State Department Closing Consulates Mostly in Western Europe

The State Department, led by Marco Rubio, is closing a dozen mostly Western European consulates including those in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal, as well as a consulate in Brazil and another in Gaziantep, Turkey, which supports humanitarian work in Syria.

This is part of Donald Trump’s upheaval of State Department objectives. He wants the department to concentrate on transactional arrangements with other countries and attracting foreign investment to the USA. Previously the department was responsible for diplomacy and soft power to promote democracy and human rights, as well as monitoring terrorism, infectious disease, trade, commerce, militaries, and government to feed information to the intelligence community.

Elon Musk’s “Department” of Government Efficiency, a subset of a White House IT team rather than a department, embedded Edward Coristine (“Big Balls”) at the State Department. So far DOGE has slashed the State Department budget by about 20% and fired some of its 70,000 workers.

Meanwhile, Russia and China are expanding their diplomatic efforts around the world, ideally poised to take advantage of the vacuum Trump is creating.

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