A change of presidential administrations offers opportunities for a change of personnel and policy. And few departments of the U.S. government need reform as desperately as the U.S. State Department. America’s diplomatic bureau “is supposed to work for the benefit of the American people,” said Family Research Council Senior Fellow Joseph Backholm on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, “but has also been skewing toward fringe aspects of U.S. domestic social issues and away from enduring core U.S. values.” The Trump administration has a chance to change that.

During the Biden administration, the State Department’s priorities have “often been out-of-whack,” agreed Eric Bordenkircher, research fellow at the UCLA Canter for Middle East Development, who joined Backholm on “Washington Watch.” “They have focused on issues that really do not advance our national interests.”

For example, the Biden administration appointed a Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, Desirée Cormier Smith. “She has gone around the world proclaiming, celebrating, these DEI elements, emphasizing diversity, equity, inclusivity,” noted Bordenkircher.

On one occasion, Cormier Smith “lectured the Jordanians on inclusivity in regard to their African population, which makes up like 2% or less than 2% of the population,” he explained. “What are our priorities? Where is our money, where is our energy best used? Dealing with a country like Jordan and then focusing on 2 to 1% of the population doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Cormier Smith has “also done this in Europe in regard to the Roma people [gypsies],” Bordenkircher added. “Where is the U.S. national security interest in regard to addressing the Roma people? Why is this a priority? … Why [are] American tax dollars being put toward these kind of agendas?”

But it isn’t just political appointees who use the State Department to broadcast woke ideology to other countries to the detriment of U.S. interests. In June 2022, “The U.S. embassy account in Kuwait tweeted about … people being tolerant of other people’s beliefs that actually provoked a strong backlash by the Kuwaiti foreign ministry,” recalled Bordenkircher. At that point, the U.S. did not have an ambassador to Kuwait, and embassy business was managed by a senior career diplomat, known as the charge d’affairs. The Kuwait Foreign Ministry summoned this bureaucrat to deliver “Kuwait’s rejection of what was published and stressing the need for the embassy to respect the laws and regulations in force in Kuwait.” That summer, U.S. embassies in at least 98 countries acknowledged or celebrated Pride Month.

As the Kuwait incident illustrates, “By focusing [U.S. foreign diplomacy] on these woke [preferences], it hurts us. It hurts us with our allies particularly,” argued Bordenkircher. “It is a waste of time. It’s a waste of energy. … It also pulls the United States away from our partners — willing partners, our allies — because it also creates some distrust between the United States and these countries.”

“Ultimately, you’re kind of going after the culture of these countries,” Bordenkircher argued. “It seems that the idea that men can become women and have babies if they want to — that is losing momentum, perhaps, even in the West and in the U.S.,” Backholm responded. So, how can we expect countries with more traditional, religious cultures to accept it?

This is true not only for Muslim-majority countries, but “particularly in the developing world, where they hold Christianity to be a very important element of their society. … The Biden administration has focused a lot of this woke stuff on Africa, South America and part of Asia,” he said, but “they’re not well received at all. “

“Is this a form of imperialism?” Backholm suggested. Western progressives would condemn imperialism for not being inclusive or tolerant, but they seem ironically to have invented a new form of it.

“I think it is, you could say, a ‘civilizing mission,’” Bordenkircher answered. “They have their own idea of what civilizations should be, and they’re going out there and trying to impose it on, particularly, the developing world. So, Western European, American society — they want to see [that] replicated throughout the world. They want to see, you could say, a woke global order, in a sense.”

For this reason, “the leadership [in developing nations] sometimes sees this as a threat as well, because leadership in some of these countries derives legitimacy through their culture. So, they see this as an attack on their society.”

Bordenkircher argued that those leaders are more right than they know. “Instead of bringing nations together, what it [DEI] does is it starts to slowly pull them apart,” he argued. “It extenuates divisions. Lebanon is … a country that actually has institutionalized [DEI] by incorporating all the religious communities into the government. But by doing that, it has created a weak sense of nationhood. And you get a lot of feuds between various communities.”

Thus, by pushing woke ideology onto other countries, State Department diplomats “ultimately create more problems than they resolve,” continued Bordenkircher. “They push us away from opportunities at prosperity, which is one of the key fundamental issues in regard to what U.S. foreign policy is supposed to do.”

“Promoting this stuff, particularly in places like Africa, South America, and even the Middle East … works against our interests in another way,” Bordenkircher said. “It makes these countries look toward places like China, toward Russia, who do not bring this element to the table … when they want to, maybe, do a national infrastructure project … because they’re not going to expect the developing world to follow these woke ideas.”

“We don’t want to drive potential friends to our enemies simply because we’re behaving unreasonably,” Backholm responded. Nothing undermines U.S. foreign policy interests more than taking nations who want to be our friends and pushing them into the arms of our greatest geopolitical rivals because of foolish efforts to undermine their culture and morals.

The question is, what can the incoming Trump administration do to reverse and reform America’s foolish foreign policy? Put another way, “Is this a flip that can be switched, or is this an ideology that’s deeply embedded in the State Department?” asked Backholm. Bordenkircher replied that it is most likely “a little bit of both.”

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Trump’s nominee for secretary of State, would likely have to seek to reform the department, “based on what President Trump has said about clearing out some of the government,” suggested Bordenkircher. “I think the Trump administration wants to advance prosperity” and “has demonstrated it doesn’t want to get involved in … the social aspects of [other] countries, that they’re a little more respectful of their sovereignty.”

A Trump administration house-cleaning would at least eliminate some of the more offensive or ineffective political positions, predicted Bordenkircher. For instance, the “special representative for racial equity and justice — that won’t be carried over by the Trump administration.”

“At the same time,” he warned, “a lot of these ideas are pretty well [ingrained] with a lot of the bureaucrats in Washington, particularly in the State Department and then also in USAID. So, they may not make these issues very prominent in their work during the Trump administration, but I think they will be there and will continue to kind of permeate under the surface, to a certain extent.” He expressed particular concern about USAID, which is in charge of distributing millions of dollars overseas and tends to do so with a political bias.

Beyond that, Bordenkircher added, “look at how our universities operate, and particularly the more prominent universities who are feeders into the State Department. A lot of students — I’ve taught at some of these universities —they’re [immersed] in this stuff.”

“This is an issue that the conservative, the Christian elements in the United States are going to have to confront and address for an extended period of time,” he reiterated. “I don’t think it’s just going to be one administration, four years, and ‘Hey, it’s done and over with.’”

There is definitely reason for conservatives to watch the State Department closely, far beyond the Trump administration. “What we don’t want to have happen is the U.S. using its influence to export things that are really destructive around the world,” Backholm concluded. “We’ve seen the impact here.”