The death sentence won’t prevent another U.S. school shooting.
For once, let’s give Donald Trump his due. In throwing Rex Tillerson out on his ear, he has treated his secretary of state exactly the way the secretary treated those under him. Poetic justice has been served. And, in the nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to succeed Tillerson, so will the interests of American diplomacy.
I’ ll get to Pompeo below, but dwell for a moment on the awfulness of Tillerson.
He came to office with no discernible world view other than the jaded transactionalism he acquired as ExxonMobil’s CEO. He leaves office with no discernible accomplishment except a broken department and a traumatized staff. Six of the 10 top positions at State are vacant; even now the United States does not have an ambassador to South Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Africa or the European Union, among other posts.
To his credit, he did seem to figure out that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. But that’s progress only because he was previously the Russian despot’s premier apologist. His director of policy planning had to write a memo explaining why human rights are a vital tool of American diplomacy. And he opposed the president’s two best foreign policy decisions: moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and decertifying the Iran deal.
Some secretaries of state — Colin Powell, for instance — alienate their bosses by siding with the bureaucracy. Others, like Henry Kissinger, do the opposite. Tillerson is the rare bird who managed to do both. Goodbye, Rex. You won’t be missed.
Pompeo is the antiTillers on. He doesn’t need to learn the Washington ropes. He’s been a competent leader of the CIA. He has the confidence of the president, meaning that, unlike Tillerson, he will have credibility with foreign governments. Just as importantly, he’s been willing to contradict the president, meaning he’ll be able to act as a check on him, too.
He’s also a traditional conservative with clear ideas about America’s global interests and responsibilities. If that scares some readers, consider that we have a president whose gut- level ideology is isolationism, governed by impulsiveness, saturated with ignorance and motivated by self- idolatry. Trump isn’t going to be disciplined by someone whose views are dovish or establishment arian. But he might listen to, and be tempered by, a responsible hawk.
Especially when it comes to North Korea. The notion that Kim Jong Un is going to abandon his nuclear arsenal is risible. What, other than reunification of Korea on Pyongyang’s terms, would Kim exchange his arsenal for? Equally risible is the idea that his regime will ever abide by the terms of a deal. North Korea violates every agreement it signs.
But the risk that Trump will be snookered into a deal so he can tout himself as the heir to Teddy Roosevelt — Nobel Peace Prize, 1906 — is real, as is the possibility that he might strike it at South Korea’s and perhaps Japan’s expense. This president has never been particularly fond of our two closest Asian allies, much less of the cost to the United States of aiding in their defence.
The promise of Pompeo is that he can provide ballast against some of Trump’s other gusts, particularly when it comes to the Kremlin. On Syria, he dismisses the possibility of a collaborative relationship with Russia. On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he insists, “America has an obligation to push back.” On WikiLeaks, he calls it a “nonstate hostile intelligence service.” On Russian interference in the U. S. election, he acknowledges it as incontrovertible fact and warns of the “Gerasimov doctrine” — the Russian conviction that it can use disinformation to win a bloodless war with the West.
These views are notable because they flatly contradict Trump. If the thought that Putin has strings to pull with this president alarms you, Pompeo’s presence should be reassuring. However much you might otherwise disagree with him, the guy who graduated first in his class from West Point is not a Russian stooge.
That may not do much to mollify Pompeo’s fiercer critics, who see any service in the Trump administration as proof of moral ignominy. And Pompeo hasn’t helped himself with some of his flummeries about Boss Trump. As secretary of state, he’d be smart to model his behaviour on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the administration’s one undisputed star, who thrives in his job because he’s plainly not afraid of losing it, much less of speaking his mind.
Still, it’s good that the State Department may at last get a leader who can persuade — and perhaps even restrain — the president, pursue a policy, manage a department, and make diplomacy effective again in an administration otherwise governed by chaos and Twitter. Considering where we’ve been these past 14 months, that’s got to be a step up.
MIKE POMPEO IS THE ANTITILLERSON. — BRET STEPHENS