Bush official rips ‘needlessly stupid’ cuts to UN delegation

A former top State Department official under President George W. Bush blasted the Trump administration on Friday over Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s cuts to the U.S. delegation to next week’s United Nations General Assembly.

The New York Times reported Friday that former and current State Department officials are furious at Tillerson’s decision to cut regional delegations down to just 140 officials, less than half of the size of last year’s delegation for the assembly in New York.

“These cuts are needlessly stupid,” Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under Bush, told the Times. “So much of what diplomacy is about is building and maintaining relationships.”

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Some bureaus at the State Department saw their individual delegations shrink by drastic amounts.

According to the Times, the South and Central Asia bureau’s delegation was reduced from 30 officials to just seven, while the Africa bureau’s delegation was slashed from 30 officials to just three.

Other delegations were eliminated entirely. State Department bureaus concerning democracy and human rights, human trafficking, oceans and the environment were removed completely, and will not be represented at the massive gathering of foreign dignitaries next week.

According to the newspaper, internal pushback inside the department spurred by Times reporters forced the State Department to rethink the strategy and increase delegation sizes. Previously, Tillerson was planning on bringing just 80 officials with him, the newspaper reported.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert defended the deep cuts to the U.N. delegation on Friday during a press briefing.

“In terms of the smaller footprint, there will be some support staff who will not be going this year because we recognize that there is a thing called technology, there’s this thing called email,” Nauert said.

“The secretary firmly believes coming out of the private sector that we all need to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” she added.