OPINION | Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are rapidly ceding American leadership. America’s retreat from the global stage is a disaster waiting to happen.
President Trump has willfully and deliberately created a diplomatic ticking time bomb as he guts the U. S. State Department.
America woke up this Fourth of July to news that North Korea had successfully conducted a test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile — a weapon capable of reaching at least Alaska and possibly the lower 48 states. Kim Jong-un, a ruthless dictator who starves his people and executes opponents for his amusement, may soon have the capability to attack the United States with a nuclear weapon.
The only problem? Most of those key positions are vacant, not because of Senate obstructionism as President Trump falsely claims, but because the president has failed to nominate anyone to fill them. Nearly six months after taking office and 240 days since being elected, Trump has not nominated anyone for 94 of the 124 appointed positions at the State Department. That’s three out of every four top jobs in American diplomacy.
American interests cannot be served without seasoned officials to serve them. Trump’s motto is « America First, » but the empty offices say « America Alone, » weakened and unable to shape world events in our favor.
Many of those empty positions are directly related to the North Korean threat. Nobody has been nominated to be ambassador to South Korea. Nobody has been nominated to be under secretary for arms control and international security affairs or assistant secretary for arms control, verification and compliance.
No nominee has been submitted for assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation affairs; or for assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs. The list goes on and on.
But turning the State Department into a hollowed-out, diplomatic zombie office isn’ t just affecting America’s diplomatic response to North Korea. As the dispute between the Saudi-led faction of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Qatar careens toward a risk of conflict, Trump hasn’ t nominated anyone to be assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, which oversees Middle East policy and the hollowed-out Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs.
