After the trade war, development aid or education, the administration of the American president Donald Trump promises a great upheaval at the level of the State Department, the equivalent of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This Tuesday, April 22, Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a plan aimed at significantly reorganizing the State Department. According to him, this overhaul must cancel “decades of heaviness and bureaucracy” within the agency. This reshuffle of the main American institution in terms of foreign policy comes as the Trump administration continues to align itself with the “America First” program, by reducing costs and staff in a quest for efficiency, underlines the American daily The Washington Post.
America at the time of withdraw
The optimization effort particularly targets programs on human rights and others focused on war crimes or democracy, according to documents consulted by the American press, whose Washington Post. On April 15, Marco Rubio welcomed his X account that under its leadership, the US State Department had canceled 139 subsidies worth $ 214 million. “American taxpayers should not finance poorly informed programs such as” Building the Migrant Domestic Worker-Led Movement “in Lebanon (Building the movement of migrant domestic workers, editor’s note) or” Get the Trolls Out! “In the United Kingdom (bring out the trolls !, Editor’s note), he denounced:” We are cleaned up by the previous administration and Let us rebuild an agency which focuses on the establishment of the “America First”.
Marco Rubio, now also administrator of the USAID development agency, has denounced the growth of the department over the years, calling it “inflated, bureaucratic and unable to fulfill his essential diplomatic mission in this new era of competition between major powers”.
A reorganization of diplomacy?
This vast reorganization comes after Donald Trump ordered an overhaul of the American diplomatic service in February, in order to ensure that he follows his foreign policy program. In March, US officials said the ministry was also preparing to close nearly a dozen consulates, the British agency reports Reuters.
According to a project of presidential decree consulted earlier in the week, Sunday April 20, by AFP and the New York Timesone of the main changes would consist in the reorganization of the American diplomatic presence in four regions: Eurasia, Middle East, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. According to this document, the current office for Africa is deleted and replaced by a “office of the special envoy for African affairs” which would depend on the National Security Council of the White House, and not the State Department, which in principle pilots the country’s foreign relations. In Africa, the emphasis would be placed on the fight against terrorism and on “strategic extraction and trade in essential natural resources”. In addition, “all non -essential embassies and consulates in sub -Saharan Africa will be closed,” said the draft decree. All remaining missions will be grouped under the authority of a special envoy. But this draft decree was denied as a whole by Marco Rubio, calling it “false information” on the X network, assuring that the newspaper had been “victim of a new hoax”.