Power Plays in the State Department
Anyi Li
On Wednesday, October 27, Michael Mckinley, former U.S. Ambassador to Peru (2007-2010), Columbia (2010-2013), Afghanistan (2014-2016), and Brazil (2017-2018), visited The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He stopped to speak and have coffee with our class PWAD 489H: Empire and Diplomacy on various topics, ranging from recent developments in Afghanistan to his experience working in the Foreign Service.
During class time, he conducted a Question and Answer session. A student in our class asked him, “are there power plays and political intrigues within the State Department and specifically in the foreign services?” Ambassador Mckinley smiled and candidly answered, “Yes.” Though he didn’t dive too deep into all the details, we can still grasp what he means in the column he wrote in The Atlantic on October 23, 2020.
In the article, he specifically addressed how the former Secretaries of State Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson weaponized the State Department at the urging of former President Donald Trump to engage in activities that seek to further Trump’s domestic political agenda rather than promoting the national interest of the nation. For instance, Secretary Pompeo authorized the release of more of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s emails days before the 2020 general election to smear the Democratic Party establishment to help former President Trump secure reelection over the current President Biden (then-Democratic presidential candidate and Trump’s No.1 rival).
Obviously, this blatant politicization of the State Department didn’t yield the result that former President Trump or former Secretary Mike Pompeo had hoped. Trump still lost the election in 2020 with a larger margin than his victory in 2016. However, as Ambassador Mckinley said in our class, the Trump presidency’s damage to U.S. foreign relations and foreign services institutions remains. Under former Secretary Rex Tillerson’s program of purging Foreign Service Officers “disloyal” to President Trump, more than 100 of the 900 were forced to leave their posts, including some of the most visible minority and women officers. And it falls on the current Biden administration to repair such damages.
Bibliography:
McKinley, Peter Michael. “The Politicization of the State Department Is Almost Complete.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 23 Oct. 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/state-departments-politicization-almost-complete/616795/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share. Accessed 2 Feb. 2022.