What Can You Do For Trump Today? Project 2025’s Diplomats, Spies and Spokespersons
"No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day. "
Mainstream media coverage of Project 2025 is lessening, as other events like Rudy Giuliani falling down drunk at the GOP convention attract attention. A misinformation campaign on social media tells people not to worry about the agenda because there’s no way bad things described can happen on Day One. And then there are the wanna be lefties (trolls) who are making false claims, the most visible one being about social security being “gutted.”
All this exhortation to calm down about the Heritage Foundation’s prescription for an authoritarian state is like saying a destination-oriented map has no relevance to what gets done when you arrive. This is true only in the sense that the ultimate vision – a white patriarchal authoritarian society – isn’t openly discussed.
I will continue my deeper dives into Project 2025 at least four days a week until I get to the end of the document. Each day’s post will have an index to prior essays, which are largely parallel to the organization of the book.
Today’s report will look at the non-economic (we’ll get to the others) aspects of foreign policy as envisioned in the document including diplomatic, intelligence, and propaganda efforts.
The Department of State, authored by Kiron K. Skinner*
The task of rooting out perceived opposition viewpoints is particularly important when it comes to foreign policy in Project 2025.
Right wingers have long held that America’s foreign services and spy agencies were rife with Marxists, socialists, and communists (and homosexuals). It’s even become fashionable in extremist circles to declare that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s accusations about communist infiltration were correct.
So Mr Skinner begins with the supposition that large swaths of the State Department’s workforce are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy agenda and vision.
The usual P2025 formula for purging our foreign service corps is offered up: Day One placement of trusted political appointees in positions that do not require Senate confirmation.
No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day.
Career foreign service ambassadors have always remained during political transitions, with political appointees expected to offer up resignations. The administration envisioned in Project 2025 will ask every ambassador to submit letters of resignation so they may be assessed for loyalty to the president.
The plan proposes the most significant shift in core foreign policy principles and corresponding action since the end of the Cold War, with international relationships to be judged by who are considered friends and those who are not.
A cost-benefit analysis of US participation in international organizations will be mandated as a top priority for the incoming Secretary of State. They’ll be looking to root out any suggestion of support of abortion, population control, and terrorist activities. Entities deemed to be promoting social policies as if they were human rights issues will not ne tolerated.
The overwhelming focus of foreign policy will be Chinese power in every sphere. China’s strategic culture on top of the feigned Marxism-Leninism of the Chinese Communist Party means that they will only respond to external pressure.
While there is generational resentment over Western plundering of Chinese national wealth and sovereignty, the entirety of these propositions for US foreign policy exists on a foundation of racism and fear. Echoes of The Great Replacement Theory abound, with the People’s Republic portrayed as already ahead of the US in many areas. This is war, as far as these P2025 folks are concerned, and the only resolution will be victory or defeat.
Other enemies of United States interests identified in this document are Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba. Note that Russia doesn’t make this list. Preventing Iran and North Korea from advancing nuclear capabilities is said to be a high priority. China has upgraded relations with Venezuela and has intelligence facilities in Cuba.
There is particular concern about Mexico, based on the presumption that cartels have co opted its sovereignty. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision overt and covert military action aimed at our southern neighbors. While the lockdown status of El Salvador may be the ideal end game, the inherent bias (and lacking historical knowledge) of would-be American interlopers offers no hope that actions will succeed.
Saudi Arabia, the great white hope of the Trump administration, is, we’re told, headed down a bad path due to increased ventures with the Chinese. I suspect a Trump victory would tamp down those concerns.
The European Union will first suffer the indignity of being painted as not doing enough (not true) in terms of defense and then told that future US support will be limited to nuclear deterrence. Great Britain’s leftward shift toward reversing Brexit will be a priority, as well as giving at least the appearance of moral support for nations on the brink of autocracy, like Hungary.
There will be an end to projecting woke US social policies in African nations, and a renewal of core economic and security engagements.
Key nations around the Indian Ocean are involved in a cooperative arraignment called the Quad with the aim of keeping a free and open Indo-Pacific. P2025 says this relationship must be supported, both as a buffer and against Chinese expansionism and international terrorism. Perhaps we’ll offer to build more nuclear submarines that are purported to be invisible to satellites.
The Arctic region is also considered a national security priority, not because the Russians are going all-in on industrializing Siberia, but because the Chinese have declared themselves as a “near-Arctic state,” with ambitions of a Polar Silk Road trading route.
