The US State Department is considering dropping "democracy" from its key mission statement - Washington Post

The US State Department is considering dropping "democracy" from its key mission statement as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson orders his department to redefine its purpose to the world.

The draft statements under review right now are similar to the old mission statement, except for one thing - any mention of promoting democracy is being eliminated.

According to an internal email that went out on Friday, the State Department's Executive Steering Committee convened a meeting of leaders to draft new statements on the department's purpose, mission and ambition, as part of the overall reorganisation of the State Department and USAID. (The draft statements were being circulated for comment on Friday and could change before being finalised.)

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--The State Department's draft statement on its purpose is: "We promote the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally."

--The State Department's draft statement on its mission is: "Lead America's foreign policy through global advocacy, action and assistance to shape a safer, more prosperous world."

--The State Department's draft statement on its ambition is: "The American people thrive in a peaceful and interconnected world that is free, resilient and prosperous."

Compare that to the State Department Mission Statement that is currently on the books, as laid out in the department's fiscal year 2016 financial report:

"'The Department's mission is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere. This mission is shared with the USAID, ensuring we have a common path forward in partnership as we invest in the shared security and prosperity that will ultimately better prepare us for the challenges of tomorrow.'"

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Former senior State Department officials from both parties said eliminating "just" and "democratic" from the State Department's list of desired outcomes is neither accidental nor inconsequential.

"The only significant difference is the deletion of justice and democracy," said Elliott Abrams, who served as deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy during the George W Bush administration. "We used to want a just and democratic word, and now apparently we don't."

The mission statement is important because it sends a signal about American priorities and intentions to foreign governments and people around the world, said Mr Abrams, who was considered by Mr Tillerson for the job of deputy secretary of state but rejected by President Trump.

"That change is a serious mistake that ought to be corrected," he said. "If not, the message being sent will be a great comfort to every dictator in the world."

Tom Malinowski, who served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour for the Obama administration, said the new proposed mission statement brings US foreign policy into closer alignment with that of some of America's chief adversaries, including Russia.

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"It's a worldview similar to that of Putin, who also thinks that great powers should focus exclusively on self protection and enrichment, rather than promoting democracy," he said. "By removing all reference to universal values and the common good it removes any reason for people outside the United States to support our foreign-policy. That said, I appreciate the honesty with which Tillerson projects his cynicism."

Mr Malinowski also predicted that the change, if it becomes permanent, would sow confusion throughout the ranks of the State Department's civil and foreign service because hundreds of State Department officials work on congressionally funded programmes every day that are meant to promote democracy and justice abroad.

Adding to the confusion, Mr Trump occasionally trumpets democracy promotion, for example when it comes to Cuba or Venezuela. But in his inauguration speech, Mr Trump made clear that democracy promotion would not be a feature of his foreign policy.

"We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow," Mr Trump said.

The changes in the State Department mission statement may not seem very significant viewed in isolation. But Mr Tillerson has made several statements and decisions that indicate he plans to lower the priority of democracy and human rights in US foreign policy.

In his first speech to his State Department employees, he said promoting American values "creates obstacles" to pursuing America's national security interests. In March, he broke tradition by declining to appear personally to unveil the State Department's annual human rights report.

In another example, the State Department will soon eliminate the www.humanrights.gov website and move its content to an alternative web address, www.state.gov/j/drl, a State Department official said.

"It's just so gratuitous. What efficiency is achieved or money is saved by taking something that is prominent on the Internet and hiding it?" said Mr Malinowski. "The consequence is that it's the 9,456th signal sent by the administration that they don't care about promoting American values."

The State Department declined to comment.

The Washington Post

Vladimir Putin Doesn't Understand the Limits of Donald Trump's Power - TIME

Vladimir Putin Doesn't Understand the Limits of Donald Trump's Power

Simon Shuster

August 1, 2017

There are still many in Russia who take pleasure in watching the White House consumed by infighting and stumbling from one setback to another, most recently the failure to push through health care reform and the rapid hiring and firing of foul-mouthed communications director Anthony Scaramucci. But the more common feeling around the Kremlin these days might seem familiar to many Republicans. After observing Trump in office for more than six months, there is a mix of disappointment and foreboding.

