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FINANCIAL TIMES
Tillerson, Pompeo and the fall of American diplomacy
In squandering America’s soft power, Trump has shrunk its
ability to get things done
PHILIP STEPHENS
Rex Tillerson proved a hapless US secretary of
state. On the evidence so far, his successor Mike Pompeo will turn out
to be a thoughtless steward of America’s global interests. Throw in
President Donald Trump’s ego-obsessed mood swings and you have the end
of American diplomacy. Mr
Tillerson knew little about affairs of state — a lifetime in the oil
business did not bestow understanding of the geopolitical tides of the
times. His promised reform of the state department became an exodus of
top-flight diplomats. He never gained Mr Trump’s confidence. From time
to time he was able to restrain the president, but he was more
frequently undermined by Twitter storms from the White House. Mr
Pompeo is closer personally to Mr Trump — perhaps because he so
studiously mimics the president’s weaknesses. Both imagine the US can do
what it likes, where it likes, when it likes — an assumption paraded by
Mr Pompeo in his approach to Iran’s nuclear efforts. Neither man asks,
let alone answers, the question at the heart of all diplomatic
calculations: “and then what?” To
the extent that the administration’s actions have a leitmotif, it is
provided by a string of unilateral initiatives intended to demonstrate
US power. They have had the opposite effect: weakening Washington’s
capacity to promote its interests. Every time the US spurns its
international commitments— whether over trade, climate change or Iran —
it invites allies to step back and look for new friends and adversaries
to press their advantage. Mr
Trump, we know, rarely thinks beyond the instant impact of his
statements and tweets. He wants to make a splash. The likely
consequences of any given decision or statement are studiously ignored.
His aides boast that this “disruptive” approach has broken a series of
historic logjams. Moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, tearing
up the Iran nuclear deal, and offering a summit to North Korean
president Kim Jong Un are filed as “game-changers”.
To what purpose? When foreign visitors
to the White House ask how the administration intends to follow through
— the “then what” — they are met with blank stares: “Hey, we have shaken
things up, rewritten the rules.” This apparently is enough. The
president will think about what to do next, well, next. As to embedding
into policy a rough calculation of how others might respond, no one
could accuse Mr Trump of being a chess player. Mr
Pompeo used his first speech to set out what he described as an Iran
strategy. Only he offered not so much a strategy as a laundry list of
demands of Tehran. The requirements went way beyond the nuclear,
reaching into almost every dimension of Iranian policy. By the end, you
half-expected the secretary of state to add that Iran must convert from
Islam to Christianity. Some
of the objectives are widely shared. The regime in Tehran is repressive
and destabilising of the region. A diplomat would have seen, though, the
gap between the desirable and the plausible. Most of the time nations
are obliged to treat with other nations as they are. I am sure Mr Pompeo
would like to see Saudi Arabia stop the export of the extreme Wahhabi
Islamism that gives cover to violent jihadis as well as Iran withdrawing
its militias from Syria.
Hubris — Iran must do what Washington says, or else — sits alongside the
absence of means of achieving the administration’s goals. Mr Trump can
wave the sanctions stick, but he has lost the support of the
international community. The Europeans will defy the US sanctions regime
where they can. Russia and China will ignore it. For their part, Israel
and Saudi Arabia will continue to push for war against Iran. I am not
sure Mr Trump’s core vote wants him to start another Middle East
conflagration. The
same ego-driven impulses explain the farce of Mr Trump’s on-off summit
with Mr Kim. The president offered the talks
without a thought as to an achievable outcome. John Bolton, his
hawkish national security adviser, filled the gap by saying the US would
accept nothing less than North Korea’s abject surrender of its nuclear
programme. The president then expressed himself surprised when Mr Kim
took offence. Mr
Bolton counts himself among those who think the US has the power to do
as it pleases. Mr Pompeo’s demands for submission from Iran are matched
by the comparison drawn by Mr Bolton between Mr Kim’s North Korea and
the late Muammer Gaddafi’s Libya. The snag is that tyrants do not
wittingly vote for their own demise. No one can be certain of Mr Kim’s
negotiating stance if, as we should hope, a summit does take place. One
thing is as certain as it could be — Pyongyang is not about to hand over
its nuclear arsenal anytime soon. Mr
Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama is sometimes criticised for stepping
back from the US leadership role. In part he was owning up to the
reality of shifts in global power, but there were also moments when he
was too eager to shrug off the Pax Americana. Analysis in the Obama
White House too often became the midwife to paralysis. Look
through the noisy threats and bombast and Mr Trump has turned diffidence
into retreat. In squandering America’s soft power, he has shrunk its
ability to get things done. And in staking out a belligerent
unilateralism, he has persuaded allies and adversaries alike that the
American moment has passed. What replaces it will probably be something
much worse. |