Candace Rondeaux
Is Mike Pompeo the Teflon Don reincarnated? If you watched the U.S. secretary of state’s pre-recorded speech to the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, you’ll know your answer doesn’t matter, because Pompeo doesn’t really care about what you, many Americans or the world thinks. Pompeo delivered his address from Jerusalem while on an official diplomatic trip to the Middle East, breaking decades of political norms, and likely federal ethics laws. In this new era of American gangster diplomacy, what matters is always being right—as Pompeo sees it—and always being unapologetic in strong-arming the world into accepting the Republican Party’s isolationist and increasingly authoritarian bent under the GOP’s godfather-in-chief, President Donald J. Trump.
Federal laws prohibit civil servants from using their office, title or government resources to influence election results. So Pompeo’s remarks provided more proof that he genuinely believes that those laws don’t apply to him, and that he’s a made man as long as Trump’s “America First” vision of the world prevails.
The Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, said this week that his committee would launch an investigation into whether Pompeo’s RNC convention speech from the rooftop of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem violated the Hatch Act, a federal statute that bars civil servants, including Cabinet secretaries, from mixing their official government duties with partisan politics. But like New York City’s one-time mafia kingmaker, John Gotti, who repeatedly escaped prosecution, Pompeo has played the role of an untouchable and loyal mafioso, enforcing Trump’s new world disorder and repeatedly testing the limits of the rule of law since his appointment as America’s top diplomat in 2018.
Pompeo and his close associates have twice been the subjects of investigations into misconduct at the State Department. First, there was the State Department inspector general’s congressionally mandated inquiry into whether the department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs overrode a vote by Congress last summer to block the sale of $8.1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia. Then, there was the investigation into allegations that Pompeo and his wife routinely ordered his State Department staff to run personal errands on his behalf, and used State Department resources to enhance his political profile.
So far, Pompeo has managed to escape accountability for these alleged abuses of power and government resources, in part by appearing to commit more of them. First, he convinced Trump to fire the State Department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, who was investigating him. Then, Linick’s replacement, Acting Inspector General Stephen Akard, abruptly resigned in early August, though he was, in any case, apparently held in poor regard by many in the U.S. diplomatic corps. The House Foreign Affairs Committee has since taken up an investigation into Linick’s firing. But with the Republicans in firm control of the Senate in what is shaping up to be a precarious election year for endangered incumbents, not much is likely to come of the effort to hold Pompeo’s feet to the fire this year.
America’s top diplomat has at the same time been a key frontline warrior in Trump’s unwinnable trade war of attrition with China, while playing small ball on the much more winnable “tech wars” by imposing bans on popular Chinese-owned social media apps TikTok and WeChat. In his convention speech, Pompeo also cheerily reminded the world that Trump’s series of friendly summits with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un helped “lower the temperature” with the regime in Pyongyang, while carefully eliding the fact that North Korea has carried out 52 missile tests since Trump took office in January 2017, according to the nonpartisan Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Trump or no Trump, the GOP’s foreign policy is unlikely to veer far from this brand of ultranationalist diplomacy as long as Pompeo remains a leading light of the party.
There are 46 other countries on the Asian continent other than North Korea and China, including Turkey, Japan, India and Pakistan, which constitute by far America’s most consequential, if at times inconsistent, partners in a wide region where geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China is likely to be the most intense for generations to come. As it is, tensions between China and India over the disputed Himalayan border territory of Ladakh only seem to be worsening, with India’s defense chief, Gen. Bipin Rawat, saying that military options remain on the table. Given Pakistan’s close diplomatic relations with Beijing, and its dependence on China for military goods and trade, the high-stakes standoff between Chinese and Indian soldiers on the world’s rooftop sets up the possibility for a three-way shooting war involving three nuclear-armed countries.
This is one time when it might make sense for America’s secretary of state to signal that a focus on allies is as important as adversaries in U.S. foreign policy. It was only six months ago, after all, that Trump proudly touted his bromance with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, on his last major diplomatic trip before the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has similarly tried to muscle Japan’s prime minister, Abe Shinzo, into being a key ally in an America First coalition of the coerced, arrayed against a rising China. Yet there was not a single mention of Japan or India in Pompeo’s convention speech.
Pompeo also enthusiastically touted the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, in January, ignoring the determination by U.N. human rights investigators that the American drone strike in Baghdad that killed him was unlawful. He praised the Trump administration’s shredding of the Iran nuclear deal, even as it became clear that the U.N. Security Council would reject the Trump administration’s demand to trigger “snapback” sanctions against Iran that were part of the deal the White House trashed and withdrew from unilaterally.
Then there was the most embarrassing part of the speech, Pompeo’s blithe commentary on the state of U.S.-Russia relations, Ukraine and NATO. “Today, because of President Trump, NATO is stronger, Ukraine has defensive weapon systems, and America left a harmful treaty so our nation can now build missiles to deter Russian aggression,” he declared.
While there are ultimately sound reasons for the recent U.S. decision to redeploy thousands of American troops stationed in Germany to Poland, it is undeniable that the White House’s move, and how it made it, has created more fissures within the already unsteady trans-Atlantic alliance. It’s all well and good that after more than a year of dithering, Ukraine now appears to be prepared to deploy its U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank batteries closer to the contested region of Donbass in eastern Ukraine. But there is zero indication that there is a Ukrainian-American game plan in the event that Russia escalates its operations in Ukraine, either in response to ongoing negotiations over the status of Donbass and Crimea, or to the still bubbling situation in neighboring Belarus. On top of all that, why anyone would view the idea of ramping up another nuclear arms race with Russia after the U.S. pullout from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty as a good thing is beyond me, and probably several million other Americans. There is so much that is illogical about the Trump administration’s Russia policy, including the lack of response to repeated provocations between Russian and American forces in the field, most recently in Syria this week.
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