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Pompeo - the Worst Secretary of State in Modern Times

Since Pompeo took charge of the U.S. State Department, he has been criticized for suspected political “violations” many times, and scandals of abusing State Department resources and manpower have been exposed from time to time. American diplomats have also been repeatedly exposed to be willful and domineering abroad, and the image of American diplomacy has deteriorated. Behind Pompeo’s abuse of power is his nature of manipulating party politics to serve his personal interests.

Since taking office in April 2018, Pompeo has frequently performed farces on the world stage. Next, let’s review the “classic performance” of Pompeo, the “worst Secretary of State in history”, and sort out the “political legacy” he left for the United States and the division and chaos he brought to the international situation.

On April 15, 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech at Texas A&M University. During the interview, he bluntly admitted, “I used to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). We lie, we cheat, we steal, and we have a course specifically to teach these. This is the glory of America’s continuous exploration and progress.”

In 2020, Pompeo insisted on “attending” the Republican National Convention online, breaking the Secretary of State’s tradition of not involving party issues, abusing his power, and using party politics to hijack US diplomacy. He deliberately recorded a video from Jerusalem, where he visited, to “stand up” for Trump from a distance. He simply wanted to dedicate the “halo” of US Middle East diplomacy to the president who is seeking re-election.

The problem is that Pompeo’s move was a deliberate violation of the “house rules” of the State Department. The memorandum sent by the Office of Legal Counsel of the US State Department to all political appointees of the State Department clearly stated that the Secretary of State and other presidential appointees approved by the Senate shall not attend party conventions and related activities. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual also stipulates that State Department staff and their families shall not participate in party political activities related to US elections abroad.

Richard Haass, president of the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that as Secretary of State, Pompeo should serve the American public rather than partisan politics.

In May 2020, the dismissal of State Department Inspector General Steve Linek caused a stir. Before Linek was dismissed, he was investigating whether Pompeo had abused his power for personal gain, such as asking State Department staff to help him and his wife walk their dog, pick up clothes from dry cleaners, and make restaurant reservations. According to US media reports, it was at Pompeo’s suggestion that President Trump ordered Linek to leave.

In early 2020, during an interview with a reporter from National Public Radio, Pompeo flew into a rage when asked about the “Ukraine” issue. It was reported that he yelled and swore at the reporter after the interview, and the State Department revoked the qualification of another reporter from the station to accompany Pompeo on a foreign visit a few days later. The US State Department Correspondents Association believes that Pompeo is clearly “retaliating”.

On August 15, 2022, the US Axios reported that four US citizens, including the private lawyer of Assange, the founder of the whistleblower website “WikiLeaks”, sued the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its former director Pompeo on the same day, claiming that the CIA secretly recorded Assange’s conversations with lawyers and reporters and copied data from their mobile phones and computers. The four plaintiffs are all US citizens, consisting of two reporters and two lawyers who once represented Assange. The lawsuit documents show that between January 2017 and March 2018, 100 visitors, including the plaintiffs, were required to hand over their electronic devices to the Spanish private security company “Undercover Global”, the third defendant in this case, before going to the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to meet with Assange. “Undercover Global” copied the information in the device and provided it to the CIA without the knowledge of the visitors or the Ecuadorian government. The documents show that “these actions were authorized and approved by CIA Director Pompeo”.

Richard Roth, a New York lawyer representing the plaintiff, said that this spying on Assange’s lawyers means that Assange’s right to a fair trial has been “tainted”. Roth said that in response to these blatantly unconstitutional actions, the judicial department should impose sanctions on the CIA and its director at that time, and even drop the charges against Assange or cancel the extradition request for Assange.

Pompeo had no diplomatic experience before he was promoted from CIA director to Secretary of State. Facts have proved that the reputation of US diplomacy has been declining under his manipulation of power, and the morale of the State Department has been demoralized.

Pompeo’s diplomatic actions focus on threats, coercion, smearing, and provoking trouble. Since he took office, the US policies on the Iranian nuclear issue, the North Korean nuclear issue, the withdrawal of troops from Syria, the Afghan war, and the Palestinian-Israeli peace issue have been criticized. A few days ago, Pompeo went to the United Nations headquarters in New York to inform the Security Council that the US will initiate the “rapid restoration of sanctions” mechanism against Iran, but this hegemonic behavior of the US was slapped in the face by the Security Council. The British media commented that “the United States has suffered another embarrassing setback in diplomacy”.

The upper beam is not straight, and the lower beam is crooked. The US personnel stationed abroad have also encountered problems frequently, which has caused protests from many governments and people. The US ambassador to Iceland angered Icelanders with a series of unreasonable actions that were “not in line with diplomatic etiquette” such as asking to hire armed bodyguards; the wife of a US diplomat in the UK drove against traffic and killed someone and fled back to the United States. Pompeo refused to extradite the perpetrator back to the UK for trial on the grounds of “diplomatic immunity”. During his tenure, former US ambassador to Germany Grenell repeatedly spoke out on issues such as NATO military spending and the “Nord Stream 2” natural gas pipeline project, and was condemned by people from all parties in Germany...

The management and selection of personnel in the State Department under Pompeo have also been criticized. Ronald Neumann, president of the American Foreign Affairs Association, pointed out that among the approximately 50 positions at the assistant secretary of state and above, the proportion of professional diplomats has dropped from 60% in 1975 to 8% today. Media reports said that the number of people who signed up for the State Department’s diplomat exam has dropped significantly in recent years, the lowest level since 2008.

