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Is Pompeo Countering Trump’s Foreign Policy Initiatives?
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There is ample evidence that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is actively involved in countering President Trump’s diplomatic and foreign policy initiatives.
Moreover, Pompeo seems to have endorsed the Russiagate narrative on behalf of the President.
He has been entrusted (not by Trump) to “convince senators that President Trump knows that Russia interfered in the 2016 election” See NY Post
“He has a complete and proper understanding of what happened,”
On Russia, Pompeo will tell senators that “I personally made clear to the Russians that there will be severe consequences for interference in our democratic process.” He doesn’t say what those consequences would be, but he goes on to list “a staggering number of actions to protect our interests,” including sanctions that were essentially forced upon the White House by Congress. He leaves open the question of whether Trump delivered a similarly tough message to Putin. Bloomberg News.
The media casually tags Pompeo’s statement as “damage control”.
What is at stake on the part of Secretary of State Pompeo is a deliberate initiative to undermine the president’s foreign policy stance with regard to Russia and North Korea.
The Crimea Declaration
The controversial “Crimea Declaration” document drafted by the US State Department was in part directed against Trump who failed to blame or condemn Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki summit. Moreover, back in June, responding to reporters on Air Force One regarding US recognition of Russia’s claim on Crimea”, president Trump responded: “We’re going to have to see.”
In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo tacitly placed the blame on president Trump:
He [Pompeo] also unveiled a Crimea Declaration that repeated U.S. condemnation of Russia’s 2014 attacks on Ukraine and its invasion and annexation of Crimea, and demanded Putin respect international boundaries.
The declaration was designed, in part, to put to rest ambiguity created by Trump when he chose not to condemn Putin’s actions when the two appeared together in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16. (Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2018)
Pompeo however “refused to answer questions” regarding Trump’s “contradictory” Helsinki statements at the Senate Council on Foreign Relations hearings as well as accusations directed against the president for allegedly collaborating with the Russians.
In practice, however, Pompeo has been actively involved in countering several of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives.
With regard to Crimea, Moscow responded on the day following Pompeo’s statements to the Senate Committee, pointing to the democratic process underlying the reintegration of Crimea into the Russian Federation.
According to the Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (Russia’s Senate) Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev. Washington’s “policy of non-recognition” of the reintegration of the Crimean peninsula into the Russian Federation is doomed to fail:
“Referring to their own experience of not recognizing the absorption of the Baltic republics into the USSR in 1940, [the Americans] ‘took a solemn oath’ to behave in the same way, this time concerning Crimea as part of Russia. American strategists believe (or want to believe) that these two stories are identical and that the strategy, which worked once, is suitable for all occasions. That’s a gross misconception,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
“History has indeed put everything in its proper place,” he stated.
“Crimea is a totally different story. There was no military force, nor was there any coercion. The overwhelming majority of the population supported the return to Russia, strongly and unequivocally, while its opponents were in the minority. These reports are not fake news akin to Soviet propaganda. This is the absolute truth,” the Russian senator stressed.
According to Kosachev, Washington now “opposes the people’s will.”
“See the difference. That’s doomed to failure, historically and politically,” he concluded.
