World

Marco Rubio’s rearranging of the deck chairs on the USS Trump — does it matter?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger speaks during the Department of State 230th Anniversary Celebration at the Harry S. Truman Headquarters building July 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. Kissinger served as Secretary of State for former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford from 1973 to 1977. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

By J Brooks Spector

6 May 2025

Most of America’s foreign aid programme has been gutted. Now there is a major proposed reorganisation and cutting down of the State Department in pursuit of those elusive ‘America First’ plans. Will this churn make American foreign policy more cogent, effective and focused — or will it just be smoke and mirrors?

For a brief time, it seemed like Donald Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio was setting off a bureaucratic earthquake in the management of the nation’s diplomatic efforts.

Panic followed a leaked memorandum that proposed eliminating the department’s Bureau of African Affairs, the closure of numerous embassies and consulates in Africa and Europe, consolidation of numerous functional bureaus or making them disappear entirely, as well as folding what remains of the country’s foreign assistance programs into a new, ill-defined office for humanitarian affairs.

Concurrently, another memo called for new precepts in the selection and hiring of all future foreign service officers — in close accord with that Musktrumpian doggerel about “America First”. About the only thing not in those leaked personnel guidelines was a requirement that new recruits would need to look and sound like Fox News presenters or B-movie supporting actors, but without much in the way of subject expertise. (Think younger versions of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson.)

Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defence, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (Photo:: Ken Cedeno / UPI / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The leaked documents, purportedly part of a larger plan to remake the country’s foreign policy machinery, generated howls of protest from former foreign service officers, as well as other foreign policy professionals and analysts. But among the broader public, there was a muttered “meh” and the shrug of collective shoulders about yet one more bureaucratic embarrassment in the Trump administration.

Given the helter-skelter way the Trump administration has been attacking much of the government’s institutional structure, perhaps those leaks were designed to smoke out opposition to any specific ideas before the roll-out of Marco Rubio’s real plans. Alternatively, there was the rumour that those earlier leaks were the revenge of officials shown the door by Rubio and released to embarrass him.

Waltz sidelined

In the public news cycle, those proposed bureaucratic changes were overtaken by yet another event, the sacking of Mike Waltz as the president’s national security adviser. Waltz was allowed to twist slowly in the wind before it was announced he would be nominated as the US ambassador to the UN. That is the one administration job most demeaned by the incumbent president. Waltz has precipitously fallen from the peak to the swamp.

(Now former) National Security Advisor Michael Waltz speaks on a panel titled Designing the DoD for the 21st Century Battlefield at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Hill and Valley Forum brings together lawmakers, tech CEO and venture capitalists for discussion on technology and national security. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Waltz would be the substitute for the earlier planned nomination of Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik who, following the announcement about her, was then told she would not be nominated after all because her vote in Congress was crucial, given the Republicans’ razor-thin margin in the House of Representatives.

Reportedly, besides being the fall guy for that Signal social media scandal in which sensitive planned military actions against the Houthis had been handed to a reporter electronically, Waltz was seen as out of step with Trump’s relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as well. Moreover, he was also rumoured to be an advocate for military action against Iran — perhaps in combination with Israel, even as the Trump Administration was inching towards new nuclear negotiations with that nation.

Read more: Trump’s unlikely comeback: Michael Wolff chronicles the chaos of a political resurgence

The position of national security adviser will now be on Marco Rubio’s shoulders, at least temporarily, in addition to a challenging full-time and a half-day job at State. And this will be in addition to holding the reins of what is left of the US’s foreign aid programme, and heading the National Archives and Records Agency.

Putting Rubio in the national security adviser’s seat means he will spend even more time at the White House than before and thus will be under more direct scrutiny by Donald Trump and his pack of true believers. The national security adviser has a time-consuming role herding the mob of cats comprising many government elements across all aspects of foreign affairs, beyond supervising a staff of subject and area experts that help formulate the reasoning for specific policies — with offices adjacent to the White House.

U.S. President Donald Trump listens as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump convened the meeting as reports released today say the U.S. economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, the first negative reading in three years, fueled by a massive surge in imports ahead of the administration's expected tariffs. (Photo: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

Interestingly, there is a potential benefit for Rubio from this new arrangement. Over the past several days, Donald Trump has mentioned him as a potential presidential nominee in 2028 (along with the vice-president). This is sharply different from the way Trump had denigrated Rubio during the 2016 Republican primaries.

