President Donald Trump has unapologetically decimated the career Foreign Service in favor of handpicked political appointments and envoys. Many of these individuals are long-term friends and business partners. This is not necessarily bad. Some State Department careerists protest too much when they clutch pearls and speak about how their service was always above politics, while many of the same people regularly leaked to undercut initiatives with which they personally disagree.
Tom Barrack, Trump’s ambassador in Turkey and his envoy for Syria, Iraq, and sometimes Lebanon, is among his most influential aides. Even Barrack’s critics acknowledge that he has, almost single-handedly, reworked U.S. policy toward the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East in Turkey’s favor.
