The body blow to U.S. diplomacy
State Department layoffs will hinder but not undo our great history
I have been away from the State Department for more than a quarter of a century, but it has always been at the back of my mind, as a fond cornerstone of meaning in the life I have lived. Not all my memories of my 15 years at State are great ones, of course—bureaucracy and I share a deep and abiding love-hate relationship, for one—but I still look back on my overall time there with a positive respect. Because of the people I met and learned from, and the feeling of teamwork we shared.
Above all, I recall the unparalleled patriotism and selfless devotion to country that characterized my colleagues seving at home and abroad, both civilian and commissioned. From the incoming Foreign Service Officers, fresh out of A-100 training and optimistic about the challenge, to the marvelously talented Senior Foreign Service officers I worked alongside, particularly in my final days. And the support staff who made our jobs not only possible but fulfilling.
I watched Friday’s firings at the C Street ceremonial entrance at Main State with an angry sorrow. For it was not just those 1,300-odd employees who were being punished and disrespected—fired with no rational reason or regard for the incredible service they had provided or the years they had already put in—but it was also my personal legacy that was being demeaned and flushed away, and that of countless thousands who served before, while, and after I was there.
Ceremonial entrance at C Street, Department of State. Courtesy Department of State
I had an emotional investment in the success of those who followed me—for they would continue the proud story, the culmination of 250 years of American diplomacy—and reinforce the continuity of our shared dream of a benevolent nation, acting wisely in the world and producing good outcomes around the globe. Serving at State was among the truly greatest honors of my life, and I was proud of it. Watching those proud employees being kicked aside by their inferiors—political hacks who have no idea how to do their jobs, and will suffer badly when a task is assigned and they suddenly have no one to teach them how to do it—was infuriating.
Who allowed this? Who thought it up? And who, if anybody, will ever be punished for this ridiculous transgression against the people of the United States?
[See https://apnews.com/video/emotional-scene-as-fired-state-department-workers-leave-for-last-time-5566a8eb0def4a4d8eddf53c6adb9abc?user_email=91ac9b91d9f16d9cb53659ee762e8e3af3dfff538fda7e64d6832d45d17cd261&utm_medium=Morning_Wire&utm_source=Sailthru_AP&utm_campaign=MorningWire_Sun_July13_2025&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers .]
I recognized no faces in the crowd of those leaving, nor any of the onlookers who lined the C Street lobby and the sidewalks outside, at the entrance long used for arriving dignitaries. It has been far too long for that. But I did recognize that resounding solidarity expressed by the dozens applauding, without shame or fear of retribution, their departing colleagues—some with heads held high, confidently striding away, others in tears as they said goodbye to what they had hoped would be their lifetime careers.
I am angry. I am confused and heartsick, but more and more, I am almost unspeakably angry at what is happening before my eyes. I floundered, until I read a Substack posting by my esteemed colleague, James Bruno. I refer you to his eloquent words on “What Mass Firings at the State Department mean for the country.”
His entry clarified and helped focus my thinking. I have come to understand, for one, that I blame Marco Rubio for being a pipsqueak and a pushover, and grinning vacantly most days from his office on the seventh floor as he ponders his own fate in liege to the swinelike Dear Leader.
He is, after all, temperamentally the least qualified Secretary of State—making Mike Pompeo and James Buchanan look like resounding triumphs—in our country’s long history, and barely third-rate intellectually to such renowned political misfits as William Jennings Bryan and Rex Tillerson. Comically arrogant in his disservice to the proud institution he is almost singlehandedly dismantling, brick by brick. A dissembling and unworthy successor to the great ones I knew in my day—George Shultz, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Madeleine Albright, topping the list.
I have long called him Miniscule Marco—echoing Donald Trump’s dismissive characterization from the 2016 debates—since I started writing my blog entries about the sorry current state of U.S. foreign affairs. And occasionally the Incredible Shrinking SecState—as he seems to deflate, almost daily, into an ill-fitting suit with sweat pouring down his temples and a nervous tic.
But lately, I have begun to realize that either diminutive is far too flattering. He deserves nothing so grand. Perhaps Marshmallow Marco would suit him better—for he has no inner strength and no principles, and will soon melt away in the bright sun of day, if there is any justice. He is not very bright, or he would never have taken this job under the most repulsive president in our long history—who had already ridiculed him as beneath contempt, like something on his shoe to be wiped off.
Marshmallow Marco chose not to attend the firings he decreed. Too busy playing almost-grownup in Malaysia. Courtesy AP
If the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, as Martin Luther King Jr., promised, Marshmallow Marco will soon be cast aside like the gooey piece of trash he most closely resembles. Banished to oblivion like the pretender he is …
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I am a “reformed” Foreign Service Officer—I walked away from the U.S. State Department in 1997—but I keep my eyes out for unusual and outrageous events occurring in countries of interest to the United States, particularly those I have served in or visited. This often includes analyses of U.S. actions affecting those countries, whether wise or effective—or neither, as here—and in many recent cases, purely puzzling.