In the lead-up to his assuming the post of secretary of state, in much of the media, Rubio had been seen as the one true, traditional Republican hope (with those traditional global interventionist bones familiar to older Republican stalwarts) in an administration populated by Musktrumpians and Manhattan real estate billionaires.

But power does things. Rubio seems to have made a near-180-degree shift in his public views about foreign policy in order to align himself with the president’s ideas, whatever they may be at any given moment. If readers will pardon the mixed metaphors, Rubio is clearly reading those tea leaves about the way the wind is blowing in Trumpland.

But given that the news is already overflowing with the Ukraine conflict, tariff yo-yo-ing madness, seemingly random cuts to many government departments by Musk’s Doge posse, ongoing Middle East conflicts, a raft of contested extraditions and immigration arrests absent due process, and more than a hundred court suits attempting to block one or another Trump executive order, it is not surprising the majority of the country was not parsing every word of proposed State Department realignments.

An intricate behemoth

In their defence of the restructuring more generally, the Trump administration has continued to fall back on its mantra of slaying “waste, fraud, and mismanagement”. In the case of the State Department, there were also bonus points being awarded for claims of dealing with inefficiency — although there have been no substantive details about those “wins”.

Of course, reorganising the State Department has not been just something of a trophy for Trump 2.0. There has been a long history of such a thing, including a very consequential one a hundred years ago with the merger of consular and diplomatic services into one system.

For many ordinary people, “real” diplomats were the ones of the movies, television and novels who discussed affairs of state over brandy and cigars in some mahogany-panelled study. But consular officers have been the people who dealt with the gritty problems of American citizens in distress abroad, who issued travel documents, and who made sure Americans arrested in some nasty foreign location had legal representation — and hopefully were released to further relations between the nations.

Over time, the foreign service divided its corps of officers into political reporters, economic analysts, consular officers, administrative specialists and public affairs officers. (The latter served in a separate agency, the US Information Agency, until it was absorbed into the State Department.)

Beyond dividing the management of diplomacy into geographical regions with desk officers responsible for individual countries, the State Department added a bureau for economic affairs, in addition to other bureaus focusing on international organisations and politico-military affairs. From World War 2 onward, it became clear that many international issues transcended traditional state-to-state relations, and these complexities led to the establishment of the post of national security adviser with a staff of subject experts.

Meanwhile, economic issues have become increasingly central to what foreign policy means for the US, making inter-agency coordination imperative, but more complex. The US Trade Representative’s office (USTR) was established, reporting directly to the president, as lead for international trade negotiations.

An independent body, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, was created as nuclear negotiations became imperative, and the US Information Agency took charge of international cultural and educational exchanges, media relations, cultural centres and the Voice of America shortwave radio network.

Meanwhile, within the State Department, a growing roster of special envoy and special ambassador positions have been appointed to deal with questions that go beyond bilateral issues, or are issues of global concern. The Trump Administration has adopted this policy with great enthusiasm.

Read more: As Trump sows chaos, electoral realignment could be coming to US politics

Adding more complexity, the Defense Department has its own mini-state department — the Bureau of International Security Affairs — and the State Department has offices for political-military affairs. The State Department’s Policy Planning Staff is an in-house strategic think tank, and there is another bureau for intelligence and research, paralleling some of what other intelligence bodies do. By the late 1970s, concerns about human rights moved closer to the centre of US foreign policy, and a nearly invisible legal adviser position blossomed into a full-scale bureau of its own.

The National Security Adviser’s central task is to coordinate this bureaucratic landscape so an administration can speak with a unified voice — or at least try to do so.

As the Donald Trump Administration came into office, one of its first moves was to shutter much of USAid’s work, with any remaining elements incorporated into a new bureau ostensibly focused on humanitarian affairs.

With all these moving parts, including special envoys and the interweaving offices, virtually any decision emanating from the State Department requires many “sign-offs” by offices whose responsibilities would be affected. Often, those clearances become turf battles, requiring clearances from other government agencies As a result, critics can claim the department is bloated, overstaffed, inefficient and wasteful, and this bureaucratic complexity means its critics often call State “the fudge factory”.

The Doge effect

Its Trumpian critics see the department as unable to move adroitly enough to suit the “America Firsters” or the urge to embrace every Musktrumpian impulse. Or, as Marco Rubio said of his proposed plan, this redesign would reverse “decades of bloat and bureaucracy” and he intended to eradicate what he believed was an ingrained “[left] radical political ideology.”

