349 - Rubbishing the American Dream

If you wanted to prostrate yourself before our enemies, say Russia and China, and if you wanted to weaken the U.S. for years, if not decades, to come, what steps would you take? Say you also wanted to cripple Washington's ability to understand what those enemies were doing to destabilize the U.S. and to lower our credibility among allies and friends? And to counter Russian and Chinese competition in strategic, mineral rich, regions of the world?

If you wanted to do such adversarial things to undermine the ability of the U.S. to continue to play a strong and resolute place in the highly charged, exceedingly dangerous, world that now exists, and if you sought even more to grab more and more for China and Russia to mess with the post-World War II rule of law environment that has existed for seventy-five years because of consistently sensible and progressive American leadership, you would seek one after another to destroy cherished American institutions.

That is what Trump and his acolytes are doing -- systematically and traitorously. After eviscerating a collection of inexpensive but forward-looking parts of the American governmental establishment like USAID and the Voice of America, attacking the Smithsonian Institution, associated museums, the National Endowments of Humanities and Arts, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and a tiny entity that funds museums across the country, Trump has now directly attacked his own State Department and the thousands of well-respected diplomats and intelligence professionals who have long provided the globe's best and most refined analyses of our enemies' intentions. The assault on the State Department equals in its shoot-yourself-in-the-foot malevolence to the gutting of the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration.

But it also equals unilateral disarmament. For whom is Trump really working? Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls the State Department "bloated, bureaucratic" and full of radical lefties -- a nonsensical claim.s

Because the State Department is now considered too woke, Rubio plans to eliminate a critical office of civilian security, democracy, and human rights; hitherto its mission has been to advance American values across the world. Trumpers call that office "a hotbed of liberal activism," without any evidence. Stripping it and sending its employees away cripples the U.S. ability to counter Russia and China across the continents.

Within that office, Trump and his people will shut the bureau for democracy and human rights, and another in charge of refugees. A counter-narcotics effort would be shut just when Trump seeks to prevent fentanyl and methamphetamines from destroying the youth of our cities. The Global Criminal Justice and Conflict and Stabilization offices would be closed, adding to the weakening of our national defenses.

Some of these excisions will save money -- ostensibly. State Department bureaus would be reduced from 734 to 602. About 700 foreign service officers and civilian employees would go -- with unmeasured losses in competence and long bundled knowledge. Russia and China will doubtless profit, the U.S. forfeit oodles of expertise. Since the State Department's budget is a mere 6 percent of the Pentagon's, these excisions are nugatory, and very compromising in our immediate loss of human understanding. AI can't possibly substitute. How can the Trump administration even try to negotiate with Iran and Russia without deep wells of expertise? How can it even begin to do without the 14,000 trained officers and 13,000 expert civilians who are being cut?

They stand things on their head, too. One of the bureaus being closed has been fighting Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation efforts.

In February, Rubio said that he was proud to preside over “the most effective, the most talented, the most experienced diplomatic corps in the history of the world” and made no mention of poisonous ideologies. Now he parrots Trump and takes a cleaver to his own department.

Embassies and consulates will be shut where we need them most and where Russia and China are busy gaining influence. China already has more persons in Africa than we do. Yet Rubio's plan is to close ten critical outposts in Africa and to give China and Russia advantages in Africa that they never had. Embassies and consulates will even be shut in Europe and Asia, a further weakening of our global infrastructure.

Why this chipping away at our diplomatic establishment is occurring at all, and why Trump is intent on destroying the essential fibre of the diplomatic corps is unclear. But the Trumpers are anxious to root out what they consider equity and diversity. The U. S. missions abroad suffer as a result. And Putin wins. There is no contest, with Russia and China forging ahead in places where there was never any serious competition.