-
This month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revealed several drastic changes in US foreign policy.
-
The reaction was swift, with many criticizing them as new attempts to undermine the Biden government and as an effort by Pompeo to polish his own political credentials.
-
“Pompeo is continuing with reckless and politicized foreign policy decisions” rather than focusing “on facilitating a smooth and efficient transition,” Rep. Gregory Meeks told Insider in a statement.
-
Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
President Donald Trump has been strangely quiet in the days since the January 6 rebellion in the United States Capitol building.
He started social media and with few remaining allies, Trump spoke little and was seen even less. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, has been busy, announcing a series of policies that are widely seen as efforts to consolidate his own position and stand up to President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump has been largely without hands in foreign policy, which has been reflected in the complicated process of achieving that policy, according to John Gans, a U.S. foreign policy historian and former Pentagon and Capitol speechwriter.
“This has been a disorderly and chaotic administration since day one, but I don’t think anyone would expect it to get where it got last week in 10 days,” Gans told Insider.
Many of Trump’s diplomatic efforts have drawn scrutiny, but over the course of four days this month, Pompeo unveiled four political measures that drew swift and widespread reactions.
On January 9, the State Department announced that the United States government should consider “self-imposed restrictions” prior to official contact with Taiwan “null and void”. On January 10, Pompeo announced that the State Department would designate Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a terrorist group.
On January 11, Pompeo said that the State Department designated Cuba as a terror sponsoring state, returning it to the list five years after Obama removed it. On January 12, Pompeo said Iran had become “the base” of Al Qaeda, a dramatic and widely contested claim that many fear that a legal basis for military action could be used.
With these measures, announced less than two weeks before leaving office, “Pompeo is continuing with reckless and politicized foreign policy decisions”, rather than focusing “on facilitating a smooth and efficient transition,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, chairman of the Chamber of Foreign Affairs Affairs Committee, said Insider in a statement.
“Pompeo’s policy announcements this week are more of the same kind of disastrous and hasty mistakes that characterized this government’s catastrophic foreign policy from day one,” added Meeks.
Laying landmines
The criticisms came from current and former employees, as well as from abroad.
Cuba’s designation was widely repudiated; The Norwegian government has called this “regrettable”. David Miliband, a former British lawmaker who now heads the International Rescue Committee, called the Houthi designation “pure diplomatic hooliganism”. Together, the designations are a “salting ground before” Biden takes over, Paul Pillar, a former US intelligence official, wrote this week.
While many welcome a review of the US relationship with Taiwan – Taiwan itself praised the decision – the timing and nature of the change has been criticized for opening Taipei to retaliation from Beijing, which sees Taiwan as a renegade province, and for politicizing that relationship .
“The idea that we should look at these types of issues is valid. I think that Pompeo doing this to become a China Hawk with less than two weeks to go is incredibly dangerous,” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration said in a recent episode of the Pod Save the World podcast.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told CNBC this week that Pompeo has “salted the land in US-China relations in general and placed landmines in Taiwan in particular”.
These recent measures are widely seen as an effort to burden the Biden government with the bureaucratic burden of reviewing these decisions and opening it up to political attacks if it rescinds them.
A Trump administration official told CNN that the goal was “to cause so many fires that it will be difficult … put out all of them”.
“If Pompeo is anything else, it is a roadmap for what we will hear in the next four years,” said Rhodes. “Joe Biden’s hyperbolic criticism will be … of Iran’s hawks, China’s hawks and Cuba’s hawks.”
It is unclear what will be needed to undo these last minute policies. Some can probably be undone with some signatures. Others, such as terrorism designations, typically require analysis to ensure that the designee does not support terrorism.
But Biden’s team must not “obey some scrupulous rule” to reverse policies that are “so clearly political and executed at the right time,” said Rhodes.
‘America will be better when he leaves’
When Pompeo took over the State Department in the spring of 2018, he said he wanted to “get his arrogance back”, but Pompeo has always alienated the department and approached Trump, embracing the president’s baseless objections to the U.S. election, even as Pompeo exposed the importance of free and fair elections abroad.
The new policies, like others before them, are seen as Pompeo’s maneuvers for a future presidential race. But if he is counting on his record, the trip will be short, said Gans.
“My guess is that Pompeo’s legacy and achievements will be small, just as any damage he does will be small on the scale of American foreign policy,” said Gans, author of a National Security Council story.
“This does not mean that work will not be needed to fix the problems. It just means that it is work that can be done,” added Gans, citing the George HW Bush administration’s recovery from the “wild west” of Reagan’s foreign policy.
Meeks told Insider that his committee “is ready to work with President Biden to restore American global leadership and bring our nation out of the devastation caused by President Trump and his chief friend, Pompeo.”
For some in Kansas, where Pompeo used a chair in Congress to boost his national profile with attacks on then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the end cannot come soon.
“In about a week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s service will mercifully end,” wrote the Kansas City Star editorial board this week. “America will be better off when he leaves office. Kansas will be much better off if he decides to stay away from his adopted home state forever.”
Read the original article on Business Insider