“No eternal allies and no permanent enemies,” Henry Kissinger’s gloss on realpolitik (borrowed from Lord Palmerston), could also describe Pompeo’s approach to relationships. Former secretaries of state had told him that his success would depend on the strength of his White House ties. “To a person, they began by saying that the most valuable asset you have is your relationship with the president,” he told me. It sounded like a brag, but he hadn’t meant it that way, so he corrected himself. “The most valuable asset to a secretary of state is having a good working relationship with the president. They weren’t referring necessarily to mine.”

When he arrived at the State Department in April, Pompeo had the good fortune to directly follow Rex Tillerson, who was widely seen by the career diplomatic corps as having been sent by the White House to restructure the department into oblivion. Tillerson instituted a hiring freeze while he undertook a lengthy “reorganization” to root out “inefficiencies.” More than half the department’s senior-level career diplomats resigned. Pompeo was able to generate almost instant good will by lifting the hiring freeze. He installed the diplomatic equivalent of a four-star general, the career ambassador Dan Smith, to lead the Foreign Service Institute, the department’s in-house training academy. At some points during Tillerson’s tenure, it wasn’t clear who spoke for America. “Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” Trump tweeted, in the midst of Tillerson’s discussions with North Korea. Tillerson, Trump complained, was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.” The public squabbling aggravated a longtime worry within State that their work simply didn’t matter, having been eclipsed by the gigantic budget of the Pentagon and the superior White House access of the National Security Council. Under Obama, the job of secretary of state went to Hillary Clinton and then to John Kerry (Obama’s second choice), two heavyweight politicians who nevertheless struggled at times to maintain their influence with the president’s core team. Pompeo was the first secretary in many years who seemed to have a bond with the president comparable to Kissinger’s with Nixon. Pompeo’s pull with the White House gave the department a renewed sense of purpose, even among those who differed with Trump on policy.

[Read Jason Zengerle’s profile of Rex Tillerson when he was secretary of state.]

During his first months in Foggy Bottom, Pompeo identified four priorities — Syria, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan — and brought in four new special representatives to tackle them and report directly to him. “I go in there with my arguments better prepared than I have at any time in my life,” says Stephen E. Biegun, the special representative for North Korea, when describing Pompeo’s management style. “I feel like I coasted in my previous jobs.” (As Venezuela became a concern, Elliott Abrams was brought on to address the crisis there. During the 1980s, Abrams was a staunch anti-Communist; at the State Department under President Reagan, he gave United States military assistance to Central American leaders who massacred tens of thousands of civilians. In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about a secret effort to arm Nicaraguan guerrillas. Pompeo has praised his “passion for the rights and liberties of all peoples.”)

In his major policy speeches, like the one in Cairo, Pompeo has situated Trump somewhere between the neoconservative militarism of Paul Wolfowitz and the isolationism of Rand Paul. In so doing, he has helped to coalesce what might be called a frugal-hawk foreign policy, reflecting a new species of Republican leader who wants America to talk tough, avoid war, punish its enemies through economic sanctions and prod allies to pick up a larger share of the tab. In this worldview, only stubbornly anti-American governments like Venezuela’s are castigated for abusing and stealing from their own citizens; the domestic misbehavior of countries like Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be ignored so long as their foreign policies remain friendly. Iran, despite its relatively fair elections, did wrong by trying to go nuclear and backing militias that attack United States-allied forces in the region.

Much of this vision was put forward in the administration’s National Security Strategy, a document produced during Trump’s first year in office. North Korea, like Iran, is a “rogue regime,” the lowest of the low, but its more advanced nuclear program means it holds a higher hand, so it gets a temporary pass in exchange for ceasing nuclear tests and talking nice about giving up its weapons. Russia and China, for their part, are strategic competitors, the military-industrial complex’s new reason for being as the threat of terrorism fades. America would also make good on its outstanding commitments, including the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, to which America would contribute “until they are destroyed.”

The frugal-hawk platform is an appealing one for taxpayers who have laid out trillions for post-9/11 military interventions but still can’t stomach the idea of America in full retreat. A good chunk of it isn’t so different from that of the president Trump replaced. In some places, like North Korea, Trump has applied his unorthodox tactics to the establishment’s orthodox goals. In other places, he has tried to color so far outside the lines that his ideas have been either been heavily discounted (exiting Syria now; threatening to leave NATO) or have disappeared completely (a joint investigation with Russian intelligence on United States soil, which Trump endorsed at Helsinki).

Trump’s major substantive difference with Obama has been over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., more commonly referred to as “the Iran deal.” Kerry and Obama labored mightily to get France, Russia, China, Britain and Germany on board with having Iran drastically cut its enrichment of uranium in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. Tillerson helped persuade Trump to delay his long-promised exit of the deal; Trump finally exited in May, to the delight of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries whose leaders much prefer Trump to Obama.