Pompeo’s checklist
A world of trouble awaits new secretary of state
Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo inherits from Rex Tillerson a host of complex and unresolved issues. Some are nearing crisis level. Mr. Pompeo, now serving as CIA director, won’t have time to wait for formal confirmation by the Senate to start to exert leadership.
The first of these is U.S. relations with Russia. There will be fallout when special counsel Robert S. Mueller gets around to unveiling his findings and the United States decides what it is going to do about Russian meddling in its 2016 elections, hopefully in advance of the 2018 elections. Apart from that, Russian President Vladimir Putin is feeling his oats, in advance of Russia’s elections this Sunday. The nerve gas attack that critically wounded a former Russian spy and his daughter, on British soil, is the most brazen example. A British policeman investigating the attack was also injured but is expected to recover.
In retribution, British Prime Minister Theresa May has expelled 23 Russian diplomats suspected of espionage, and will be calling on its NATO and other allies, including the United States, to back up Britain in punishing Moscow. Mr. Pompeo will have influence in determining U.S. response to the British request for support — which should be swift and uncompromising.
A second priority for Mr. Pompeo will be to construct a comprehensive U.S. foreign policy response to the increasingly active Chinese politicalcommercial offensive across the globe, in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, which is relatively new ground for Beijing. China’s latest enterprise is the establishment of a military base in Djibouti, in northeast Africa, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen in the Middle East, alongside an American base there, too.
Mr. Pompeo should lead a case-bycase active campaign to get rid of — through diplomacy — some of the ongoing, long, marginal, mostly fruitless, expensive “little” wars that America is engaged in across the world in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, West Africa and Yemen.
It is also time for the United States to pay more attention to the severe humanitarian disasters underway, particularly those of the Rohingya people who have fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh, the many victims of the South Sudan civil war, and the festering crisis in Venezuela.
Finally, and most immediately, Mr. Pompeo should prepare Mr. Trump for his upcoming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. That process should include coordinating meetings with interested allies and North Korean neighbors China, Japan, Russia and, especially, South Korea and its president, Moon Jae-in, who is perhaps the most important U.S. partner in this ongoing enterprise.
These are urgent matters, touching on America’s future. Mr. Pompeo must hit the ground running if America is not to find itself seriously damaged through lack of preparedness.