/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

Donald Trump announced that he would replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with current CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, who is "more in line with Donald Trump's 'America First' foreign policy."

At least CNN thinks that this move will result in restraints being removed from Donald Trump enacting the foreign policy he wants to enact.
>[it is the] latest move in an audacious power play designed to build a governing team in his own image and to purge restraints that have tempered his brazen, impulsive instincts.
>Weeks of staff departures in the West Wing, with the prospect of more to come, and days of turmoil and chaotic governance have left Trump more solitary than ever before, but also offer space for him to give his disruptive, nonconformist impulses free rein.
>There is a building sense that Trump is relishing the prospect of running the presidency of which he always dreamed, as he acts from the gut, disregards "expert" advice and lives out the convention-trashing promise of his campaign.
>"I'm really at a point where we're getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want," Trump, a President who values personal loyalty, told reporters Tuesday.

Here's some of what that means for US foriegn policy. But expect a change.
>In the short term, Trump's desire to move Mike Pompeo from the CIA to the State Department could actually provide more coherence and stability to US foreign policy after months of chaos, given his ideological synergy with the President.
>That will be especially important with the approaching epochal summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It could also reinforce the President's determination to do away with the Iran nuclear deal, given that both Trump and Pompeo have been strident critics of the Obama-era agreement.
>The expected eventual departure of McMaster will give Trump the chance to round out his foreign policy unit, and will leave Defense Secretary James Mattis as perhaps the final restraining influence on Trump's diplomacy.
>The overhaul in the foreign policy team also represents a final break with the Republican foreign policy establishment, which had been instrumental in pushing the claims of Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief.
http://archive.is/z7dHl