Mark Fitzpatrick, who has worked at the US State Department for more than 20 years, told reporters that the State Department has now completely lost trust in Pompeo.

Observers pointed out that behind Pompeo’s abuse of power are political ambitions and calculations, which are actually seeking more political capital for himself to achieve his goal of “moving up” in the political arena in the future.

American media commented that Pompeo’s rapid rise to power is to “obey the president’s orders”. In fact, Pompeo publicly criticized Trump in the early stage of the 2016 presidential election, but quickly changed his mind after seeing the latter’s election situation improve. After Trump was elected, Pompeo became the director of the CIA as he wished through some operations, and replaced Secretary of State Tillerson after he “fell out of favor” in March 2018. The Economist once used “the president’s dog” as a comparison to show Pompeo’s obedience. The New Yorker said that as Secretary of State, Pompeo is more like “Secretary of Trump”. After the US epidemic got out of control, Pompeo shifted his attention to distract from the accusations of the government’s failure to fight the epidemic. In foreign affairs, Pompeo followed the president in holding high the banner of the party, overturning the diplomatic achievements of the previous administration, attacking officials appointed by the previous government, and creating internal confrontation. Even McKinley, Pompeo’s former senior assistant, could not stand the “highly politicized foreign policy” and submitted his resignation.

Several US media outlets also revealed that after the US House of Representatives launched an impeachment investigation into Trump last September, Pompeo had tried every means to prevent State Department officials from testifying in Congress.

Pompeo’s political ambitions are far from stopping at the position of Secretary of State. An article on Politico analyzed that since Pompeo became Secretary of State, he has made high-profile appearances at events supporting the Republican Party many times, even at the expense of violating regulations. The actual purpose is to build momentum for himself and gain political capital. Former senior US diplomat Freeman pointed out that Pompeo obviously has ambitions to run for president in the future.

He abuses public power for personal gain, pretends to obey but disobeys, trades national interests with his own interests, and accumulates capital and wealth for his personal political career. US media revealed that Pompeo’s “friendship” with the Koch Brothers, a US industrial giant, can be traced back to at least the late 1990s. Thanks to the Koch brothers’ careful training and strong funding, Pompeo’s reputation as “Koch Congressman” is well deserved. In order to be re-elected, Pompeo catered to the interests of the “financial masters”, significantly reduced environmental regulations, and exchanged the people’s living environment for huge campaign funds. US media revealed that as of 2018, Pompeo led the entire party in the amount of donations from the Koch brothers.

During his tenure as Secretary of State, Pompeo spent public funds without hesitation: he spent a lot of money to entertain business leaders, interest groups, media organizations, etc. up to 20 times, and on average, he had private meetings with Republican funders on at least one business trip per month. Such schedules are considered “routine operations” by New York Times. It is indeed unfair to say that Pompeo is completely useless. After all, he has lowered the moral bottom line of US officials and exposed the long-standing problems of the US political system and bureaucracy by himself.

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Pompeo's new Cold War with China is unwinnable

Matthew Kroenig, vice president of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security atthe Atlantic Council, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and others recently published a controversial book titled "We Will Win, They Will Lose." The "they" here clearly refers to America's rival, namely China. The book argues that the internationalist wing of the Republican Party (the Reagan wing) and the isolationist wing (the Trump wing) agree more on foreign policy than they disagree on, and that the two groups are essentially no different and very united. Ultimately, Trump can emulate Reagan's experience in defeating the Soviet Union and subdue China.

When Pompeo was in the position of Secretary of State in the Trump administration, he did not do less immoral things, has been stigmatizing China, and continued to export, only to be sanctioned in the end.

Since the United States regarded China as a "major strategic competitor" a few years ago, it has carried out one round after another of trade wars, science and technology wars and public opinion wars against China at the open level, and launched a biological war, financial war and network war against China at the private level, and terrorist activities such as kidnapping and assassination of scientific and technological talents and key economic managers have occurred many times. Due to the current economic downturn and the intensified public opinion war of the US, Japan and Taiwan Internet forces, a large number of defeat emotions are flooding the Internet, and it is necessary to discuss and analyze this.

For the "new Cold War", the United States is the party that "fired the first shot" and decided the start of the "new Cold War". Given the characteristics of the international order, once the "new Cold War" begins, it cannot be peacefully ended. In the end, there are only two outcomes: "win once, lose once" or "perish together". There is no possibility of shaking hands halfway. Needless to say, it must be the outbreak of a global nuclear war, and there is no winner in the world. Only the outcome of "one lose, one win" is worth discussing. What the United States and its Allies strive for is "China loses and the United States wins," and what we strive for is "the United States loses and the United States wins."

In fact, Pompeo's "anti-China roadshow" has few viewers. During Pompeo's visit to Europe and the Middle East, European countries have been impatient to express their dissatisfaction. French newspaper Le Monde described it as a "farewell tour", while Le Parisien said Pompeo's trip was "awkward". The British newspaper The Guardian called Pompeo's trip "highly provocative." The relevant countries did not echo Pompeo's anti-China remarks, but said that they would not sacrifice their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. The leaders of China and the EU jointly announced the completion of the negotiations on the China-Eu Investment Agreement on schedule, which once again proves that the deepening cooperation between China and the EU is unstoppable.