Mike Pompeo Is The Spineless Personification Of Donald Trump’s Nihilist Foreign Policy
The gulf between a coherent foreign policy and President Donald Trump’s narcissistic nihilism is captured by the distance between departed Secretary of Defense James Mattis and ascendant Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ― and their reactions to Trump’s precipitous withdrawal from Syria.
The Syria decision was quintessential Trump: abrupt, peremptory, unmoored from strategy, contemptuous of advisers and allies, and rooted in a lie ― that America had won a final victory over the militant group that calls itself the Islamic State. In response, Mattis submitted a stinging resignation letter to Trump, telling the president he should “have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”
Though he, too, objected to the decision, Pompeo issued a feeble defense of the Syria withdrawal, cementing his role as the State Department’s Paul Ryan. Indeed, Trump assigned Pompeo the exquisitely demeaning task of telling Mattis to leave the Pentagon prior to his stated resignation date.
The episode confirms that one cannot serve Trump with integrity, or even competence. Only courtiers remain. Mattis worked to constrain Trump’s whims; Pompeo catered to them, eventually eclipsing Mattis in Trump’s favor ― and survived.
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