The issues facing Pompeo start within the Department of State - Grievances about Tillerson's political ineptitude and bureaucratic mismanagement have roiled the Foreign Service and marginalised the Department of State within the interagency decision-making process. Despite Tillerson's protestations to the contrary, he left the Department of State in worse shape than when he arrived. His noble attempt at reorganising the department's structure and operations bogged down from the very beginning, perceived by employees and former career officials as haphazard, imperialistic, and corporatist. The official supervising the reorganisation effort resigned herself after a month on the job, one of the many examples of senior employees choosing retirement or resignation over continued service for an administration typically regarded as derisive of diplomacy.
Eight out of the top 10 positions in the Department of State remain vacant, not to mention the important ambassadorships - Egypt, the European Union, South Korea, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia - that are unfilled to this day. Pompeo will be forced to deal with a significant staffing shortfall on his very first day - a deficiency in foreign policy knowledge and experience that he will have to remedy if he hopes to be more successful than his predecessor. [...]
It is the international environment, however, that will pose the biggest obstacle to the new secretary. As this piece is posted, the Trump administration is in the midst of discussions with European allies about salvaging an Iranian nuclear deal that Trump would much rather walk away from. On North Korea, the biggest action item on the Trump administration's foreign policy agenda, Department of State officials are in the process of scrambling together a choreographed summit this May between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Whether or not the historic get-together actually occurs, Pompeo will need to ensure that Trump and the White House national security staff are briefed to the fullest extent possible on Pyongyang's goals for the summit; North Korea's negotiating tactics over the past 25 years; and what script the president should follow when talking with the head of a regime that has broken every agreement it has signed. Keeping Trump on message in and of itself will be a tall order for any secretary of state.
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