In an interview with NR, the secretary of state argues the Trump administration did build coalitions — only without a ‘bias towards appeasement.’
In an interview with NR, the secretary of state argues the Trump administration did build coalitions — and did so without a ‘bias towards appeasement.’
P resident Trump’s combative and defiant brand of nationalism enraged his critics — some within his own administration — as much as it buoyed his base. The narrative, which calcified to a stubborn degree these past four years, was that he coddled adversaries and cold-shouldered allies, leaving America isolated.
Setting aside that Trump counter-claims Joe Biden would go easy on Iran and China, his top diplomat has another rebuttal to these kinds of charges. The claims of a go-it-alone approach, he contends, simply aren’t true.
“I hear some attack us, saying we don’t build coalitions, it’s America alone,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told National Review. “I mean, this fact is just nonsense.”
Sitting down with NR in Abu Dhabi last weekend, Pompeo reflected on an eventful three years in this post as he wrapped up an extensive tour through the Middle East. His seven-country trip featured visits to numerous U.S.-allied countries. (Click here for more from that interview.)
He discussed the prospects for more normalization agreements between Arab nations and Israel, the war in Afghanistan, and more. But a common thread in his outlook, and in his overall assessment of the administration’s foreign policy, is a stern rejection of the charge that it acted without the support of partners.
Pompeo’s comments came one day before former Trump defense secretary Jim Mattis co-authored an article for Foreign Affairs arguing, “In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’”
In disputing such claims, Pompeo pointed first to Afghanistan, maintaining, to the backdrop of the president’s controversial decision to withdraw more troops from the country, “We’ve built up partners and alliances that are performing [the mission] together.” Pompeo, a day earlier, had met with Afghan government and Taliban representatives in Doha, where negotiations over a settlement to the protracted conflict have stalled.
But Pompeo also ticked off coalitions he said were assembled to combat ISIS, isolate Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and bring Southeast Asian nations together as Beijing attempts to fortify its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Some of these efforts — namely, the coalitions in Afghanistan and against ISIS — started under previous administrations.
But his comments and his mindset shed light on how the secretary of state — a proponent of a more conventional Republican foreign policy who has staffed his State Department with 2016-era Trump opponents — has thrived in an unconventional presidency.
“It all starts with telling the truth and not having a bias towards appeasement,” Pompeo told NR. “Once you do those two things, you can build a realistic platform that others will want to become part of.”
Pompeo doesn’t leave much daylight between himself and Trump — a strategy that’s put him in the president’s good graces. But his celebration of certain alliances and international coalitions would appear to stand in contrast to Trump’s broader views on these issues.
“You know in many ways our allies treat us worse than the enemy,” Trump said during a rally in Florida in the closing days of the 2020 presidential campaign. “The enemy at least we have our guard up. Our allies, what they have done to us in terms of military protection and trade is disgraceful.”
President-elect Biden and his supporters have argued that Trump damaged America’s alliances and compromised its leadership in the world through questioning NATO’s collective self-defense guarantees, imposing tariffs on some key allies, and withdrawing the United States from several international treaties and organizations, such as the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.
More than a few Republican officials have endorsed some of these critiques, particularly regarding Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his first-year anti-NATO barbs, and the withdrawal of troops from Syria, Germany, and Afghanistan. (The president’s tough talk on NATO, however, has also been credited with convincing member states to up their defense spending.)
During a November 24 event to unveil his picks for key national-security posts in Biden’s incoming administration, the former vice president called them “a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” His intended nominee for secretary of state, former deputy secretary of state Tony Blinken, has been portrayed by Biden supporters and the media as an advocate for strong alliances who is being brought in to repair America’s global reputation under Trump.
The nature of the strained relations between the U.S. and some of its European allies was on full display during the trip’s awkward first stop in Paris. According to the Associated Press, the French Elysée called Pompeo’s visit there a “courtesy visit,” though readouts from his low-key, closed-door meetings with President Emmanuel Macron and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted discussions about the importance of maintaining the trans-Atlantic relationship and cooperating on counterterrorism and China.
The Trump administration has found itself at odds with France and others over Iran. As the State Department led a push to reimpose U.N. arms embargoes set to expire under the 2015 nuclear agreement, the European parties to the deal voted against those efforts at the Security Council. At the time, a furious Pompeo accused them of “siding with ayatollahs.”
On Sunday, his comments about the Europeans’ reluctance to act on Iran were not as blunt, expressing confidence that the European people “share the American view that says that the right way to approach this is what we think about as sort of this idea of conservative realism, where we centrally acknowledge the truth, build up coalitions around that, and then act in a way that protects Americans and builds out prosperity around the world.”
This gets to the heart of Pompeo’s stated strategy. He was warmly welcomed later in the trip by other countries that have enjoyed close ties with the United States under Trump, such as Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, demonstrating that as the president has alienated some foreign governments, his administration has reassured U.S. partners elsewhere by calling out the behavior of Iran and China.
The administration’s diplomatic push on countering China is another that Pompeo addressed in his interview with National Review.
“See the agreement between the Australians and the Japanese yesterday,” he said, referring to a recent security cooperation pact between the two countries. “It’s historic. You see the relationship between the United States and India and the Quad.” The Quad is a grouping of the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia that appears poised to contest China’s bid for dominance in the Indo-Pacific.
“These are historic sets of relationships built up by the Trump administration based on simple facts that we laid bare for the whole world to see,” he said.
Pompeo’s acknowledgement of the central importance of certain alliances hasn’t necessarily put him at odds with the president. It appears more a translation of Trump’s instincts and tough talk into global coalitions against malign actors.
Later in the interview, the secretary of state answered a question about how he would like to be remembered for his time at Foggy Bottom. While stressing his efforts at coalition-building, he did not shy away from the America First worldview that brought Trump into office:
“For every hour that I have as America’s secretary of state, I’m going to continue to do my best to take President Trump’s guidance and implement it and demonstrate American leadership all around the world in a way that fundamentally addresses the president’s America First view.”