The State Department will be expected to assist the Department of Defense going on offense against those considered adversaries. Deterrence as a strategy will be jettisoned, as well as situations where a “red line” is drawn as a cause for reaction. Foreign policy will be seen as more of an us or them affair when circumstances require involvement.
The Intelligence Community by Dustin J. Carmack*
A common perception on the right of the United States Intelligence Community (IC) is as a vast wasteland of inefficiency saddled by “woke” culture, identity politics and social justice advocacy, replacing traditional American values like patriotism, color blindness, and workplace competence.
While there is truth in the ‘inefficient’ part of this evaluation, steps taken to achieve the P2025 vision would be the equivalent of throwing out the baby with the bath water. Imposing an ideological framework on intelligence gathering and analysis would be like putting a piece of cardboard over one half of a screen being viewed.
The way intelligence is communicated is more like using conventional wiring instead of fiber optic cable; with each connection along the way the signal/data is weakened.
The IC is considered the heart of the deep state, spread throughout 18 independent and Cabinet sub agencies. The plan for fixing this sorry existence is mostly the same as elsewhere; packing in partisan loyalists, evading congressional oversight, and tossing out the “bad apples.”
Doing this would involve dethroning the CIA as the alpha dog to be replaced by the Office of National Intelligence, in effect separating a conductor from an orchestra.
Authority over all agencies would reside with the Director of National Intelligence, with a non-Senate confirmable Deputy Director who can immediately take action on the presidential agenda. Work would be farmed out to not-near-DC locales. And the process of retribution will begin.
In addition, the Director should break the cabal of bureaucrats in D.C. by permanently moving various directorates, such as Support and Science and Technology, out of Virginia and possibly open campuses outside of D.C. where analysts and other experts could contribute virtually.
In particular, the IC must restore confidence in its political neutrality to rectify the damage done by the actions of former IC leaders and personnel regarding the claims of Trump–Russia collusion following the 2016 election and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and media revelations of its existence during the 2020 election
Domestic intelligence gathering with an ideological framework/filter would be broadened by way of expanding Executive Order 12333, the president’s direction for implementing the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
Here’s Seth Hettena at SpyTalk:
Project 2025 wants to shine light into some of Langley’s dark corners. Carmack recommends a 60-day review of all covert actions after the inauguration of the next Republican president. Covert actions—secretly influencing events abroad—that are ineffective or running “with little scrutiny in ways that are inconsistent with overt foreign policy goals” should be stubbed. Under Trump, that will likely mean a swift end to the CIA’s support for Kyiv.
Carmack is just getting warmed up. Project 2025’s job is to turn Trump’s familiar and tired grievances into policy. The intelligence community’s future leaders must stop fostering a “woke” culture and rectify the “damage” done by former leaders who voiced concerns over the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and the Hunter Biden laptop that Trump’s attorney was shopping to reporters. Formers who can’t keep their mouths shut will lose their security clearances.
It’s Carmack’s dubious duty to define the shadowy, unaccountable “deep state” Trump wants to demolish. At Langley, it means the ranks of senior CIA managers—branch chiefs, division chiefs, and members of the senior intelligence service. “Because mid-level managers lack accountability, there are areas in which personnel are not responsive to any authority, including the president,” Carmack writes. GS-14s and up, beware. A new crop of managers is coming. Project 2025 also recommends permanently moving various agency directorates out of Virginia to “break the cabal of bureaucrats in D.C.”
Media Agencies - US Agency for Global Media | Corporation for Public Broadcasting by Mora Namdar*
Once again, the formula of stacking political appointees at the top, evading congressional oversight, and exiling trouble makers comes into play. If this plan proves to be difficult, completely shutting down is offered as an option.
As part of an offense envisioned against US adversaries, P2025 calls for restoration of international broadcasting infrastructure and “recommitting to people-focused and pro-freedom messaging and content.” Assistance from conservative industry groups, nonprofits, trade associations, foundations, and activist organizations would be a big part of any content revisions. Stephen Miller’s America First Legal (anti-migration) outfit is the first among many entities suggested.
Eliminating federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public would be a red line issue for the next president. Although defunding these entities wouldn’t destroy them, stripping stations carrying these programs of their non commercial education status would end their tax exempt status and force payment of regulatory fees.
