This is to be welcomed because it will restore some balance to foreign-policy-making, in which the State Department has been appallingly weak. The task before Pompeo will be enormous. It is easier to say which diplomatic positions have been filled than which have not—we have no ambassadors for Saudi Arabia, Germany, or France, let alone representatives to the European Union or the International Atomic Energy Agency. We have no assistant secretaries of state for East Asia and the Pacific (as we possibly stumble into a second Korean War) and none for the Middle East.

The State Department is indeed due for a reorganization—but it would have been wise to have at least a core staff in place to do it, and to have done it by listening and learning the business of diplomacy first, and leaving the management consultants to work their magic on failing bricks-and-mortar retail companies, which they may understand, rather than foreign policy, which they probably do not. This is not the immediate task in any case. What Pompeo will need to do rather, is to get the department up and running again, and doing the day-to-day foreign-relations work of maintaining America’s role in the world.

It will be interesting to see whether Pompeo would do better than his inarticulate predecessor in laying out American values as well as American interests. That will be the big divide with the White House, if he has the stomach for it: making it clear that commitment to free government, rule of law, and individual liberty are critical parts of the American message to the world, and an essential element not only of America’s appeal, but American power. Trump does not understand this, of course.

There will be other challenges as well. If he is honest, and has honest subordinates, the new secretary will realize how much damage has already been done to America’s global standing as evidenced by the deals cut by Middle Eastern allies with Russia, by Asian allies with China and by the profound disgust and mistrust with which our European allies view our president. Above all, he will—again, if he is honest—have to confront the fact that America’s reputation and indeed its stability are in question around the world. That is the meta foreign-policy crisis of our times, and he may not be able to do a great deal about it.

There will be one lesson from this episode that he and every other senior official should also take away. If the president and his immediate staff can treat Tillerson this way, they can, and will, treat anyone this way. Eviction by sustained humiliation was a gambit Trump tried with Jeff Sessions, whose desire to cling to his job seems to have overwhelmed whatever stock of self-respect he once possessed. But if Tillerson has had the experience of getting unceremoniously muscled over the window ledge before a crowd of gaping onlookers, the same may await any of the rest of them, including those even now prying his clutching fingers off the sill. And like Tillerson himself, as they plunge to earth they will see in the onlookers’ eyes a kind of disgusted curiosity, but not much in the way of sympathy.