Sohn: White House swamps U.S. as foreign powers grow

A man at the Seoul Train Station in South Korea walks by a TV screen last month during a local news program reporting about North Korea's missile firing. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A man at the Seoul Train Station in South Korea walks by a TV screen last month during a local news program reporting about North Korea's missile firing. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

While Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis and the rest of America worry about North Korea, China, Iran and Russia, many of the office suites reserved for the U.S. diplomats are empty or have temporary fill-ins.

Likewise many of the offices normally reserved for the top civilian officials at the Pentagon - those who help when the diplomats can't - are empty.

Add to that, the fact that the head of Homeland Security just vacated his office to move into the West Wing as Trump's new chief of staff.

If you're thinking that our defenses - especially those front line defenses known as diplomats - are looking a bit bare, you're right.

Despite all of President Donald Trump's campaign pledges to build up our military and homeland security forces, he's left those forces to wither with no leadership and no peacemakers.

As of mid-June, Trump had roughly 1,100 top-tier positions to fill across his administration, but had only nominated 111 individuals for them. Further, only 41 had cleared the Senate, according to CNN Money. The Pentagon alone has 150 vacancies.

No president in modern history had fallen so far behind in naming heads of agencies, assistant secretaries, ambassadors and other critical leadership roles that require Senate approval. In the first four months of former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, each had named more than 200 nominees, with more than half of them approved by the Senate.

Without critical leadership, agencies are left rudderless - even neutered.

Trump has blamed Democrats in the Senate - especially when we had no ambassador to the United Kingdom in place after a terrorist attack in London in the spring: "Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals," our president squawked by tweet.

It turned out, however, that while Trump had announced in January that he would nominate Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets to that UK post, his administration did not follow through and send over the formal paperwork for the nomination. The same was true of a handful of other intended hires. Without the formal nominations, the Senate had nothing to work with.

In the State Department, only two of 32 top department leadership positions (including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson) has been filled with a Senate-confirmed appointee. And only five individuals had been officially nominated as of one week ago. Meanwhile, our top cyber diplomat, Christopher Painter, apparently was forced out of the department at the end of July. The cyber security office will be folded into the Economic bureau, according to State Department employees.

Can there be any doubt as to why this administration seems to have no coherent or consistent foreign policy?

Tom Countryman, a former State Department assistant secretary who left earlier this year, recently told CBS News that leaving those deputy positions empty was "handicapping" Tillerson while helping other countries - friends and adversaries alike - to set the international agenda.

Just ask Russia, which continues its cyber-meddling. Just ask North Korea, which continues its nuclear missile testing.

What are we doing?

As a New York Times editorial below posits on Tuesday: "It is not at all clear that Mr. Trump's chaotic White House and weakened State Department are in any position to take these ideas [a proposal under which North Korea would freeze its nuclear and missile testing in return for the United States and South Korea limiting their military exercises] and turn them into a coherent negotiating strategy."

Instead, Trump has made his 36-year-old son-in-law Jared Kushner something of a Swiss Army knife that so far appears stuck shut. Kushner, whose background is in real estate, was tapped to head the White House Office of American Innovation, intended to reinvent government using inspiration from the private sector. That job title included fixing Veterans Affairs, workforce development and opioid addiction, according to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Kushner also became what The Washington Post reported as "the primary point of contact" for presidents, ministers and ambassadors from "more than two dozen countries." Just to be clear, that's more than 24 countries. What's left for Rex Tillerson? Especially with Kushner supposedly brokering peace in the Middle East and all.

All the while, Korea readies missiles. Russia hacks. China and Germany set the tone on trade and climate change. France invites the world's scientists to innovate energy and technology advances. The rest of the world hums along.

And America becomes weak as the Trump White House chases its tail.

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