CIA Director Mike Pompeo is on course to become US Secretary of State, after narrowing avoiding the humiliation of becoming the first nominee to be rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
I spoke with Monocle 24’s The Briefing on Tuesday about the likely impact of Pompeo’s move to the State Department, predicting uncertainty as the new Secretary of State is caught between his appointment as a Trump loyalist, rather than as a head with diplomatic experience, and his representation of his badly depleted Department’s analysis of key issues such as Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
There are genuine doubts about Mike Pompeo, but the broader doubts are about whether Donald Trump can have anything resembling a coherent foreign policy when scores of high-level State Department positions are not filled.
Listen from 11:51:
