President Trump undermined Rex Tillerson’s success at the State Department, but that doesn’t mean his successor will do a better job.
Rex Tillerson’s tenure as secretary of state has been tumultuous, damaging to American foreign policy and his department. And, one can reasonably speculate, more unpleasant and unsatisfying than not for Mr. Tillerson himself.
Successful secretaries of state tend to have respectful relationships with their boss. The Trump-Tillerson partnership failed miserably as the president soured on the former ExxonMobil C. E. O. and marginalized him in policymaking. A relationship in which Mr. Tillerson privately called President Trump a “moron” and Mr. Trump publicly faulted Mr. Tillerson for “wasting his time” on North Korea seemed destined to end badly.
Mr. Tillerson has approached his job more as an efficiency-driven management consultant than as the nation’s senior diplomat and spokesman to the world. He has undermined the institution of diplomacy by advocating a 30 percent cut in the State Department budget and trying to push out 2,000 career diplomats, has shown little interest in explaining American positions at home or abroad and has done little to counter the steady erosion of trust in America’s historic role as a global leader, which Mr. Trump has brought about by his indifference to old alliances and his courtship of despots and strongmen.
Yet, amid reports that Mr. Tillerson may soon be forced out of his job, the people thought to be front-runners in any shake-up of the administration’s national security team are cause for concern and, potentially, every bit as inimical to the national interest. Although other names are said to be in play, C. I. A. Director Mike Pompeo is reportedly the top choice to succeed Mr. Tillerson at State while Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, is a leading contender to replace Mr. Pompeo.
Mr. Pompeo, by all accounts, has a much closer relationship with Mr. Trump than Mr. Tillerson has, impressing the president during daily intelligence briefings and becoming a trusted adviser even on issues outside his formal portfolio, like health care. He would almost certainly have more influence with Mr. Trump than Mr. Tillerson has managed to muster.
The problem is that Mr. Pompeo may be too chummy. A former member of the House from Kansas, a Tea Party conservative and a climate change skeptic, Mr. Pompeo has never shed his partisan clothing. In principle, the C. I. A. director is expected to leave politics aside and lead the agency with a focus on gathering solid intelligence and providing unvarnished analysis. But Mr. Pompeo has not been shy about mixing politics with intelligence and policy and may feel even freer to do so at the State Department.
Like Mr. Trump, he has played down the extent of Russia’s intervention in the presidential election and indeed has been at odds with the intelligence community on this issue. He is also a fervent critic of Iran, insisting that the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and six major powers, including the United States, should be scrapped. He is considered among the administration’s toughest hawks on North Korea.
For all his faults, Mr. Tillerson has tried to pursue diplomacy to end the nuclear crisis with North Korea and has certified Iran as complying with its commitments under the nuclear deal, a decision that has infuriated Mr. Trump. He has also been more skeptical than Mr. Trump about Moscow, and while he cultivated close ties with President Vladimir Putin when he ran ExxonMobil, as recently as Tuesday he declared in a speech, “We, together with our friends in Europe, recognize the active threat of a recently resurgent Russia.”
Mr. Cotton, like Mr. Pompeo, has been a stalwart defender of Mr. Trump, prompting similar concerns about his ability to lead the intelligence agency in an independent, nonpartisan way. He also has no experience managing a large organization. A hard-line conservative and leading Republican Senate voice on national security, Mr. Cotton is widely viewed as bright, but he lacks career intelligence experience. This could compromise his ability to push back against political pressure from the White House.
There are other negatives. Mr. Cotton has mocked the idea that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the presidential election. He does not seem to view waterboarding as torture, raising the prospect that he might reintroduce that barbaric practice, even though the Obama administration, human rights advocates and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have all said that it violates international law and harms American interests. He has also been Congress’s most aggressive opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, adding one more voice to the chorus of senior officials trying to undo the agreement.
These appointments would add two more white men to a cabinet dominated by them, and two more senior officials with military backgrounds to a national security team that is already top-heavy with them. Mr. Cotton is a decorated Army veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Pompeo is a retired Army officer who graduated from West Point. Military experience can be valuable, but not to the point of overwhelming the civilians.
In the final analysis, the people who fill cabinet jobs are a reflection of the president, his values and his priorities. And, in the end, the problems with American foreign policy arise from that very same person.
