On the first day of the open-hearing impeachment inquiry, Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, called his initial two witnesses, career State Department diplomats William Taylor Jr. and George Kent. They were there because of their service in the US embassy in the Ukraine.
Listening to them testify brought back vivid memories of my two years as deputy for Pacific area policy dealing daily with personnel in most of the US embassies through the Pacific region.
Our US foreign service officers are highly intelligent, well-educated and comprise the preeminent foreign service in the world.
Having said that, there is one additional, overarching distinguishing feature; they operate in and support a powerful and pervasive culture of elitism. They are nice folks, pleasant to be around but that culture is part of who they are and how they operate. The purpose of making that point is to amplify my assessment of their congressional testimony during the week of 18 November.
Far from providing damning evidence of criminal presidential behavior, the State Department personnel mostly confined themselves to four topics:
First, a 20-30-minute opening statement describing, in agonizing detail, their own sterling résumés and that they know more about how the Ukraine should be treated than anyone on earth.
Secondly, for the most part they had zero first-hand knowledge of incriminating actions by President Trump.
Third, their poorly hidden disgust with President Trump’s foreign policy.
And fourth, their disdain for the president’s personal envoy, Rudy Giuliani.
Based on my experiences with the State Department, none of the these surprised me; let me elaborate on 3 and 4.
Constitutionally, the president is charged with defining US foreign policy, not the State Department. The State Department executes. But what happens is that Ambassadors and their staffs become fixated on “their country”, begin to believe they know what is best for “their country” regardless of how it may or may not “fit” into the President’s global policy, regional policy or specific policy for that particular country.
One of the most important pieces of the Trump foreign policy is an ongoing effort to re-think our decades-old policies on foreign assistance which is normally about $50 billion per year. The problem is that much of that assistance goes to countries wherein corruption is endemic and where a significant portion of the “aid” is routinely syphoned off leaving little actual aid for the intended users.
A good example, would be a shipment of foodstuffs or MREs (meals ready to eat) to be distributed to a starving populace. It is not unusual to find those products FOR SALE the following day in the local markets.
The issue in the impeachment hearings is the presence, or absence, of a quid quo pro involving a Biden investigation in return for military aid to Ukraine.
So, now let’s put the military aid to the Ukraine into the context of the President’s new foreign policy on aid to foreign nations.
When a senior leader has to make a decision on a major issue, here is what normally happens. The staff will put “everything on the table” and develop a number of courses of action (COA) for discussion and eventual decision.
In the case of aid to Ukraine, the alternatives discussed would likely have included:
COA 1: following the Trump doctrine, Ukraine (considered to be the most corrupt country in Europe) should not get any aid.
COA 2: give them the military aid (they need munitions capable of killing Russian tanks) but make it contingent on tangible efforts to clean up their corruption. That is an example of quid quo pro that is used every day in US embassies; give something, get something.
COA 3: consider in the offer, VP Biden’s successful bribe to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless they fired their corruption prosecutor. Also consider in this COA Ukraine’s role in our 2016 presidential election.
COA 4: Give them the military weapons, period.
Also consider that the aid to Ukraine was a multi-agency action; Departments of Defense, State, Energy, the White House, the US embassy in Ukraine and the European Union were all players. Emails, meetings, phone calls were ongoing for months creating a ripe environment for rumor and innuendo.
Obvious from their testimony, the Ukraine Embassy folks felt left out and believed they should have been in charge.
Presidential envoys to foreign nations to consult, negotiate and investigate have been common throughout our history. As the president’s personal envoy to assess corruption, Rudy Giuliani did not need to check-in, check-out or inform the embassy of his mission or findings. Obvious from their attitude and testimony, this was very disconcerting.
After days of, “I assumed, I thought, I understood, my impression was, my feelings were, I’ve never met the president, I have never talked to the president”, finally our ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondlund, testified that he looked President Trump in the eye and asked him, “Mr. President, what do you want from the Ukraine”? The president replied, “nothing, nothing”. Course of action #4.
By the way Ambassador Sondland had failed to include that critical
episode in his lengthy self-aggrandizing opening statement.
Marvin L. Covault