New Delhi: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 63, a California-born former soldier and alumnus of the Harvard Law School, is scheduled to touchdown in India Tuesday for a three-day trip when he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
The trip is likely to see the secretary of state offer New Delhi some assurances on India’s Chabahar partnership with Iran, while trying to get it out of the $5.4 billion deal with Russia for the S-400 Triumf missile-defence system.
Pompeo’s career over the past three decades has seen him dabble in several fields: As a soldier, he was in Germany when the Berlin Wall was brought down in 1989. He then went on to get a law degree, before founding an aerospace company, working in the oil business, and serving as chief of one of the most controversial spy agencies in the world.
He is also a four-time former member of the US Congress.
In a profile of Pompeo this February, The New York Times compared him to Winston Wolfe from the Quentin Tarantino cult classic Pulp Fiction: The “hard-nosed problem-solver” of gang boss Marsellus Wallace.
Because that is exactly what Pompeo, the former CIA director, has come to do under his rather whimsical boss, President Donald Trump, who often conveys big foreign policy changes through tweets.
As the NYT profile noted, since becoming secretary of state, Pompeo has gone around the world to pick up the “wreckage left by Trump”.
Pompeo: Soldier to Secretary of State
He went on to join the military academy at West Point and topped his class. After graduation, he was deputed to West Germany, as a second lieutenant in a US tank unit.
Pompeo witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 from close quarters and this incident continues to shape his views on Moscow. Even today, he believes that Kremlin and its vision for the world order need to be “confronted”.
After completing the mandatory five-year military service required of West Point graduates, Pompeo attended Harvard Law School. When it looked like he would make a career as a corporate lawyer, he moved to Kansas, attended business school, and co-founded an aerospace company, Thayer Aerospace. He ran the company until 2006, when he sold his shares and entered the oilfield equipment business.
In 2010, Pompeo ran for Congress and served as a legislator until January 2017.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, after Trump won the Republican Party primaries, he joined the fold as an adviser to his running mate Mike Pence. Once Trump was elected, he was nominated as head of the CIA.
Also read: No sanctions for Iran’s Chabahar port or cap on H-1B, Pompeo to tell Delhi on India trip
‘Internationalist vs isolationist’
Since he replaced Rex Tillerson at the State Department in April last year, Pompeo has come to represent the “traditional” in an increasingly unorthodox American foreign policy.
Trump as President has been synonymous with erratic shifts in American foreign policy, and here comes the role of Pompeo.
According to the NYT profile, Pompeo has been described as an “internationalist” who has reined in the president’s “instinctive isolationism”.
Pompeo has had to tread a careful line. He has gone around the world trying to sell a coherent version of Trump’s obscure tweets to American allies and partners.
He is, however, a “hawk” when it comes to American policies vis-a-vis Iran or North Korea. Pompeo’s hawkish stance on Iran can be dated back to his days as a Congressman. Along with Republican Senator Tom Cottons, Pompeo mounted a blistering attack on the then President Barack Obama for his outreach towards Iran.
His radical views on North Korea are also well-known. While Pompeo, to a large degree, has been managing Trump’s negotiations with the North Korean regime, the Kim Jong-un administration, frustrated with his “reckless remarks”, sought his removal as the US pointperson for bilateral nuclear talks.
‘Saving the State Department’
Pompeo is said to have brought a wave of fresh air into the State Department, which saw several career diplomats and experts fired during Tillerson’s tenure.
Under Tillerson, according to journalist Ronan Farrow’s book War on Peace, several important positions in the State Department became vacant, leaving American foreign policy in a complete limbo. He also undermined his own office by severely limiting his communication with other countries, the book adds.
According to Farrow’s book, when Tillerson assumed the secretary of state office in January 2017, he received 60 congratulatory phone calls from around the world. Most of them went unanswered, as Tillerson attended only three calls a day.
In contrast, when Pompeo got into office, he personally called up every single living former secretary of state, including Hillary Clinton, trump’s presidential rival, seeking their advice.
According to the NYT profile, Pompeo also lifted the “hiring freeze” and has begun to “normalize” the State Department again.
Also read: Donald Trump has a new Asian headache as Pompeo gets snubbed & lectured
What he brings for India
Speaking at the US-India Business Council earlier this month, days after PM Modi came back to office with a resounding majority, Pompeo made several observations about the two countries’ relationship, conveying a deep admiration of the prime minister.
Pompeo said that, unlike some analysts, he and the State Department were not surprised by Modi’s victory.
“Many observers were surprised by the result, but, frankly, I wasn’t… we knew that the Prime Minister was a new kind of leader for the world’s most populous democracy,” said Pompeo, who also exhibited a much deeper understanding of India’s complex neighbourhood.
“We realise it’s different to deal with the likes of China and Pakistan from across the ocean than it is when they are on your (India’s) borders,” he said.
But perhaps the most interesting instance of how Pompeo manages to get around Trump’s oft-transactional ideas came last year, during his press conference in New Delhi after the maiden Indo-US 2+2 Dialogue, by when the S-400 purchase had already emerged as an irritant for Washington.
“We do understand the history, right, of India’s relationship with Russia and legacy systems. Our effort here, too, is not to penalise great strategic partners like India, a major defence partner,” said Pompeo, trying to reassure India against possible sanctions.
Pompeo’s visit to India this week will set the stage for a meeting between Trump and Modi on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan