CIA Director Mike Pompeo told senators Thursday at his confirmation hearing for secretary of State that he vows to promote democracy and end the “demoralizing” vacancies at the State Department.
“If we do not lead the calls for democracy, prosperity and human rights around the world, who will?” Pompeo said during his testimony at the hearing. “No other nation is equipped with the same blend of power and principle.”
Pompeo, a former Republican Congressman from Kansas with a reputation for a hawkish approach to American security, has been a lightning rod for criticism from rights advocates and some Democrats who worry he'll lead the president into war.
In addressing his hawkish reputation on the left, Pompeo said, “War is the last resort… and I know work for a president who feels the same.”
"The U.S. needs a military balance of power but “the best outcome are always won at the diplomatic table…. Diplomacy gives us a chance to achieve what we want peacefully,” he added.
Former Senate majority leader Bob Dole, R-Kansas, joined a group of senators who sang Pompeo’s praises before the nominee testified.
He listed the highlights of Pompeo’s resume: West Point graduate, army veteran, businessman, congressman, father, husband. “All those things add up to the experience he has,” Dole said. “He’s ready to go.”
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised Pompeo for the transparency with which he worked with the committee as CIA director.
“I would suggest to you that Mike Pompeo represents everything we crave in a nominee that we want to have,” Burr said.
Trump’s first secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s efforts to reorganize and streamline the department wound up hollowing out its top ranks, said Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, a professional organization and labor union.
“With all the threats facing our country, this is not the time to pull the foreign service team from the field and risk forfeiting the game to our adversaries,” Stephenson told USA TODAY.
Many of the State Department’s most experienced diplomats departed in the past year, while many ambassadorships remain unfilled around the world.
Pompeo said he plans to help State employees feel relevant again and to help them gain the resources they need.
“When I took over as director (of the CIA) I immediately started a massive restructure,” he said, adding that he told his staff “to come talk to me.”
“When my team needed additional resources, I asked for them. And the president never hesitated to provide,” he said. At State, “with your help I will do the same thing.”
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the ranking democrat on the Senate committee, questioned the close relationship Pompeo had developed with Trump as CIA director.
Menendez asked Pompeo if he will “enable President Trump’s worst instincts” or guide him to moderation.
“Will be working from crisis to crisis?” Menendez asked. “Will you stand up to President Trump to say ‘no’ or will you be a yes man?”
Pompeo gained President Trump’s trust while advising the president on a number of confrontations that will be decided in the coming days and months.
Syria
President Trump is in the process of deciding how to respond to an alleged chemical attack in Syria that has been blamed on forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who Russia has pledged to protect. Trump taunted Russia Wednesday, saying on Twitter that missiles “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’”
Saturday's chemical attack happened after Trump told a crowd in Ohio March 29 that he’d like to withdraw troops from Syria “very soon.” Pompeo joined other members of the president’s national security staff to warn that doing so would be a mistake, CNN reported.
In an interview with CBS News March 11, Pompeo described Trump's approach to earlier allegations of chemical attacks on rebel-held neighborhoods in the East Goutha neighborhood of the Syrian capital.
“We have a higher standard to make sure we understand precisely what took place, precisely who did it so that our response can meet the threat,” Pompeo said.
North Korea
Trump is preparing for a proposed summit in May with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss the North’s nuclear weapons program, which Kim has said is aimed at deterring a U.S. threat. Pompeo said at the Aspen Institute last July that the administration’s priority is to separate Kim from the nuclear weapons he controls.
“It’s one thing for him to have one missile capable of landing in Denver, Colo., and it’s another thing for him to have an entire arsenal, and there are things we can do to keep that capability out of his hands,” Pompeo said.
He added that there’s room for diplomacy: “We need China to help us to convince Kim it’s not in his interest to go down that path.”
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping rocked international stock markets in the past few weeks with tit-for-tat threats to impose tariffs on each other’s countries that would affect hundreds of billions of dollars in trade.
Iran Deal
Trump is also poised to decide in May on whether to kill or stick with the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.
Pompeo opposed the agreement, which limited Iran's nuclear activities for a time, while lifting international sanctions. A year after it was signed, he wrote that while the deal prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons for a few years, provisions in the deal that allow Iran to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial-scale in the future means that eventually it will be able to develop those weapons.
“Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime,” Pompeo wrote in an op-ed for Fox News in July 2016.
More recently, Pompeo told CBS News that while Obama didn’t want to upset Iran during the nuclear negotiations, the situation now is different.
“This administration has taken a much stronger approach, a much more aggressive posture with respect to countering Iran,” Pompeo said.
Russia
Pompeo has historically had some choice words for Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies said sought to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor and continues to meddle in U.S. politics even now.
“I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that, but I'm confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election (and) that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won't be great,” Pompeo told the BBC in January.