President Vladimir Putin seems particularly out of sorts. By now he has realized that betting on Trump represents a mistake he has made before with Western leaders, and his decision on Sunday to expel hundreds of diplomats and other personnel from the U.S. embassy in Moscow shows that he’s ready to cut his losses. “There was nothing more to wait for,” his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said in explaining the decision on Monday. “It was all pretty obvious.”

And Putin should have known better. His closest alliances with the West have all gone the same way. Whether it was Jacques Chirac in France, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, each was built on a personal rapport with an incoming head of state, always another man, usually also a blowhard. Each collapsed when that leader was confronted by the limitations of democracy: term limits, a free press, an independent legislature, an unhappy electorate, or any of the other checks and balances built into their constitutions. But with each new attempt at a friendship with the West, Putin seemed to hope that his counterparts could override these curbs on their authority the same way Putin has done in Russia.

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They have always let him down, though none quite as spectacularly as President Trump. The U.S. Congress sent Trump a veto-proof bill on July 27 imposing new sanctions on Russia for its alleged interference in the U.S. presidential elections last year, not even a month after the two Presidents met for the first time during the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. To many in Moscow, the legislation proved Trump to be a feckless leader, unable to make good on his earnest promises to “get along” with Russia. “Since Trump cannot handle his own lawmakers, it means he is weak,” the Russian political analyst Alexei Makarkin wrote in an analysis of the sanctions bill.

But the point Makarkin missed was the one that Putin also seems incapable of getting his head around: that members of the U.S. Congress, including the Republicans, are not Trump’s “own lawmakers.” They represent a co-equal branch of government, much like the judiciary that has repeatedly blocked Trump’s agenda on immigration.

That confusion over the limits on executive authority goes back to the early years of Putin’s presidency, when he established control over the Russian media and began to assume that his Western counterparts could do the same in their countries. During a summit in 2005 with then-President George W. Bush, Putin refused to believe that the U.S. commander-in-chief does not have the power to muzzle American journalists. “Don’t lecture me about the free press,” Putin said, according to Bush’s memoir. “Not after you fired that reporter.”

It took a moment for Bush to realize what Putin was talking about. “Vladimir,” he said, “Are you talking about Dan Rather?” The veteran broadcaster had been forced to apologize and resign from CBS News a few months earlier, not due to any White House fiat but because of a flawed report on Bush’s service in the National Guard. In Putin’s eyes, the incident showed that the American posturing about freedom of the press was a charade. Bush tried to set him straight. “I strongly suggest you not say that in public,” he recalls telling the Russian President. “The American people will think you don’t understand our system.”

But that’s just it – he doesn’t. A few years into my stint as a reporter in Moscow, I lost track of the number of officials who tried to explain to me that there is no such thing as an independent journalist. One official even started our interview by exclaiming that American reporters are all just secret agents in disguise. This is how Pavel Astakhov, then the Kremlin ombudsmen for children’s rights, greeted me one afternoon in 2013: “The CIA is here!” he shouted, laughing, to his assistant. “Send him in!”

He wasn’t entirely kidding. In Russian officialdom (and among the public generally) people often assume that the West functions a lot like Russia, with a tame judiciary, a subservient media and a ruling clique that pulls all the strings. This view of the world makes it easier to brush away foreign criticism: if everyone is corrupt, no one has the right to judge. But a lot of very senior officials in Moscow also happen to believe this.

They tended to believe, for instance, that Trump would be able to override the other branches of government in pursuing his agenda, especially when it comes to easing U.S. sanctions against Russia. On a deeper level, they believe that power in the U.S., like in Russia, is concentrated in the hands of the executive, while the rest is mostly democratic window dressing.

And that conviction is not likely to budge amid the latest lesson in American civics. On Russian state television channels, Trump’s failure to silence the media and force his agenda through Congress and the courts has simply been cast as further proof that the U.S. is run by some all-powerful cabal – only this time the cabal has turned on the U.S. President.It is a new twist on a familiar narrative, and it suggests that the Kremlin still holds out hope for Trump getting a grip on the American system and steering it toward an alliance with Moscow. “We have fed the hope that the situation will change,” Putin lamented on Sunday in a televised interview. “But it seems that if this change does come, it won’t be soon.”