Japan, take note. This will not be your grandfather's U.S. State Department.
That could well have been the underlying message as U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson testified recently before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Trump administration's 2018 State Department budget request. The proposed budget of $37.6 billion, significantly less than in prior years, could well have major implications for America's diplomacy efforts in Asia, whether here on a divided Korean Peninsula or even in Japan.
While there would be "substantial funding for many foreign assistance programs," America's top diplomat said, other initiatives would see reductions. The State Department and USAID budget, he noted, had increased more than 60 percent — a "rate of increase in funding (that) is not sustainable" — from 2007, reaching an all-time high of $55.6 billion in 2017.