by Xinhua writer Lu Rui
SEOUL, June 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo started a three-day visit to India late Tuesday. His arrival was preluded by a protest staged in the capital city of New Delhi.
The show of public opinion against the American "pressure tactics" in the populous Southern Asian nation is only a tip of the iceberg of extensive discontent with the America First-guided U.S. policies.
India is imposing tariffs as high as 120 percent on 28 U.S. imports in retaliation for Washington's termination of its exemption from higher steel and aluminum tariffs. On Wednesday, Pompeo failed to pressure India by threatening sanctions to agree to a U.S.-desired call-off of an arms deal with Russia.
Not much optimism goes with Pompeo's mission to sort out problems in the U.S. relations with India. In fact, the troubles he has made during his foreign trips seem to have been far more than the ones he has fixed. More than a year after turning from U.S. intelligence chief to top diplomat, Pompeo seems to have failed to adapt to the role shift.
The global landscape today is going through unprecedentedly complicated changes unseen in a century, which may give rise to frictions and disagreement.
But the responsibility of a diplomat, in particular a top decision-making diplomat of the world's No. 1 country, is to play a strong role of "mediator" to dispel mistrust and ease tensions, and to help bridge the gaps between countries and maintain regional and world stability.
However, what Pompeo did is just the opposite. Instead of acting as a catalyst to removing misunderstanding between parties concerned, he seems to have been trying to cook up hostilities and tensions.
For example, instead of trying to help solve the crisis in Venezuela through diplomatic means, Pompeo has been turning up the tensions with a hint of U.S. military intervention.
On the U.S. ties with China, Pompeo has tried to interfere with China's internal affairs through groundless accusations and to sow discord in Beijing's relations with other countries.
Pompeo has also tried to terrify U.S. allies into blocking China's telecom firm Huawei so as to get rid of the so-called China's challenge to the U.S. technological dominance worldwide.
As Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lu Kang has pointed out, directly referring to the name of the state secretary, certain U.S. politicians have been touring the globe with the same script in their pockets to smear China, starting fires and fanning the flames while sowing discord.
With his efforts, the world is seeing a United States further estranged from others and even its allies by going further in unilateralism, hegemonism and protectionism, as well as more uncertainties which emerged as a result to threaten stability in many parts of the world.
On Pompeo's part, one cannot simply blame his failure to play a constructive diplomatic role on his lack of expertise. It has much to do with his thinking patterns and values.
Among the examples was his address at a public discussion at Texas A&M University in April. "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole ... We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment," he said.
It is no exaggeration to conclude that Pompeo, by redefining the meaning of diplomacy in a distorted way, is making the United States a "public enemy" of the international community.
The top U.S. diplomat may think he can always succeed by lying and bullying, but he needs to revisit what former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
It is advised that Pompeo act as a trouble-shooter rather than a trouble-maker.