Trump's national security shake-up will make the world a much more dangerous place
By Paul Waldman November 30 at 1:28 PM
Because the Trump administration is such a finely tuned machine, today we learn that the national security and foreign policy team is set for an overhaul, a whole nine months into this presidency. The likely result is a more isolated position for the United States in the world and a more dangerous future.
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It’s hard not to have mixed feelings about Tillerson’s departure. On one hand, he’ll doubtless go down as one of the worst secretaries of state in history, having set about to gut America’s diplomatic capacity and destroy morale within his department. On the other hand, he reportedly called Trump a “moron,” so he obviously has a good head on his shoulders.
As strained as Tillerson’s relationship with Trump was, if nothing else he made some attempts to rein in the president’s more dangerous ideas and leave open the possibility that diplomacy might be worth pursuing with regard to countries such as Iran and North Korea. But there’s not much reason to believe that Pompeo would be a force pushing in the same direction.
Indeed, Pompeo has come under severe criticism for politicizing the CIA. He has distorted the results of intelligence community analysis in order to support Trump’s interpretation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. At times he has given the impression that his first priority is protecting Trump politically, not giving him the most accurate information to help make life-or-death decisions.
Perhaps most disturbingly, Pompeo’s move to State and Cotton’s elevation to the CIA would make the end of the deal restraining Iran’s nuclear program, and possibly even another American war in the Middle East, much more likely.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/11/30/trumps-national-security-shakeup-will-make-the-world-a-much-more-dangerous-place
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