Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. appears to be pulling back from its leadership role on the world stage and warns there is no other nation that can step in as the champion of global democracy if America walks away.
Pompeo, J.D. ’94, sat down on Monday for a closed-door talk at Harvard Kennedy School about his time as the nation’s top diplomat and spoke candidly about his efforts with Israel and the Middle East, Iran, China, and his views on Russia’s war with Ukraine.
The event was part of the American Secretaries of State Project, a collaboration between the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at HKS. Over the years, past secretaries including James A. Baker III, Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton have come to these sessions to share insights into some of their greatest diplomatic challenges.
In the wide-ranging discussion, Pompeo detailed the negotiations behind the 2020 Abraham Accords, a series of agreements normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
He said there were three essential components to getting these deals done: first, demonstrate the U.S.’ unwavering support for Israel; second, make clear Iran is a bad actor in global politics and the central impediment to improved Mideast relations; and lastly, convince the Arab Gulf nations that the U.S. would not throw them under the bus if things fell apart.
Pompeo also defended his close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even after a CIA assessment found he was behind the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Pompeo, who Monday called the killing “horrific,” said he felt it was important to U.S. long-term strategic interests to remain close with Saudi Arabia.
Asked about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Pompeo, now at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said it’s “very unlikely” there will be a two-state solution in the near or medium term.
“If America doesn’t lead, the world is forlorn. There’s nobody. … For good or for bad, it sits on our shoulders, and we should own that, and we should be happy to go lead in that way.”
Mike Pompeo
While in Congress, Pompeo had been a vocal critic of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry, believing it gave Iran too much leeway to enrich uranium, a necessary step in the production of a nuclear weapon. Less than two weeks after he became secretary of state, the U.S. withdrew from the deal.
Even now, with Iran’s power diminished from a decade ago, it’s “an absolute imperative” that the U.S. stand firm on its policy of “no enrichment” because there’s no way to ever be absolutely certain Iran wasn’t doing so secretly. “If they can cheat, they will,” said Pompeo.
“As good as our intelligence agencies are, as wonderful as our collection is, [Iran is] a big country, and they have demonstrated their ability to foil our efforts to actually know what’s going on,” he said, adding, “If the Iranians get any closer than they are, you’ll have proliferation in the region.”
Pompeo was joined in the discussion by Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at HKS; Robert Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, at HLS; Meghan L. O’Sullivan, director of the Belfer Center and Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at HKS; and James Sebenius, Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Before becoming secretary of state, Pompeo served as CIA director from 2017‒2018. While a supporter of the agency, he believes it remains too focused on Middle Eastern counterterrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
One of the CIA’s lingering “shortcomings,” he said, is that it does not spend enough time on economic intelligence, which puts the U.S. at a great competitive disadvantage with China given that President Xi Jinping “has been at war with the United States for 40 years — economically.”
He called standing by as China moved to weaken democracy in Hong Kong following the 2019‒2020 protests “one of my great failures” as secretary.
In regard to Russia, Pompeo said he has not been surprised by the actions of Vladimir Putin. It makes sense that the Russian president remains fixated on Ukraine and righting what he perceives as a historic wrong done to Russia as he continues to “chip away” at Europe’s borders.
“It’s intrinsic to who he is,” Pompeo said, which is why “we should never give an inch of Europe to him, and I regret that it appears that we’re headed that way.”
Pompeo rejected the notion that the U.S. can’t afford to help countries like Ukraine and should cut back its defense of democratic values around the world.
“That’s what saddens me in my own political party, is that too many people who know better, who know how important this is,” have been unwilling to do the hard work and explain to the country “why it’s in America’s best interest to be the world’s leader, that the benefits far exceed the costs,” said Pompeo, who served in the U.S. Army before attending the Law School.
A more isolationist approach to foreign policy is the easier political argument to make to voters, but the U.S. will regret it in the coming decade if we fail in this moment to lead on the global stage, he said.
“If America doesn’t lead, the world is forlorn. There’s nobody. The Japanese can’t do it. The Australians can’t do it. The Indians won’t do it,” said Pompeo. “For good or for bad, it sits on our shoulders, and we should own that, and we should be happy to go lead in that way.”
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