'Everyone is bracing': Diplomats worry Trump will toss all their work 'in the dumpster'
The U.S. foreign policy establishment is bracing for major changes on the brink of another Donald Trump presidency.
The president-elect has promised to fire thousands of "deep state" government workers and replace them with political loyalists, and there's a last-minute push to speed up efforts to support Ukraine, restrain Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and carry out other Biden administration priorities before Trump appointees can roll back those endeavors, reported The Guardian.
“I’m skeptical that the transition process will be super-impactful since the natural instinct of the new team will be to toss all of Biden’s foreign policy in the dumpster,” said one former senior diplomat.
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Trump has already tapped hawkish former State Department official Brian Hook to lead the transition for the diplomatic corps, and within the department there are concerns that the incoming administration will slash entire bureaus overseeing population, refugees and migration and democracy, human rights and labor.
“Everyone is bracing [themselves],” said one diplomat stationed abroad. “Some [diplomats] may choose to leave before he even arrives.”
The Project 2025 policy memo released by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which is staffed by many former Trump administration officials, calls for sweeping changes to the State Department and other government agencies, but some believe the chaos inherent to the former president's leadership will hinder some of those efforts.
“If you go back to 2016, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall, and, you know, it doesn’t look like there was a secret plan to defeat ISIS,” said Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security think tank. “Some of these things didn’t turn out the way that they were talked about on that campaign trail and we go into this without really knowing what the president’s proposal will be for all of this – and what he will do.”