If there’s one thing the Trump administration has in common with previous Republican presidencies it’s a bone-deep hostility to the State Department. This goes back decades to the anti-communist fervor after WWII and the case of Alger Hiss, a high ranking diplomat and Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt which began with his famous “list” of supposedly 205 communists employed in the department. (The number changed daily and McCarthy never produced the names but he managed to keep half the nation in a state of full-blown hysteria for years.)
Even after the Red Scare died down the right wing never gave up their suspicion of the State Department. Even if it wasn’t crawling with commies, it was considered weak and useless in the fight against the Soviets with its diplomacy and treaties and whatnot. That belief lasted long after the Evil Empire was defeated, with the likes of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich lambasting the “Rogue State Department” in an essay for Foreign Policy back in 2003, writing, “anti-American sentiment is rising unabated around the globe because the U.S. State Department has abdicated values and principles in favor of accommodation and passivity.”
That was the muscular foreign policy promoted by the cold warriors and neoconservatives. They hated State because they believed it wasn’t confrontational enough and cared too much about such secondary issues as human rights. Gingrich wrote that the State Department was failing in its mission and needed to “experience culture shock, a top-to-bottom transformation that will make it a more effective communicator of U.S. values around the world, place it more directly under the control of the president, and enable it to promote freedom and combat tyranny.”
Gingrich wrote that during the height of the Iraq war, shortly after President George W. Bush donned a flight suit and gave his premature “Mission Accomplished” speech on an aircraft carrier. The Republicans were triumphant and saw themselves as the world’s saviors, ending terrorism and building a new world in America’s image, whether the world wanted it or not.
Donald Trump could not care less about “promoting freedom and combatting tyranny.” In fact, he’s more interested in the opposite: promoting tyranny and combatting freedom. But that is no impediment to the right wing once again attacking the State Department and arguing for its disembowelment.
Last week the Washington Post reported that according to a proposal from the Office of Management and Budget, the administration was planning to cut the department by 50%:
Under the proposed budget described in the memo, which remains subject to deliberations within the administration and, crucially, on Capitol Hill, USAID is assumed to have become fully a part of the State Department. Humanitarian assistance would face cuts of 54 percent, while global health funding would fall by 55 percent, the memo says.
There would be particularly steep cuts to support for international organizations, with just under 90 percent of this funding eliminated in the proposal. Funding for the United Nations, NATO and 20 other organizations would be ended.
A few others like the Atomic Energy Agency and the International Civil Aviation Authority would be allowed to remain which is awfully generous. All educational and cultural programs including the Fulbright Program will no longer be funded.
Two days ago the New York Times reported on a different draft Executive Order that would radically restructure the department which included “eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent, according to American officials and a copy of the document.” It also cut the offices that “address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns” and in the interest of eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” the anticipates laying off career diplomats and civil service employees and ending the foreign service exam for new criteria that includes “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”
And, of course, there’s this:
[I]t says the department will end its contract with Howard University, a historically Black institution, to recruit candidates for the Rangel and Pickering fellowships, which are to be terminated. The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.
Who needs diversity in a global institution?
The Times was unable to ascertain who wrote this draft order or how seriously it was being considered but it was obviously something that was under consideration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the report fake news like a good little Trumper, but it does reflect the thinking of plenty of people in the Trump administration who mistakenly believe that the United States’ interest in the world is solely one of economic and military dominance. “Soft power” is for losers.
Finally, last night Rubio himself unveiled his own restructuring plan which, at this point, seems like an attempt to assert authority that may or may not exist. It’s obvious that these other plans were being circulated in order to pre-empt his. He announced it on “X”:
That political statement indicates that Rubio is striving for MAGA credibility over serious purpose. And perhaps that’s understandable considering that his portfolio has been more or less usurped by Trump’s real estate pal and “Special Envoy” Steve Witkoff (whose shocking naivete in dealing with world leaders has stunned even some Republicans) and Elon Musk with whom he has been privately and publicly feuding.
No one knows at this point what plan is going to be adopted by the president. He will no doubt issue some kind of Executive Order soon enough and we’ll find out. But despite his belief that his word is law, these plans to drastically shrink the State Department will have to be dealt with by the U.S Congress and as we’ve seen, the GOP has long wanted to diminish if not completely eradicate it. They believe in domination not diplomacy (or as Rubio puts it, “great power competition”.) Trump may be the first president to actually get that done.
The humanitarian catastrophe has already begun. The NY Times reports:
The stark consequences of Mr. Trump’s slashing of U.S. aid are evident in few places as clearly as in Sudan, where a brutal civil war has set off a staggering humanitarian catastrophe and left 25 million people — more than half of the country’s population — acutely hungry.
The administration says they haven’t completely cut off the aid but with the USAID work force of about 10,000 being reduced to about 15 positions, the whole operation is nothing but chaos, ineptitude and failure. Nothing is getting through. This is just the beginning of massive, unimaginable suffering that’s going to happen over the next year as America betrays its values and abandons the most vulnerable people in the world. Soft power is finally dead. It’s a Republican dream come true.
