“Diplomacy Is for Wimps”: When Authoritarianism Wears a Varsity Jacket

Governed by Cosplay: The Dangerous Theatrics Behind Trump’s Foreign Policy Purge

If you’re wondering what the collapse of American foreign policy looks like in real time, it’s not a mushroom cloud or an urgent press conference. It’s Pete Hegseth leaking classified war plans in a Signal group chat with a reporter. As if leaking classified strike plans in one Signal chat wasn’t reckless enough, Hegseth reportedly shared sensitive military details in yet another private group, this one featuring his wife, brother, and personal attorney. In any functioning democracy, that alone would be a career-ending scandal. In Trump’s government-by-favor, accountability is reserved for whistleblowers and truth-tellers, not loyal foot soldiers who break the rules in the name of the boss. It’s a defense secretary behaving more like a podcast host than a military strategist, forwarding strike timetables as if they were YouTube links. It’s Tulsi Gabbard stomping through the Pentagon in combat boots for a photo op while gutting the career ranks beneath her.

This may seem like parody, but it’s now policy. And it’s not just incompetence, it’s design.

The Trump administration’s draft executive order to "reorganize" the State Department, leaked this week, lays out a breathtakingly nihilistic roadmap for America’s diplomatic collapse. Not only does it call for shutting down embassies across sub-Saharan Africa, erasing entire bureaus focused on human rights, climate, refugees, and democracy, and eliminating the foreign service exam altogether, it also proposes replacing it all with AI and “targeted deployments.” That’s dystopian speak for: fewer career diplomats, more obedient errand boys with comms apps and clearances they didn’t earn.

Of course, the man technically overseeing this bonfire is none other than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who insists the leaked 16-page draft order to dismantle his own department is a “hoax.” But his actions tell another story. Under Rubio, the State Department has already shuttered the Global Engagement Center, formerly tasked with countering foreign disinformation, on the grounds that it was “censoring Americans.” He’s proposed slashing humanitarian aid, defunding international organizations, and retooling U.S. foreign assistance into a transactional pay-to-play program. In other words, while Rubio denies he’s burning down the house, he’s standing in the smoke holding the gas can, reassuring us it’s just steam.

And where did this madness come from? Not out of the blue. It’s all outlined, with evangelical zeal, in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page roadmap for turning the federal government into a MAGA loyalty cult. The goal isn’t efficiency, it’s purification. Dismantle the institutions, remove the experts, reclassify or fire the “disloyal,” and install a cadre of true believers who will execute orders without blinking, much less reasoning or questioning.

In this warped vision, diplomacy is weakness, multilateralism is surrender, and cultural exchange is globalist rot. The State Department, once the domain of fluent polyglots, policy historians, and area specialists who spent decades cultivating alliances, is now on track to become a haunted WeWork where Musk’s Grok drafts foreign policy memos and the only qualification for ambassador is having survived a PragerU internship.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so chilling. Trump doesn’t surround himself with the unserious by accident. He surrounds himself with the unserious because serious people would never go along with this. A real Secretary of State wouldn’t greenlight the closure of every African consulate to speed up lithium extraction. A real defense secretary wouldn’t treat operational security like an episode of Fox & Friends. A real president wouldn’t treat Project 2025 as a blueprint but as a war crime in slow motion.

And so we end up with a kakistocracy in full bloom, a government of the worst, by the worst, for the ego of one man who can’t tell diplomacy from demolition. We are being governed by people who hate government, advised by people who hate expertise, and propped up by billionaires who think replacing civil servants with chatbots is “efficient” because they never had to renew a visa or evacuate a diplomat under fire.

Meanwhile, as the professionals are purged, the Hegseths and Gabbards move in. Not because they’re brilliant, but because they’re available and willing. No person of substance, no one who has ever stared down a negotiation table in Lagos or brokered a ceasefire in Myanmar, would carry out these orders. So Trump doesn't recruit talent, he recruits servitude.

The tragedy isn’t that America is led by fools, it's that it’s led by people who know exactly what they’re doing: gutting the institutions that once stood between us and the abyss, and replacing them with mirrors that reflect only power, fear, and the grotesque performance of strength.

Because that’s what this is. A performance. The closing of embassies, the end of Fulbright, the assault on diversity in diplomacy, the rise of AI over area studies. They’re props. Each one is a stage cue in the ongoing theater of American decline, and Trump is writing the script in crayon, while the rest of us are left searching for exits.