How does butchering the State Department ‘make America great’? 

Back in 2019, I wrote a column on how President Trump had intentionally weakened and fractured the State Department. The results of his first-term purge were immediate and severe: State lost 12 percent of its foreign affairs specialists in just eight months, and morale among Foreign Service Officers hit all-time lows. Journalist Julia Ioffe rightly called the purge Trump’s “war on America’s diplomats.” 

It turns out Trump’s first purge was just an appetizer for the destruction to come.  

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on a draft White House order that would obliterate the foreign service and many of the State Department’s core program areas. Trump’s proposed cuts are so deep and sweeping that career diplomats now openly worry that there may not be much of a State Department left to serve. 

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed many of those overhauls in an official statement dripping with disdain for the department he leads.

If Rubio's changes go into effect, America will surrender its influence in Africa and Latin America to a rising Chinese Communist Party and undo half a century of diplomacy that has made the world more democratic and more economically prosperous. In its place will be a world that is less safe, less predictable and less free.  

For much of American history, the State Department has stood apart as the most esteemed and prestigious institution in the nation. Rubio's proposal would demolish much of that effectiveness by eliminating 700 senior roles and shuttering 132 agency offices, alongside sweeping budget cuts. Slated for the chopping block are mission-critical offices including the Office of Foreign Assistance, the Office of Global Women’s Issues, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and the firing of tens of thousands of career diplomats and civil servants. 

Worst of all, Trump proposes stripping the civil service backbone of the Foreign Service as a means of combating, in Rubio's words, the State Department's "radical political ideology." That apparently means offices promoting ideas as radical as democracy, human rights and civilian protections, all of which will disappear under the new plan. No longer will America’s diplomats be drawn from the brightest, most capable minds in the nation, called to service by a genuine passion for advancing American interests abroad. Instead, applicants will only need to prove their personal loyalty to Trump’s ideology — whatever that might be on any given day.

The institutional brain drain to come will cripple State’s effectiveness in nearly every aspect of its work. 

That such a plan was even humored marks a moment of personal disgrace for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a man who envisions himself as a great statesman in the making. Rubio may share the same post Thomas Jefferson once held, but his reckless leadership has more in common with another former secretary of State — James Buchanan, one of State’s most tragically incompetent and forgotten leaders. 

We won’t need to wait long for America’s adversaries to fill the gap left by Trump’s unprecedented withdrawal from the world stage. Between 2000 and 2020, China invested over $73 billion in Latin American trade deals that served as backchannels for Chinese influence operations on the continent. China’s rising influence in the region only stalled when the Biden administration redoubled State Department investment in the Americas — something Trump’s plan would slash almost entirely.  

American foreign policy experts across the ideological spectrum have for years called on the United States to build a long-term diplomatic strategy to counter China’s staggering advances in Latin America. Ryan C. Berg, director of the Americans Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts it bluntly: “The bad news is how dramatically China has grown its presence in recent years; the good news is that it is not too late to push back and regain the U.S. foothold.” Instead, Trump is preparing to surrender Latin America’s development future to a criminal regime that wishes to do us harm. 

The situation is even worse in Africa, where Chinese diplomats are already seizing on America’s pullback to realign the geopolitical map in their favor. This often comes in the form of economic development deals that are little more than exploitative efforts to extract African natural resources. China’s efforts aren’t lost on our allies, either: Former Nicaraguan Ambassador to the Organization of American States Arturo McFields warned earlier this week of China’s “deceitful, disastrous projects in Latin America and Africa.” 

Xi Jinping and the boys in Beijing are already ramping up diplomatic pressure on African nations as Trump withdraws. Without serious opposition from American diplomatic efforts, Chinese officials no longer need to worry about America’s “good cop.” Chinese diplomats are taking America’s weakness as an opportunity to play hardball with nations that previously benefited from American diplomatic and development attention. If Trump’s programmatic cuts are realized, American influence will disappear from those regions permanently, replaced in every corner by a rising China.  

Congress must push back before these proposed changes are finalized, and both parties must make clear that crippling our State Department does not serve any American interest at home or abroad. America’s diplomatic corps has been the envy of the world since its inception in 1789. Protecting it is more than a matter of national pride — it’s a matter of grave national security. 

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.