US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo already hates his new job. Wouldn’t you, if tasked with really important work, for which your entire life, to date, supples you with no training, no experience, no knowledge, no skills and no ability? That is a recipe for a terrible, awful business trip, i.e., Secretary Pompeo’s most recent fool’s errand to North Korea.
Pompeo is no dummy, which makes all of this vaguely sad. As a young man, he won appointment to the United States Military Academy and graduated 1st in his class, studying engineering management. He later went to Harvard Law and did well there, too. But Lex Luthor was also smart.
Pompeo used his time in uniform to snuggle up with the military-industrial-complex. He scurried from the Army right after his service commitment, and entered the aerospace business in Kansas with Army buddies. With investment from the Koch brothers, Pompeo’s business ventures succeeded in positioning the young Italian-American Tea Party firebrand for a run at a Kansas seat in Congress, where he won and served, until accepting Trump’s appointment as CIA Director.
For considerable time, various thinkers have noted that persons who perform their jobs well in any hierarchy tend to be promoted until they reach a job for which they lack necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, etc. This last job is where the person reaches their level of incompetence. An extended and satirical exploration of the phenomenon, published in the 1980s, spread ideas and observations about this by Laurence J. Peter, a thinker and educator, hence The Peter Principle.
I’m sure that Secretary Pompeo had fully reached his level of incompetence when Trump promoted him from Congress to the CIA Directorship. But at the CIA Pompeo didn’t really receive capable oversight and most of whatever it was that he did there happened secretly, anyway, so who’s gonna know? Also, Pompeo wasn’t at the CIA very long when Trump jumped him up to Secretary of State.
However, everyone is now watching Pompeo’s ineptitude and lack of preparation for the very likely impossible and almost certainly extremely delicate job he has been given of implementing President Trump’s pipe dreams about a denuclearized North Korea.
Hence these snippets from Bloomberg in the wake of Pompeo’s Gangsta Tour of North Korea —
From the moment Pompeo landed in Pyongyang, North Korean officials quickly asserted control. Kim Yong Chol set the optics during their first meeting, which took place around a long wooden table in one of the many conference rooms off the carpeted hallways of the guesthouse complex.
<snip>
The lack of U.S. control clearly rankled Pompeo. A former military officer accustomed to short, focused meetings, he was made to sit through multi-course meals with Kim and his staff, as waiters brought plate after plate of food -- foie gras, turkey, pea soup, boiled oak mushrooms, kimchi, watermelon and ice cream, plus a drink branded “American Cola.”
By the morning of his second day, Pompeo had enough. Instead of the elaborate breakfast prepared for him, he ate toast and slices of processed cheese.
<snip>
As he was leaving, Pompeo told reporters the conversations were “productive and in good faith.” Hours later North Korean state media issued a statement that did not mention him by name but called the demands he presented “gangster-like.”
Days before the trip began, reporters traveling with Pompeo had to rush to get new passports with a special endorsement allowing entry to North Korea. In the end, authorities in Pyongyang never stamped them and the documents were returned unblemished. It was as if the secretary had never visited at all.
It was as if the secretary had never visited at all. But, of course, it was not. Pompeo’s inevitable failure to make anything better just makes things worse. American influence in Asia becomes even more of a caricature than before. Trump’s deconstruction of American stature on the World stage continues apace.
Fortunately, nothing more important is at stake here than nuclear tipped missiles aimed at sovereign US territory and citizens.