The warm reception Mike Pompeo received this week from State Department employees might have been as much a wave of good riddance to his predecessor as it was a welcome for their new boss.
While staffers welcome Pompeo’s promise of more employee-friendly management, he becomes secretary of state with heavy baggage, including his previous Islamic-phobic remarks that could hinder his relations with many countries. That baggage also has the weight of Trump’s “shithole countries” quip during an Oval Office discussion on immigration. It’s not Pompeo’s baggage, but there’s the decades-old issue of Uncle Sam’s chintzy approach to foreign assistance that the new guy would be wise to reverse.
Perhaps acknowledging Tillerson’s distant demeanor, Pompeo told a gathering of employees in the department’s lobby Tuesday that “I will get to as many parts of this organization as I can,” vowing to spend “little time on the seventh floor,” where the department’s senior leadership sits. “I know that every task, every endeavor that each of you undertakes is a critical part of achieving that ultimate objective” of delivering “America’s foreign policy around the world.”
One reason to spend little time on seven is loneliness. State Department morale has been so low in part because the number of top-level vacancies is so high, in addition to significant cuts in the rank and file under Tillerson. Of six undersecretary positions, only one has a full-time appointee.
Pompeo, who had a good reputation as a manager at the Central Intelligence Agency, promised to meet and listen to as many employees as he can. He won fans by ending a hiring freeze on family members of State staffers abroad. “I want the State Department to get its swagger back,” he said at his Wednesday swearing in, as Trump, standing nearby, nodded. “We need our men and women out at the front lines, executing American diplomacy with great vigor and energy, and to represent the finest nation in the history of civilization.”
Pompeo hit the right notes, but veterans have heard that song before.
“Pompeo is saying a lot of the right things and people are very pleased by that,” said Ronald E. Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, formerly a deputy assistant secretary who had three stints as an ambassador. “If your first act is to stop the beating, it’s pretty easy to improve morale.”
But for all his bonhomie, Pompeo is trailed by his record as a Republican congressman from Kansas that showed “animus towards American Muslims,” said a letter to senators, before his confirmation, from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. It was signed by more than 50 organizations.
As my colleague Michelle Boorstein reported in March, “After the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, Pompeo — then a member of Congress — falsely accused American Muslim organizations of not condemning terrorism. Despite a steady stream of such condemnations since the Sept. 11 attacks — including many in the hours after the Boston attacks — Pompeo accused American Muslims of being ‘potentially complicit.’ On the House floor, weeks after the Boston attacks, he said condemnations hadn’t been sufficient. ‘It casts doubt on the commitment to peace by adherents of the Muslim faith.’ ”
That attitude can only hurt America’s relations with the world’s more than 1.6 billion Muslims, whose assistance Uncle Sam needs in the fight against terrorism. The United States also provides foreign assistance to many countries, about $50 billion in fiscal 2016.
That’s a big number, but contrary to popular opinion, it makes Sam a piker by international standards. Under Republicans and Democrats, the United States has provided much less for international aid than many believe, and much of what the nation does spend is for American goods and services.
Developed countries should provide assistance worth 0.7 percent of their gross national income, according to a target set by the United Nations. At 0.2 percent, the United States falls far short. Perhaps Pompeo can convince Trump that the deep assistance cuts he proposed, and Congress rejected, is bad policy.
Britain is one country that meets the target. Rather than disparaging foreign aid, Trump, Pompeo and most of America could learn from them.
“It is the right thing to do, and it’s also good for Britain,” George Hodgson, British ambassador to Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, said by email. He met last week with a delegation sponsored by the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN), including this reporter, to discuss sustainable development issues. “Our aid commitment — which is enshrined in law — increases Britain’s global influence and allows us to shape the world around us, which is firmly in the U.K.’s national interest.”
Uncle Sam’s definition of national interest is more selfish.
The United States ties a greater portion of its aid to the purchase of its goods and services than any other major donor — about two-thirds in fiscal 2016, according to a report issued last week by the Congressional Research Service.
In other words, Sam spends most of his foreign aid on himself.
“Foreign assistance is imperative to maintaining the peace and security of our common home,” said Djibril Diallo, president and CEO of ARDN and former regional director of UNAIDS in West and Central Africa “It is also important to think of foreign assistance as more than just dollar signs, but a total package of support that a nation is providing to a sister or brother nation in this family we call planet earth.”
It’s a warm thought, but one that Trump and Pompeo, like their predecessors, are not likely to embrace.
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