Replacing Tillerson With Pompeo Would Supplant a Moderate With a Hawk
And 3plus months later, it is going to happen.
Nov 30, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/politics/mike-pompeo-state-cia.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article
Replacing Tillerson With Pompeo Would Supplant a Moderate With a Hawk
As the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo has brought a hard-charging style that President Trump values, White House aides said. Al Drago/The New York Times
Updated March 13, 2018: President Trump announced that he had ousted Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and intends to replaced him with Mike Pompeo, now the C.I.A. director.
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WASHINGTON — For all his political and bureaucratic stumbles, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has been a steady voice of moderation in how the Trump administration engages with the world.
That voice will be lost if, as expected, President Trump replaces Mr. Tillerson at the State Department with Mike Pompeo, a hard-line former Republican congressman who has brought an avowedly political edge to the Central Intelligence Agency, where he is the director.
Mr. Pompeo, a West Point graduate best known for savaging Hillary Clinton’s response to the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, when she was secretary of state, has called for the Iran nuclear agreement to be ripped up, played down talk of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and suggested that regime change in North Korea would be a welcome development.
Those views have put him in good stead with Mr. Trump, whom White House aides said has come to value Mr. Pompeo’s pungent opinions and hard-charging style during his presidential daily briefings. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has publicly undermined Mr. Tillerson while the secretary of state has responded with thinly veiled contempt.
Mr. Pompeo, analysts said, would bring other qualities to the State Department that could make him more effective than Mr. Tillerson, not least his healthy relationship with the president. Mr. Pompeo has won credit at the C.I.A. for consulting the agency’s professional staff, something that Mr. Tillerson has conspicuously chosen not to do.
But based on his record and recent statements, experts said, Mr. Pompeo will line up squarely with the hawks in an administration that is already hard-line on issues including Iran and North Korea.
“Pompeo has done nothing but talk about how we need to take the gloves off,” said Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “There’s no reason to believe he would change his views if you put him in charge of the State Department.”........................
