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By the time Secretary of State Michael Pompeo was wrapping up a 10-day swing by Europe and the Middle East, he had angered Turkey’s leaders, infuriated the Palestinians and befuddled the French.
It’s a visit that appeared nearly calculated to offend — and to burnish Pompeo’s conservative credentials for a doable 2024 presidential marketing campaign. Never one for niceties of etiquette or protocol, Pompeo’s final huge tour as America’s 70th secretary of state supplied provocations of those that have questioned Donald Trump’s “America First” overseas coverage and Pompeo’s function as its No. 1 promoter.
Like President Trump, Pompeo refuses to publicly acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov. three election. Nonetheless, the seven-nation journey, one of many longest he’s taken as secretary, supplied proof that Pompeo is already trying previous the Trump period, chockablock as the journey was with pronouncements probably to make Biden’s life tough and setting out a platform for his personal political future.
“He’s spending his last two months in office trolling the world,” mentioned Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow on the Brookings Institution. “It’s an odd role for the nation’s top diplomat to be playing at a rather sensitive time.”
The journey began in Paris, the place Pompeo’s first occasion — earlier than seeing authorities officers — was a personal assembly with reporters from right-wing French media, together with Valeurs Actuelles. It’s {a magazine} that was roundly condemned as racist — and was put beneath preliminary investigation by a prosecutor — after printing a picture that depicted a Black French lawmaker as a slave in a bit of fiction.
In Turkey, Pompeo proposed that authorities ministers come to him in Istanbul — they refused — the place he met with the top of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Turkish officers known as Pompeo’s assertion on spiritual freedom in the nation “extremely inappropriate,” whereas senior State Department officers blamed a scheduling battle for his failure to journey to Ankara, the capital. In Georgia, Pompeo waded into that nation’s election dispute, lending legitimacy to a authorities that has cracked down on protesters demanding a brand new vote.
Pompeo Wine
Pompeo hit peak anti-diplomacy by visiting a vineyard in the Israel-occupied West Bank that after named a pink mix after him — with a label that claims #madeinlegality — for his pro-settlement stance. Under any earlier administration, Republican or Democrat, this could have been forbidden, not least as a result of Palestinian households nonetheless declare the land on which the vineyard was constructed.
“He visited settlements, drank from the poisoned chalice, sanctioned dispossession,” the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper mentioned in an editorial on Pompeo’s final day in Israel. “These are the last days of Pompeo. How good it is that this is the case.”
Through all of it, the query was – why? What was so essential that it merited a visit simply as France, Israel and different nations undertake new lockdowns in a determined effort to get the coronavirus beneath management earlier than Christmas?
The tour was deliberate nicely earlier than the U.S. election, and secretaries of state routinely journey in the lame-duck interval between election and inauguration. Before the journey, senior State Department officers mentioned it had many objectives: honoring the victims of terrorism in France, selling spiritual freedom and discussing the diplomatic agreements between Israel, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
A senior division official, talking to reporters on situation of anonymity on Sunday, rejected the thought the journey was a victory lap or geared toward furthering Pompeo’s ambitions. The official described it as essential diplomacy even amid the pandemic and mentioned the administration would pursue its insurance policies till it’s not in workplace any extra, each time that is perhaps.
But there’s by no means has been a state of affairs like this, as Trump refuses to concede his re-election loss and the coronavirus in the U.S. continues to shatter data.
Awkward Issue
Two folks aware of Pompeo’s conversations mentioned the folks he met with largely averted the difficulty of the U.S. elections.
Shortly earlier than he departed the U.S., when requested at a briefing whether or not he was getting ready for a Biden administration, he mentioned, “I’m preparing for a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Although it appeared to be a joke, Pompeo was criticized for making mild of an election disaster in his personal nation contemplating the U.S. typically calls out different nations’ voting travails.
Pompeo added, “When the process is complete, there’ll be electors selected. There’s a process.”
As for the officers he met on the highway, they appear already to have moved on. French President Emmanuel Macron noticed Pompeo for just a few minutes, dropping in for what his workplace known as a “courtesy visit” on the finish of Pompeo’s assembly with Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. French officers made certain to inform reporters the assembly had taken place at Pompeo’s request.
Throughout his travels, Pompeo averted any alternative for reporters to query him in regards to the transition and Biden. He didn’t maintain a information convention or a briefing. The State Department blamed coronavirus restrictions.
In truth, America’s prime diplomat did nearly no public diplomacy. The solely place he supplied any public statements was Israel, the place he commented 3 times.
Golan Heights
Pompeo traveled by helicopter to a army outpost-turned-tourist cease in the Golan Heights. Near a present store and an indication promoting mozzarella pizza, Pompeo received a briefing from retired Brigadier General Avigdor Kahalani, a former tank commander who rebuffed a Syrian assault throughout preventing in 1973.
“It was all the rage in the salons in Europe and in the elite institutions in America to say that this should be returned to Syria,” Pompeo mentioned of the Golan, with out mentioning that successive prime ministers, together with the present one, Benjamin Netanyahu, had held secret talks on withdrawing from the realm. “Imagine, imagine with Assad in control of this place, the risk, the harm to the West and to Israel and to the people of Israel.”
Pompeo additionally stopped at a museum that highlights the contributions made by non-Jews to Israel through the years. It’s known as Friends of Zion.
“I do see it as another Trump effort to nail down his legacy, but for ‘nail down his legacy’ you could read ‘stick a thumb in the eye of his critics,’” mentioned Kenneth Pollack, a resident scholar on the American Enterprise Institute. “Pompeo may have other things in mind, particularly nailing down his own relationship with Israel for his own future prospects.”
Officials denied that Pompeo was intent on advancing insurance policies that can change into booby traps for Biden if he seeks to return to a much less one-sided coverage on Israel and the Palestinians.
The largest announcement of Pompeo’s journey was that the U.S. will permit items produced in Israeli settlements to carry a “Made in Israel” label. Moves like that might be tough for Biden to undo, subjecting him to criticism from Republicans operating for president in 2024 — maybe together with Pompeo — that he’s weak in his help of Israel.
A centerpiece of Trump’s overseas coverage has been strengthening ties with Saudi Arabia, so it was becoming that one in every of Pompeo’s final stops is Neom, the Saudi metropolis that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is establishing in the desert as a testomony to Saudi technological development.
“I find the trip bizarre, but I think I can explain it in terms of Pompeo’s obeisance to Trump and highlight the issues his boss has pursued,” mentioned Aaron David Miller, senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Mideast official on the State Department. “It has as much to do with Pompeo’s own politics as it does with a president who is quickly fading in the rear view mirror.”
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