Diplomacy: Who's Mike Pompeii?

The least you can say is that with Mike Pompeii at the head of the State Department, American foreign policy will become even more muscular: harsh with the great Chinese opponent (with political instruments and trade sanctions), but fast with European allies. The first test ban will be the nuclear agreement with Obama's signed Iran, but strongly supported by all EU countries, except from Russia and China: Trump has rebuked him, but still has not broken a deal that has always been protected by Rex Tillerson.

Cadet, soldier, the flag of Tea Party's radical right in Congress, and, finally, chief of spying services, Pompeii has always expressed himself willing to blow up an agreement with Tehran that, like Trump, considers catastrophic. In the last 14 months, he's been silent about it, but only because his role in the CIA forced him to be reserved. He is unlikely to have changed his judgment, even though, called upon to analyze reality with the lens of secret services, he has been able to assess some advantages that that that agreement brings, in terms of the prospect of a rapid completion of the nuclear weapons programme, on the part of the Republic of Ayatolahs.

The units with the verification of the deal will take place in May. It has to be said that with this American military son of Kansas, the first in his class at West Point Academy, for five years the Mechanized Horseman who was deployed by the Army along the Iron PErd, before he went to his career as Congressman, Trump Administration policy seems more militarized. But the truth is that generals who should have put order in the White House and in foreign policy, cabinet chief John Kelly and National Security adviser HR McMister, are not able to control Trump, his election and mood mourning.

McMister, long-oriented to exit from the scene, can be replaced very quickly. It's about a non-military successor, but certainly more radical than John Bolton. As for the Pentagon's head, James Mattis, he could be weakened by the appearance of Tillerson, with which he was often in harmony in efforts to ease Trump's explosions, and to provide security to NATO's European allies. So more correct, to talk about a more muscular policy: a perspective that is still alarming.

And yet at European diplomatic facilities in Washington, the Tillerson-Pompeo change has been expected with almost some relief. It has long been clear that, with the former director general of Exxon at the helm of diplomacy, US foreign policy was paralyzed: with ambassadors and the best of the secret services leaving the State Department, entire director without leadership, president and his minister agreeing to nothing, from Russia to environmental protection, to Iran. To the dialogue with the North Korean dictator, who was declared by Trump without Tillerson's knowledge, who was traveling to Africa. With Pompeii there's a less dam, since it appears in the synton with Trump in almost everything.

But there will also be an end to the confusion of the double track, while Pompeo, who no one disputes professional skills, should manage to reorganize and give a role to the State Department. He did it in the CIA, where, although he did not give up his radical conservative ideas, he won the appreciation and respect of the structure. Enjoying Trump, but never allowing him or anyone else on his team to interfere with the Agency. / Corriere della Sera ʹworld.al