Such a charge would surprise generations of foreign service officers, let alone the leaders of many internationally oriented NGOs, or many foreign governments.

Describing Rubio’s plan, the Washington Post reported:

“The effort targets some human rights programs and others focused on war crimes and democracy… As part of the plan, senior officials would submit to department leadership a path to reduce U.S.-based staff by 15 percent, according to the documents, potentially affecting hundreds of jobs, though there would be no immediate layoffs.

“A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration, said Rubio’s plan represents the first attempt ‘in decades’ to reorganize the domestic structure of the nation’s oldest executive department. Other officials left open the possibility that far greater downsizing could occur — affecting, potentially, tens of thousands of the department’s 80,000 employees globally and numerous U.S. consulates and facilities abroad.

“The State Department has sent its reorganization plans to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which provide oversight of the department. Lawmakers in both parties have raised concerns about major changes to congressionally mandated programs and agencies that the Trump administration has signalled it wants to revamp or outright delete.”

Rubio also wrote on social media: “Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist.” He did not specify which ones or what the nature of the misalignment was.

Given the president’s longstanding animosity towards the department, it has been clear since the administration came into office that it would target State. Thus, the question was not whether cuts would happen, but how big they would be.

Others have been less kind, arguing this plan is really Rubio’s effort to wrest control of any downsizing from the Doge crowd, or as one former senior officer told the Post, it is “designed to satiate the Doge demand for cuts, irrespective of the damage to American interests”.

Congressional Democrats quickly criticised the lack of consultation with Congress and its relevant committees. The senior Democrat on the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, said, “The vital work left on Secretary Rubio’s cutting-room floor represents significant pillars of our foreign policy long supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, including former Senator Rubio — not ‘radical ideologies’ as he now claims.”

U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) reacts to the families sharing stories about their loved ones during a roundtable discussion with the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on February 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo Kayla Bartkowski / Getty Images)

Concerning the fate of the remnant of USAid, one of its former senior officials told reporters, “My biggest concern is that there is no stand-alone humanitarian assistance bureau. The same person who is supposed to be coordinating all foreign assistance across the department is also supposed to be the chief humanitarian for the US government, responsible for getting billions of dollars of assistance to the most difficult operating environments with likely 95 percent less staff than before.”

Specific changes include the termination of various foreign assistance-funded grants and contracts across USAid and the State Department that are inconsistent with administration priorities, with a total value exceeding $80-billion. The foreign aid cuts will total 85% of all aid programmes. It has also closed the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, which the administration insisted (without proof) had had a hand in censoring Americans.

Leadership matters

But the crucial point about any proposed rearrangements or cuts of its offices and staffers is that the bureaucratic arrangements of the State Department — or any department — are less important than the policies and goals espoused by a president and his top appointees. Leadership and vision matter.

Career officers can slow walk things they truly disagree with, but ultimately strong, cogent leadership will demand the doing of what it deems to be important. But, crucially, too, if the policies are an ever-changing dog’s breakfast; if there are confused goals or any understanding of what constitutes the national interest, it probably doesn’t much matter which office is responsible or what the plaque on the door says.

Back in the 1970s, when Henry Kissinger was both secretary of state and the national security adviser, he freely admitted he had little use for most of the State Department. Instead, he relied on a cohort of about a half-dozen experienced, knowledgeable officials like Lawrence Eagleburger and Winston Lord to do the secret negotiations for the creation of a new diplomatic relationship between the US and China. That outcome was the most consequential American diplomatic effort of the post-war 20th century.

But in doing so, the rest of the State Department was largely left in the dark — including diplomats who had spent years studying China and Chinese, and analysing its government. But Kissinger’s (and President Nixon’s) goals — at least with regard to China — were crystal clear and they made a real difference. It is way too early to predict that Marco Rubio’s plans — in tandem with his boss’s mercurial behaviour and ideas — will have anything approaching Kissinger’s success.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of the incumbent in the Oval Office of the White House. No one really knows what policies he will espouse next week or next month, or even tomorrow.

No matter what the organogram of the State Department looks like, it will be very hard for the department, along with any other departments involved in foreign affairs, to deliver the “winning” that Donald Trump says he wants to achieve for his nation. The success or failure of this plan – whether it will make America stronger or weaker – will matter to the rest of the world as well. DM

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World

Waltz sidelined

An intricate behemoth

The Doge effect

Leadership matters