State Department Is Completely Sidelined By Trump/Bannon White House

It is pretty clear that foreign policy in the Trump administration will only be conducted out of the White House. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has apparently become mute since his confirmation, is merely a pawn or an emissary that Trump, Bannon, and Kushner use to appease other world leaders. He has no input into any policy decision making and the State Department is effectively cut out of everything the administration is doing.

Tillerson refused to make any comment on the North Korean missile tests and is now heading off on a trip to Japan, South Korea, and China in the wake of that incident. Incredibly, he is not taking any foreign policy reporters along on the trip with him so the only reporting we will get will be the scripted comments at press briefings with his Asian counterparts, it they actually occur. Any other reporting will therefore have to rely on the foreign press and that will allow Japan, South Korea, and China to drive the narrative about their meetings.

The tensions are already high in northeast Asia. South Korea and Japan are rattled by the North Korean tests. China is furious with the deployment of the missile defense system in South Korea. There is the aggressive Chinese expansion of power in the South China Sea. I imagine that Australia, long a key ally, will be further infuriated that Tillerson isn’t even making a courtesy stop there. The question that these Asian leaders will have to ask themselves is whether Tillerson has any clout inside the White House. That decision will color whether they can “deal” with Tillerson or whether he is just a cipher to send messages back and forth with the White House.

But the real capper on the diminished state of State came when the Department’s spokesman Mark Toner was not even aware that the Mexican Foreign Minister was in Washington and meeting with Kushner, Gary Cohn, and NSA McMaster. When asked whether the State Department would be meeting with the Foreign Minister, Toner said, “I was unaware that he was – the foreign minister was in town. I can’t speak to whether there’s going to be any meetings at the State Department at any level.” Incredible.

It seems hard to believe that Trump/Bannon think they can run the government entirely out of the White House. The expertise and execution of policy in the individual departments of government are seemingly ignored. This, of course, is the way Trump and Bannon run their businesses. But it is a recipe for disaster in this complicated world and we will see the deficiency in that thinking if this White House has to confront more than one disaster at a time.