State Department cuts raise a question: What is the US national interest?

As he prepared for a July trip to Malaysia to attend a regional meeting of ministers – his first visit to Asia as secretary of state – Marco Rubio turned to the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs’ multilateral affairs office.
The experts’ task: to bring Mr. Rubio up to speed on the complexities of U.S. interests in the vast Indo-Pacific – a region the Trump administration has declared to be its top priority in an era of intensifying big-power competition.
Before Mr. Rubio had even returned home from the meeting, however, the State Department announced that the East Asian multilateral affairs office was being shuttered, and its experts shown the door.

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