I love a good ol’ fashioned common sense
perspective, as it sometime seems lacking in the world today, and while
watching Fareed Zakaria GPS this morning with guest Richard Haas, President of
the Council on Foreign Relation, I received a much needed dose.
I have always enjoyed Haas’s perspective as he
seems to be a straight shooter, who I have heard both criticize and compliment
Barack Obama in the past. Recently, Haas
called for the resignation of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but not because
of the reason you might think, that at different times, his own boss has gone
out of his way to emasculate him in public.
It’s true, while Tillerson was meeting with
Chinese counterparts, the President disparaged his own diplomatic efforts, and
separately undermined the Secretary of State at every turn as he tried to work
a deal between Saudis and Qatar.
But Haas went on to say that Tillerson has
made a bad situation worse, because of his focus on reducing the size of the
State Department staff. Calling the
savings a routine rounding error in the budget, Haas asked why we should be
doing this with magnitude of the diplomatic challenges we currently face,
including one in South Korea, asking “Why don't we have an ambassador there
nowa?” He went on to say:
“We face as large a diplomatic inbox any
administration has ever faced in modern times, and this Secretary of State
seems focused on reducing the diplomatic capacity of his own department
staff. I simply don't think that is wise
”.
Neither do the majority of Americans who still
believe that the world doesn't end on the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans.
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