The Washington Post editorial board Thursday urged the Senate to confirm Mike Pompeo as secretary of state because as President Donald Trump "juggles multiple crises without adequate counsel," not doing so "probably would make an already parlous situation worse."
"The Trump administration is grappling with a chaotic confluence of actual and looming foreign crises — including some of its own making," the Post said before outlining several that have engulfed the White House in recent months.
"President Trump is contemplating military strikes against Syria while also pushing for a U.S. pullout; he has committed to attempting to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korea while threatening to repudiate the nuclear pact with Iran," the board said.
"He is waging a trade war against China and Japan while counting on their strategic cooperation against the regime of Kim Jong Un."
Further, Trump is "doing all this with a badly depleted national security apparatus" because "dozens of senior positions are vacant at the State Department."
In addition, new National Security Adviser John Bolton "has started with a purge of senior staff at the White House," the editorial noted.
Pompeo, 54, who was CIA director before Trump nominated him after firing Rex Tillerson, "did his best" at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "to be reassuring," the Post said.
"He stressed that he favored diplomatic solutions with Iran and North Korea; he played down the likely consequences of a decision by Mr. Trump to scrap the Iran deal next month.
"Importantly, he promised to defend the State Department's budget and to quickly seek to fill its many vacant positions, which would be a welcome departure" from Tillerson's "odd management style."
Pompeo, long hawkish on national security issues, told the panel that current conflicts with Moscow and President Vladimir Putin had resulted from "Russia’s bad behavior" — and he acknowledged that sanctions had not been tough enough before promising to "reset . . . deterrence," the Post noted.
The editorial also said Pompeo "sounded like an improvement" from Trump and Tillerson on human rights, as he testified "we should defend American values every place we go."
Promoting democracy around world, he told senators, "is an important tool of foreign policy," the Post noted.
Pompeo "should be deployed to Foggy Bottom," the editorial concluded, referring to the State Department's location in Washington, "in the hope that he will fulfill his promise to revive and reassert U.S. diplomacy."