Mike Pompeo, the execrable Trumpist buffoon that heads the State Department for the next 9 days, is busy throwing sand in the gears of U.S. foreign relations at the last minute to deliberately undermine the incoming Biden Administration. Pompeo's last minute mischief is in line with his cult leader's unAmerican refusal to permit an orderly transition of power, leaving major problems for President Biden to clean up.
Starting last night, Pompeo announced the designation of the Iran-backed Yemeni group the Houthis as a terrorist organization. The designation complicates the delivery of humanitarian supplies to the desperately in need Yemenis who are dying from famine and disease while fighting Saudi-backed forces. Then, in an obvious payoff to Florida's so-called Cubano Gusano hard right electorate which overwhelmingly supported Trump, he is also putting Cuba back on the state-sponsored terrorism list, guaranteeing the Cuban regime's backsliding on human rights, etc. A third cynical move was removing some long-standing restrictions on U.S. government dealings with Taiwan, which China views as its territory under the "One China" policy, and which China has already objected to.
If they were legitimate, all of these actions could have been taken earlier in the Trump regime. That they weren't reinforces the conclusion that they were meant to hamstring the Biden Administration's foreign policy. Per the linked article:
"The announcements themselves won’t outright prevent President-elect Joe Biden from rolling back President Donald Trump’s foreign policies, experts said, but will make it more politically and diplomatically difficult to do so.
'You have a whole group of things coming together as the administration leaves,' said Anthony Cordesman, a scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'This administration is certainly going out with more of a bang than a whimper.'
Cordesman said there are ways the Biden administration can try to ignore or sidestep the latest policy pronouncements that don’t completely box in its foreign-policy priorities. But they represent diplomatic land mines the Biden administration will have to carefully work to avoid." (our emphasis)
While this "soft sedition" is expected from the Trumpists, but it's no less despicable.
(photo: Pompeo and his seditious cult leader. Sky News)
