According to the Washington Post, Trump plans to destroy much of the State Department’s organization and bureaucracy.
Trump associates echo “Trump’s insistence on the need to ‘drain the swamp’ of national security officials who are not prepared to forcefully and enthusiastically implement whatever his priorities may be.”
Under a Trump rewriting of federal personnel guidelines that allows the president to replace both political and career officials well down the bureaucratic ladder in jobs that do not require confirmation, it suggests firing officialsdown to at least the level of deputy assistant secretaries.
“No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day,” Skinner recommended.
Those proposals echo Trump’s distrust of international institutions and multilateral commitments, evinced in his first term withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization during the covid-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden returned the United States to both Paris and the WHO and spent several fruitless years trying to renegotiate a new Iran nuclear agreement.
Lt. Gen. Kellogg, who initially served as Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser before becoming chief of staff at Trump’s National Security Council, has indicated that the State Department would play a reduced role in Trump diplomacy.