My first six years as a Foreign Service Officer were spent under the leadership of George Shultz, the gold standard in my book—for many reasons, but one specific attribute still stands out in my mind: loyalty to those who served under him. He stood by the men and women in his department at a time when lie detector tests were being demanded to ferret out alleged leaks.
In 1985, Shultz said no, not on my watch. He refused to take the test himself, and would not allow his employees to be forced to do so, either. It was a moment of high drama—a rare public disagreement between him and President Ronald Reagan, whose advisers were furious that someone with a high security clearance was apparently feeding the press inside information. But according to PBS.org, “Shultz told reporters, ‘The minute in this government that I am not trusted is the day that I leave.’ The administration soon backed off the demand.” [See his 2021 obituary, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/reagans-longtime-secretary-of-state-george-p-shultz-dies .]
Former Secretary of State George Shultz with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in my day. Courtesy BBC
I traveled as part of his entourage on two occasions, and he routinely shook hands with all of us staffers as we left his plane. A distinguished academic with a Ph.D. in economics as well as a decorated Marine, he never lost the common touch. I could go on. And while I did not always agree with the policies he helped enforce for President Reagan, I admired him nonetheless for his innate sense of fairness and decency.
I think he would turn over in his grave at Rubio’s callous and inept mishandling of the work force, and his arrogance at dismissing so many employees for no discernible reason except to toady to Presidential whim. Shultz would have said no, not on my watch.
I believe he would be mortified at the Trump administration’s blithely allowing lie-detector tests at the FBI to determine whether any employee there has ever criticized that floundering agency’s erratic and paranoid “leader,” Kash Patel. Monstrous overstep by a petty, bug-eyed fool with no human understanding …
One of the State Department bureaus that Rubio is determined to gut completely is the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM). When I worked at State in the 1990s, I almost went to work for them; I was looking for a non-administrative job after leaving the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center as Russian-designated watch officer. Assistant Secretary for PRM Phyllis Oakley was an old friend. Deputy spokesman for the Department when I was a press officer in the late 1980s, Phyllis had became the PRM’s first head in 1993.
But as there was no suitable position available at my grade in PRM, I looked elsewhere, finally going to work in the separate Bureau of International Organizations instead, as an international relations officer in the Economic and Social Affairs office (IO/ESA). It was a good job. I stayed there for 18 months, until I decided to resign my commission and return to the private sector, for personal reasons. But I never doubted the commitment of those who stayed behind, both in PRM and our companion bureau at DRL (Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor), also dismantled on Friday.
Until this year, PRM’s mix of civil servants and Foreign Service employees provided aid for and sought to enhance the protection of refugees, victims of conflict and stateless people around the world. It managed the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to resettle refugees in the United States, and was a major funder of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other aid groups. [As summarized by Wikipedia.]
DRL’s responsibilities included promoting democracy around the world, formulating U.S. human rights policies policies, and coordinating policy in human rights-related labor issues. The bureau was responsible for producing annual reports on the countries of the world with regard to religious freedom and human rights. [As summarized by Wikipedia.]
But for a time, no more. All of these pursuits, of course, are now anathema to the Dear Leader and his team of MAGA DEI flesh-eaters, who have decreed that the world is better off without our helping anyone, and that Hungary and North Korea should be praised and offered instead as arrogant, selfish examples of the kind of world he wants.
The Trump administration has simply obliterated three decades of superior work by hundreds, if not thousands, of dedicated employees—and Rubio has dutifully lifted his hind leg on them, in an incredibly insensitive parting statement, reducing their careers to an ill-conceived numbers game.
According to the Associated Press, “‘It’s not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don’t need those positions.’” Rubio made the remarks to reporters a day earlier in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he was masquerading as a statesman. “Understand that some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people.”
This is not the end, sadly, of his wrecking ball. More tireless public servants will be fired as he continues his mindless rampage to achieve mediocrity in all things he touches. And so long as this particular administration holds sway, others will follow him into the office that George Shultz once graced—and Marshmallow Marco now so completely disgraces.
The office of Secretary of State has become a temporary haven for unworthy political hacks, as have so many U.S. agencies of late. And this political hack has now devolved into an even lesser species of man—with few detectable skills, no conscience, and a deficit of brains. He will be missed by no one when his time comes—which I have lately begun to pray for as occurring soon.
Until that day, I will continue to grieve for the Department I once so proudly served—and its eventual restoration as the shrine of diplomacy and international sanity it was meant to be. Those fired on Friday must help carry that vision forward until then—so I will cheer them on silently, from a distance, as I carry my own banner forward in their support.
Grief is one step, but by itself, accomplishes little. Nor will anger alone change anything. Those natural feelings must instead be channeled into productive uses. We are the soul of all that U.S. diplomacy ever accomplished under sensible leadership. Our duty is to remember the past, store it, and promise to brong it back when the time is right.
For as Holocaust survivor Eleanor Weiss so eloquently reminds us, “The soul never forgets.” In her 90s, the former teacher continues to serve as a mentor and volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, a symbol of strength gained during teenaged tortures in a Nazi death camp. We must learn from her—and move into our own future.
Next time: More foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world