President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state, CIA director Mike Pompeo, will say at his confirmation hearing Thursday that a milder American policy toward Russia is "now over" and promise that the State Department will find its "swagger once again," according to his prepared remarks.
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"Russia continues to act aggressively, enabled by years of soft policy toward that aggression," Pompeo will tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to the remarks. "That's now over. The list of this administration's actions to raise the cost for Vladimir Putin is long," Bloomberg wrote.
Pompeo will seek to convince skeptical senators that President Donald Trump – who until recently had resisted criticizing Putin directly – is determined to get tough on the Russian leader. Pompeo will also distance himself from the management style of his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who was accused of weakening morale and de-emphasizing the importance of human rights and U.S. values overseas.
His remarks touch on the biggest foreign policy issues faced by the U.S., a reflection of how many daunting challenges the administration faces. On Iran, he'll tell senators that he will work with U.S. allies to fix the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, which Trump has threatened to withdraw from. He also will say there's "no higher diplomatic task" than resolving the North Korean nuclear threat.
