tillerson never enjoyed.
“One of the most important jobs for the secretary of state is to make clear to the world the president’s policies and priorities,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, an establishment Republican and initial Tillerson backer, said Tuesday, after Trump announced via tweet that Pompeo would replace Tillerson. “No one has a stronger relationship with President Trump than Mike Pompeo. This relationship will empower him throughout his tenure as secretary of state.”
Tillerson had been widely criticized for an aloof management style, which had alienated droves of career diplomats and driven many of the agency’s senior brass into early retirements. But his foreign policy was far less controversial, as he hewed to much of the agency’s pragmatic approach, from climate change to free trade agreements, and to preserving the Iran nuclear deal, even when that put him at odds with his president and his most conservative supporters.
In Pompeo, the diplomats and civil servants who make up the 70,000-strong department may now encounter the opposite: a fiercely partisan veteran of some of the most bitter battles in Congress while he was a House Republican, and someone willing to jeopardize his reputation to defend Trump, as evidenced when he called up journalists to try to discredit a New York Times story outlining Trump campaign connections to Russia.
But Pompeo also helped engineer a detente between Trump and the U.S. intelligence agencies after the incoming president likened them to Nazis. In doing so, Pompeo never lost his access to Trump, or experienced a mass revolt to his leadership like Tillerson faced at the State Department.
“Tillerson’s ouster is a sign of continued turbulence in U.S. foreign policy,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a Cornell University professor.