***
The ultimate goal in all these foreign policy proposals is a change to a primarily transactional basis favoring the aims of the chief executive and his peers in the wealthiest class. Broader and longer perspectives are to be relegated to the back of the line.
Thinking of our foreign services making deals in a fictional mafia context is a good place to start. “What’s in it for me?” would be an appropriate slogan for the government.
This is how bigger transnational issues can be ignored. The US can avoid greener policies, for example, because the Chinese are spewing toxic greenhouse gasses.
***
Today’s Project 2025 Authors
*Department of State: Kiron K. Skinner
Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy; President and CEO of the Foundation for America and the World; former Director of Policy Planning and Senior Advisor, Department of State; Visiting Fellow and Senior Advisor, The Heritage Foundation.
*Intelligence Community: Dustin J. Carmack
Lobbyist for Meta; Heritage Foundation Lobbyist; Former Chief of Staff to the Director of National Intelligence; Research Fellow for Cybersecurity, Intelligence, and Emerging Technologies in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.
*Media Agencies: Mora Namdar
Attorney, and Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council; former vice president, Compliance and Risk at the United States Agency for Global Media; former Senior Advisor, Dept. of State; Voice of America.
***
Tomorrow:
Biblically Driven Foreign Aid (Agency for International Development)
Previously:
(Intro) Digging Deep into Project 2025 - (a multi-part Series)
Going Deep into Project 2025 - Partisan Priorities for Civil Servants
Project 2025: Christian Soldiers Marching Off to Land Wars
Homeland Security’s Authoritarian Role in Project 2025
***
Wednesday News to Peruse
***
The Millennial MAGA VP Pick by Jay Kuo
Finally, at age 39, Vance is inexperienced, with just two years in the Senate. Measured against Kamala Harris, Vance is green and untested. That could be on full display in their debate next month, the terms of which are still being negotiated. As a vocal champion of women’s reproductive rights and an experienced prosecutor, Harris will have an opportunity to paint Vance into a corner over his extremism.
Indeed, the contrast between an under-qualified white male MAGA radical and a seasoned minority woman defender of democracy and liberty could hardly be clearer. Trump may have thought he was making a smart bet, hoping to pull in more of his base voters in the midwestern swing states. But those people aren’t going to show up in greater numbers just because Vance is on the ticket. Trump already had those voters.
So why ever did Trump pick Vance, given all that? Trump was actually leaning toward Burgam as his choice, apparently. That instinct was probably correct and could have eased concerns among more centrist voters. Apparently, however, it was Don Jr. and Eric who insisted upon Vance, whom they view as some kind of cultural hero who can bring in big Silicon Valley money, too.
***
Trump Picked Vance to Make Project 2025 a Reality by Dan Pfeiffer at The Message Box
Donald Trump does not give two shits about governing. He’d likely struggle to explain how a bill becomes a law or distinguish between an executive order and a presidential memorandum. His knowledge of the responsibilities of the cabinet agencies under his administration would likely be lacking as well.
However, Trump picked Vance for the same reasons George W. Bush picked Cheney — someone who has the smarts and know-how to implement the MAGA agenda. Trump may not even know this is why he picked Vance, but it’s why so many people behind Project 2025 supported Vance’s appointment. While Trump is watching his fifth hour of Fox News that day and Truthing about absurd marginalia, Vance is going to pull the lever of power to put in place the most radical policies in modern American history. As evidenced by the transition from Never Trump to slavishly pro-Trump, Vance has no moral center or ideological consistency. All he cares about is his power. Vance is driven by ambition, and he knows that MAGA is the future of the Republican Party. So die-hard MAGA is his persona.
Unlike Mike Pence — a famously dumb person — Vance is smart enough to be very dangerous. I would encourage you to read Ross Douthat’s interview with Vance. Douthat’s political crush on Vance comes through because he refuses to challenge Vance with tough follow-up questions or confront him about the glaring contradictions in his responses. However, the article provides insight into Vance's thought process and his skill in presenting extreme views in a palatable manner.
***
Biden set to announce support for major Supreme Court changes via The Washington Post
President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.
He is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The announcement would mark a major shift for Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has long resisted calls to make substantive changes to the high court. The potential changes come in response to growing outrage among his supporters about recent ethics scandals surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas and decisions by the new court majority that have changed legal precedent on issues including abortion and federal regulatory powers.
