The Atlantic gift article
The End of Diplomacy
The once-bustling corridors of the State Department are tomblike as ambassadors scrape for information.
By mid-afternoon, the gray, windowless corridors of the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department, feel less like the nerve center of the world’s most consequential foreign-policy institution and more like the catacombs for diplomacy. A disorienting and disheartening quiet has settled in, following last year’s sweeping cuts at State and its sister agency USAID. Today, decisions that once moved through interagency meetings, policy-planning staff, and regional bureaus now seem to drop, fully formed, from a small circle of advisers around President Trump. The traditional (and famously bureaucratic) step-by-step process has been replaced by after-the-fact briefings for the nation’s diplomatic corps, and even those are sporadic.
Trump, in his second term, has plunged headlong into foreign policy, seeking quick, headline-grabbing deals, much as a businessperson might scour the world looking for a new acquisition. While domestic battles over affordability and immigration grind on, he has devoted outsize attention to legacy-defining international targets—at times with little warning and even less consultation with Congress.
Trump has relied on trusted lieutenants such as his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the real-estate executive turned envoy for all things (officially he is special envoy to the Middle East). They have bounced around various capitals trying to end the war in Ukraine, cement a fitful cease-fire in Gaza, and broker a deal with Iran. Recently in Geneva, the duo held different negotiating sessions on the same day, racing from the consulate of Oman for discussions with Iranian officials on a new nuclear deal to the Intercontinental Hotel Geneva for talks aimed at resolving four years of war in Ukraine. The two men are scheduled to return to Geneva for last-ditch talks with Iran on Thursday.
Several officials in the Middle East told me that diplomats are seldom looped into the discussions that Witkoff and Kushner have about regional matters, and instead learn about them after the fact. The pair of businessmen turned diplomatic dealmakers have approached the issues with a preference for quick wins, often absent the nuance and historical and linguistic command that more traditional brokers possess. (Like others who spoke with me for this story, they requested anonymity to protect their jobs.)
“Special Envoy Witkoff and Mr. Kushner regularly communicate with President Trump and his national security team, including Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio, before, during, and after diplomatic negotiations,” Anna Kelly, the deputy White House press secretary, told me in an email, adding that those who “complain to The Atlantic” aren’t looped in, because they “can’t be trusted not to leak.”
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