Rubio vs Grenell: Is a ‘loose cannon’ blowing Trump diplomacy to pieces?

Just like Elbridge Colby in the Department of Defense, US President Donald Trump has got a loose cannon in his foreign policy team as well. He is Richard Grenell.

As the President’s Envoy for Special Missions, Grenell has a portfolio that stretches from tasks in Venezuela to North Korea. His working has, however, not just frustrated senior figures in the Trump administration and has raised ethical questions, but has also compromised foreign policy priorities.

For example, Grenell’s handling of negotiations with Venezuela for the release of jailed Americans led to the failure of talks.

Last week, The New York Times reported that Grenell held talks with the same Venezuelan official without coordinating with Secretary of State Marco Rubio , who was also holding talks at the same time, and offered Venezuela terms that had not been approved by White House. The result was that talks collapsed and efforts to secure the release of Americans jailed by Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro failed.

The Venezuela debacle is just one of the occasions when Grenell has embarrassed the Trump administration. His ‘freelance’ way of working is part of the broader pattern in the Trump administration where there is little clarity about who calls the shots.

Grenell — a freelancer with little checks and balances

While supporters have lauded Grenell for being one of the foremost champions of Trump, critics have said that he has been “freelancing” in the administration and has not worked as per the mandate.

“It just says that the administration, part of it doesn’t know what the other’s doing, and that can put Americans at risk,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told The Hill about the Venezuela debacle.

Grenell has operated outside of the purview of Department of State and even the White House. Consider these instances:

In addition to compromising Venezuela talks, Grenell embarrassed the White House by telling Romania to release internet personalities Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, who have been charged with a host of crimes like rape, human trafficking, and assault , and subsequently bring them to the United States.

Grenell also blindsided the administration by using a private aeroplane without authorisation to bring Americans released by Venezuela to the United States.

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Moreover, Rubio was publicly forced to reject Grenell’s push for Trump to overturn the decision of stopping Chevron’s operations in Venezuela.

A source familiar with the thinking of the White House described Grenell to The Hill as “a little untethered”.

“I would describe Ric as kind of a little bit of — maybe not even a little bit — a loose cannon. He’s involved in a million things. He’s running around. The president likes him and it’s a classic thing, like, the president likes him, these guys feel empowered. There’s no checks, no balances,” the source said.

Considering that Rubio is stretched thin because he is doing two jobs of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, he needs more authority to keep Grenell in check, Michael Rubin, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Hill.

Chaos in Trump’s foreign, defence teams

Grenell represents the larger chaos in Trump’s foreign and defence policies.

While Grenell has sought to operate without any guardrails out of his loyalty to Trump, Elbridge Colby, who is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has driven some of the most controversial decisions at the Department of Defense without approval from Trump.

For example, neither Trump nor Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were the driving force behind the suspension of weapons to Ukraine this month. It was Colby. Trump later reversed the suspension.

Similarly, Colby unilaterally ordered the review of Aukus, the agreement between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia to develop maritime capabilities in the Indo-Pacific that involves the sale of nuclear submarines to Australia. He has also asked Japan and Australia about their plans in case China invades Taiwan.

The Taiwan diktat particularly rattled US allies as even the United States does not have a clear policy in the matter — the United States follows ‘strategic ambiguity’ regarding the defence of Taiwan.

As Trump has little interest in policy matters and instead indulges in populist agenda like the crackdown on immigrants, and his secretaries appear inefficient to run their departments, relatively junior officials like Grenell and Colby appear to be running the show without any supervision.

In an article for The Atlantic, Tom Nichos noted that no one appears to be in charge of the US government.

As Trump’s secretaries are “either incompetent or detached from most of the policy making, and so decisions are being made at lower levels without much guidance from above”, noted Nichols.

He further noted, “The Trump White House’s policy process—insofar as it can be called a ‘process’—is the type found in many authoritarian states, where the top levels of government tackle the one or two big things the leader wants done and everything else tumbles down to other functionaries, who can then drive certain issues according to their own preferences (which seems to be what Colby is doing), or who will do just enough to stay under the boss’s radar and out of trouble (which seems to be what most other Trump appointees are doing). In such a system, no one is really in charge except Trump—which means that on most days, and regarding many issues, no one is in charge.”