The End of Diplomacy
The once-bustling corridors of the State Department are tomblike as ambassadors scrape for information.
By mid-afternoon, the gray, windowless corridors of the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department, feel less like the nerve center of the world’s most consequential foreign-policy institution and more like the catacombs for diplomacy. A disorienting and disheartening quiet has settled in, following last year’s sweeping cuts at State and its sister agency USAID. Today, decisions that once moved through interagency meetings, policy-planning staff, and regional bureaus now seem to drop, fully formed, from a small circle of advisers around President Trump. The traditional (and famously bureaucratic) step-by-step process has been replaced by after-the-fact briefings for the nation’s diplomatic corps, and even those are sporadic.
Trump, in his second term, has plunged headlong into foreign policy, seeking quick, headline-grabbing deals, much as a businessperson might scour the world looking for a new acquisition. While domestic battles over affordability and immigration grind on, he has devoted outsize attention to legacy-defining international targets—at times with little warning and even less consultation with Congress.
