Rex Tillerson, with no previous government experience and a 40-year career at a single corporation, has made considerable progress in what appears to be his chief objective at the State Department—wrecking the place. He calls it reorganizing for efficiency.
This is not to say everything was hunky dory at State before January or that U.S. foreign policy was wholly on the right track until then. But combined with the erratic nature of his boss as well as that man’s profound ignorance of world affairs, Tillerson with his aloof leadership and failure to listen to or credit the work of career staff are surely generating negative impacts on some of the most fundamental aspects of U.S. relations around the planet. As for how to deal with a serious international crisis, having this pair in charge is akin to having climate science deniers in running environmental policy. Oh, right, we do have.
Gardiner Harris reports at The New York Times today that what began this year among foreign service professionals as guarded optimism about their new boss turned by summer into concern, then quiet anger, and now, as large numbers of them are fired or spurred to resign, into fear about the impacts at home and abroad of Tillerson’s efforts to gut the department he believes is over-staffed and unproductive.
Even before he showed up at work, he had made clear his intent to cut the budget 31 percent. He recently offered $25,000 in a buyout proposal that he hopes will encourage 2,000 more employees to leave by the end of the fiscal year next September.
Tillerson’s aides have fired some diplomats outright and pushed others out by failing to give them assignments they have sought or not giving them any duties at all. Most of the most experienced black and Latino diplomats have been booted, along with many women. The top two ranks of career ambassadors and career ministers will have been cut from 39 to 19 by the end of next week. Firings and expected departures in the third rank—minister-counselors—will soon have reduced their numbers by 18 percent.
Tillerson’s spokesman, R. C. Hammond, doesn’t buy the idea that this slash-and-burn approach to personnel management is doing any harm:
“There are qualified people who are delivering on America’s diplomatic mission,” Mr. Hammond said. “It’s insulting to them every time someone comes up to them and says that the State Department is being gutted.”
Former State Department officials disagree.
“The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world, and you simply cannot be effective if you don’t have assistant secretaries and ambassadors in place,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat who was an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush. “It shows a disdain for diplomacy.”
One result is that there is no one in place with responsibilities for some key trouble spots.
Tillerson’s view that the State Department staff is bloated and needs trimming might be viewed in a more positive light if his cuts and proposed cuts weren’t so drastic and if key positions were being filled. But cuts are bone-deep and vacancies affect crucial posts. Harris notes that there is still no assistant secretary for East Asia or an ambassador to South Korea. Also no ambassadors for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, or South Africa. No assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs or for African affairs.
Not only does this reckless, machete-style approach to management create immediate problems for U.S. diplomacy, it can, like draconian cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the Interior Department, create problems well into the future. Among those problems is recruitment. The number of people signing up to take the foreign service entry exam is reportedly down by 50 percent over last year.
Nine months ago, there was a brief wave of optimism that, whatever his foreign policy ideology, Tillerson would be a hands-on chief who would reorganize the department in a positive way. That point of view has disappeared, at least among diplomats and former diplomats who are speaking up:
“These people either do not believe the U.S. should be a world leader, or they’re utterly incompetent,” said [Dana Shell Smith, the former ambassador to Qatar]. “Either way, having so many vacancies in essential places is a disaster waiting to happen.”
By now it is apparent that having Trump and Tillerson at the helm means we have a lot more than one disaster-in-waiting.