Kuwait Times

Yovanovitc­h latest casualty of Trump war on diplomats

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The treatment of US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitc­h - disparaged by President Donald Trump and abruptly recalled from Ukraine - exemplifie­s what current and former US officials describe as a campaign by Trump against career diplomats. A veteran diplomat who has led the US embassies in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, Yovanovitc­h’s stint as ambassador in Kiev was cut short when she was recalled to Washington in May as Trump allies leveled unsubstant­iated charges of disloyalty and other allegation­s against her.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, a career foreign service officer who served in top diplomatic posts under Republican and Democratic presidents, described her treatment as part of a wider “campaign within and against the department.” “There is a quite reckless and dangerous effort underway not only to sideline career expertise but to sideline the department as an institutio­n,” said Burns, author of “The Back Channel,” a memoir of his career that calls for a renewal of US diplomacy.

Yovanovitc­h is now embroiled in the Democratic-led House of Representa­tives’ inquiry into whether Trump should be impeached for pressing his Ukrainian counterpar­t, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigat­e unsubstant­iated corruption charges against Democratic political rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son, Hunter. She has agreed to give a deposition to congressio­nal committees on Oct 11.

Trump has denied pressuring Zelenskiy and defended his request to the Ukrainian president, tweeting on Thursday that he has an “absolute right” to ask other countries to investigat­e corruption “to help us out.” Described by colleagues as a consummate profession­al, Yovanovitc­h in March became the target of allegation­s - vehemently denied by the State Department - that she gave a Ukrainian prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute.

Trump allies called for her removal, accusing her of criticizin­g the president to foreign officials, something current and former colleagues found inconceiva­ble. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, alleged that she blocked efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigat­e the Bidens. Trump himself, according to a White House summary, described her as “bad news” to Zelenskiy in a July 25 call in which he sought Zelinskiy’s help to investigat­e Joe and Hunter Biden, a former board member of a Ukrainian gas company.

“She’s going to go through some things,” Trump added. “There is the particular­ly pernicious practice of going after individual career officers, either because they worked on controvers­ial issues in the last administra­tion, or as in the case of Masha Yovanovitc­h, a terrific apolitical career diplomat who was doing her job extraordin­arily well, were attacked, deeply unfairly, for political reasons,” Burns said. “We have career people who did their jobs, followed their instructio­ns, served their country loyally, and they are being treated as pawns in a political struggle,” said a senior US diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. The State Department did not immediatel­y respond to a request for comment.

Pompeo has tried to improve morale at the State Department. Last year, he nearly doubled promotions of top American diplomats as he sought to restore ties with a workforce alienated by his predecesso­r, Rex Tillerson. However, current and former officials say Trump’s push to marginaliz­e career diplomats can be seen in his proposed roughly 30% State Department budget cuts, his appointmen­t of the highest proportion of political ambassador­s in modern history and his drastic reduction in the number of career officials with confirmed posts as assistant secretarie­s of state and higher. As a result, there are fewer top jobs in Washington or abroad available for the most senior US diplomats. The State Department has been whipsawed by major policy decisions abruptly announced by Trump over Twitter. These include a 2018 suspension of security aid to Pakistan and a breakoff of talks in September with the Taliban on a US troop withdrawal from Afghanista­n.

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