George Kennan, perhaps America’s greatest diplomat, was fond of saying why people were doing something concerned him less than how they were doing it. Within the tactful arena of old world diplomacy in which Kennan was schooled and operated, less was usually more, and if more was being offered that meant it was prudent to pay particularly close attention. Bluster and careless rants were the dead giveaway a rank amateur was in the house. Words mattered because they were employed with thoughtful purpose. A country whose emissaries were reckless with their language could hardly be relied upon as an ally, and was surely demonstrating weakness as an adversary.
American government is structured to give the Executive Branch wide latitude in representing our positions to the world. Time and again the Supreme Court has dismissed challenges to the President’s role as “the sole organ of American foreign policy.” Of course this is wise, both from a common sense stand point as well as operational necessity. Who else is going to do it? Senators, who foremost answer to the narrow parochial needs of their states? No, micromanaging foreign policy was never a role the founders intended for Congress. They could impose their collective will as a function of approving or rejecting specific funding requests, but as far as US messaging to the world is concerned, the buck stops with the President, who is supposed to lean on the professionals.
This established practice makes Secretary of State a preeminent cabinet position. Whoever oversees Foggy Bottom must enjoy, not only the President’s full confidence, but also complete access to decision making. After all, if foreign countries aren’t confident America’s chief messenger speaks for the White House, how can the message have any resonance? Indeed, it would seem a no brainer that any serious Secretary of State would be adamant such confidence that he/she is fully in the policy loop is essential, and anything less wholly unacceptable…. grounds for resignation.
All of which brings us yet again to current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, burdened with the debilitating onus of translating a sociopath’s rabid tweets for horrified foreign leaders attempting to make sense of dangerous gibberish. Yet and still, anybody bent toward empathizing with Pompeo should resist the urge and first examine the record….. it is ugly and getting uglier, a cautionary tale about servility’s circular trail of tears for those without the integrity to refuse its obligations.
Before her appointment as Ambassador to Ukraine in May, 2016, Marie Yovanovitch had enjoyed what could be termed a brilliant career in the US foreign service. A graduate of Princeton, Yovanovitch was first posted in Ottawa. Assignments in Moscow, London and Mogadishu followed before she was tapped in 1998 for the prestigious slot of Deputy Director of the Russian Desk at State. In August of 2001 she became the Deputy Chief of Mission in Ukraine, and by August 2004 the Bush team thought enough of her to make Yovanovitch senior advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Safe to say, by the time she was appointed as Ukraine’s Ambassador by Obama, Yovanovitch was widely respected as the consummate foreign service professional she had become.
In Ukraine the prevailing issue was corruption, and the US Embassy worked closely with point man VP Joe Biden to make certain demands by both the US and NATO allies that the overt corruption of the country’s recently deposed previous leadership be addressed and rigid new standards be established were heard loud and clear. The US was approving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid for resisting Russian hegemony and it wanted guarantees its investment would not evaporate through rampant graft.
As the Obama era ended and Trump took office, progress had been made in Ukraine to create a judicial system with the teeth necessary to respond to government corruption and discourage its practice. By all accounts, Yovanovitch was aggressive in her efforts to push reform, enough so that she made an enemy of then prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko. Rudy Guiliani would later press Lutsenko to, not only discredit Mueller’s work, but also dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter and his relationship with Barisma, a Ukrainian energy company; this after the prosecutor had declared no impropriety had been uncovered.
From the start Trump was wary of government careerists, eventually lumping most into the “deep state” he maintained was ever out to get him. As he became more fixated on Ukraine as an epicenter of his persecution because of the prosecution of Paul Manafort, who had cashed in for plenty when it’s government was a cesspool, the President railed at the professionals within the US Embassy. His developing agenda to use Ukrainian sources to discredit the Mueller report was never going to fly with straight shooters like Yovanovitch; so he wanted her gone.
It is unclear exactly when Trump made his first demand that Yovanovitch be recalled, and it is equally unclear to what degree Pompeo, or perhaps his own staff, may have ignored the President’s initial impulses. After all, it had become common place for Administration officials to simply ignore unhinged West Wing edicts with the hope Trump would forget the whole thing. But regardless of when Yovanovitch first came into Trump’s crosshairs, as his obsession with putting the elbow on Ukraine’s leadership to do his dirty work grew, there was no doubt her days as ambassador were numbered. The central question became to what degree if any Pompeo had her back.
He didn’t. By May of this year, after a campaign of unsubstantiated innuendo that she was disloyal to the President and had actually been bad mouthing him abroad, which nobody within the State Department career ranks gave any credence to, Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled. On his now famous call July 25 to pressure incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump hissed that Yovanovitch was “bad news” and ominously assured she “would be going through some things.” At no time has Pompeo offered any public words of support for his employee. In fact, it’s come to light that, prior to Yovanovitch’s recall, Guiliani presented Pompeo with a report outlining outrageous charges that included she was in league with George Soros, but most shrilly whining that Yovanovitch was not adequately pressing the case to look into Hunter Biden. The math from that revelation is not difficult to perform.
The best we can now say about our Secretary of State is he leaves those he pledged to protect flapping in the wind, laid bare to the disgusting intrigues of Trump and his “personal lawyer.” The worst we can say is he takes an active role in development and pursuit of such schemes. Pathetically weak and fully out of the loop or wretchedly corrupt and an accomplice to purges against his own people? Pick your poison. When he replaced indifferent Rex Tillerson, a demoralized foreign service hoped Pompeo would live up to his job’s vivid history and the standards for autonomy it had set. Instead he has ushered in a new nadir for a critical American institution…. just another fitting footnote to the ruin Trumpism has produced. BC