Washington Post: The Trump White House’s plan to starve the foreign policy establishment
Daniel W. Drezner, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

“…[President] Trump’s proposed budget threatens to gut an already starved State Department. … What’s interesting is that many of Trump’s other cuts — to the Centers for Disease Control, United Nations peacekeeping, the Coast Guard, TSA, and FEMA — are like those aimed at the State Department. They save small sums of money, but only by eliminating insurance programs that might come in handy during an emergency — particularly a foreign policy emergency. If you think there will be no need to commit nonmilitary American resources to address a serious pandemic or foreign policy crisis or peacekeeping issues, then you’re an America Firster who is happy with these cuts. If you think that the national security establishment can’t do its job properly when starved of staff and budget, then all of this should concern you immensely. It certainly concerns the military, which will have to pick up the slack…” (3/14).