At State Department, diplomats prepare for a big shift in style

Tillerson firing stirs ambivalence

WASHINGTON — As they prepared for a new leader, diplomats and civil servants at the State Department expressed relief and trepidation Wednesday after the stunning firing of Rex Tillerson, whose tenure as secretary of state was one of the most contentious in recent memory.

For the hopeful, the transition rids the department of a former oil executive criticized for walling himself off from career diplomats, attempting to slash the department’s budget and returning internal memos from subordinates with grades reflecting typos and other highly technical infractions.

If confirmed, President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed Mr. Tillerson, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, would come in with a strong working relationship with the president and a track record of giving broad autonomy to his underlings.

“Pompeo isn’t a micromanager and he didn’t start his tenure by saying we have to cut the agency by 25 percent,” said a current 30-year veteran of the Foreign Service, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “That’s a good start.”

The official said fewer people would doubt whether Mr. Pompeo speaks for the president, and praised the CIA director’s protection of an institution that, like the State Department, Mr. Trump viewed with skepticism at the outset of his presidency.

But diplomats also expressed disquiet over Mr. Pompeo, whose origins as a former tea party congressman from Kansas leave a long paper trail of inflammatory comments about Islam, torture and hard-line positions that clash with the typical ethos of the Foreign Service.

“In the view of many diplomats, Mr. Tillerson was solid on policy and quite horrible on management,” said Ronald E. Neumann, the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. “Now they may get better management but worse policy.”

Mr. Pompeo’s hard-line views and blunt demeanor are precisely what endear him to Mr. Trump, who explained that his decision to fire Mr. Tillerson was based heavily on political differences, including onthe Iran nuclear deal.

“I actually got along well with Rex, but really it was a different mind-set, a different thinking,” he told reporters Tuesday. “When you look at the Iran deal, I thought it was terrible, he thought it was OK.”

That will be much less of a problem with Mr. Pompeo, who shares Mr. Trump’s disdain for the Paris climate accord, which the president withdrew from last year, and the Iran nuclear agreement, which Mr. Trump may withdraw from as early as May. Mr. Pompeo, like Mr. Trump, has also condemned Muslims in unsparing terms, such as in 2013, when he said the failure of American Muslim leaders to forcefully denounce the Boston Marathon bombing made them “potentially complicit in these attacks.”

As for Iranians, they were bracing Wednesday for further turmoil in their country’s relationship with the United States, and the possible unraveling of the 2015nuclear agreement.

“The hawks overcame the doves in the American administration,” a former diplomat, Ali Khorram, wrote in a column in Arman, a daily newspaper aligned with Iranian reformists.

But at the same time, Mr. Tillerson’s firing was welcome news for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which view Iran asa regional menace.

Meanwhile, the fate of Mr. Tillerson’s top aides is under intense speculation given expectations that Mr. Pompeo, if confirmed, will clean house. Diplomats scrambling to prepare for a historic meeting between Mr. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in May are now expressing fears that the nomination of Susan Thornton, a Tillerson ally, could be pulled before her confirmation in the Senate, leaving the department without an acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at a critical juncture.

And with Mr. Tillerson out, South Korean President Moon Jae-in may have fewer people within Mr. Trump’s administration who agree with his position.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday he will oppose Mr. Trump’s decision to replace Mr. Tillerson with Mr. Pompeo and to nominate Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel to lead the nation’s spy agency. Both in the past have supported waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that Mr. Paul said are unacceptable forms of torture.