Never Give an Inch

Mike Pompeo’s Never Give an Inch is both a memoir and a manual for statecraft under pressure. Across roles as CIA director and Secretary of State, he argues that effective leadership demands moral clarity, disciplined risk-taking, and a refusal to concede ground—politically, operationally, or ethically. The book’s throughline is captured in its title: national security and leadership depend on the courage to draw firm lines and defend them with action, not rhetoric.

The narrative moves from clandestine missions to Pyongyang to moral debates about faith and religious freedom, building a composite picture of how power, principle, and prudence intersect. It blends battlefield pragmatism with managerial strategy, showing how leadership culture, risk appetite, and moral vision align to shape American influence abroad. Pompeo’s lesson is direct: if you want to protect freedom, you must lead from conviction, not consensus.

Leadership as calculated risk

At the heart of Pompeo’s view is risk. As CIA director, his clandestine 2018 Easter mission to Pyongyang illustrated how leadership demands entering the danger zone to reset failing paradigms. Avoiding risk, he writes, often magnifies threats. A mission can succeed only when leaders analyze odds, protect teams, and still have the courage to launch. He contrasts his approach with the previous “strategic patience” toward North Korea, which he saw as drift. For Pompeo, small, trusted teams and delegated authority turned risk into leverage.

That same mindset applies to everyday leadership: cutting bureaucracy, hiring bold performers (“pipehitters”), and empowering staff to act. It’s a culture of competence over caution. Risk-taking, when disciplined and bound by mission, becomes a multiplier of strategic advantage.

Pivoting and accountability

Pompeo extends risk-thinking to failure. When policies fail, leaders must pivot quickly—“fix, cut losses, move.” He applies this to major foreign policy shifts: abandoning the Iran nuclear deal, intensifying the fight against ISIS, and engaging North Korea from a new angle. Delayed pivots, he argues, bleed power and credibility. Leaders must identify sunk costs, reallocate resources fast, and build coalitions that support decisive change.

This pivoting mindset depends on accountability—the willingness to face outcomes directly, whether during the COVID-19 crisis, in bureaucratic clashes, or in international deals. Pompeo treats accountability as moral and strategic architecture: without it, deception flourishes, as seen in his account of China’s initial COVID cover-up and the WHO’s failure to act decisively.

People and culture as force multipliers

Pompeo’s organizational chapters explore culture-building. His signature reform at CIA was to replace paralysis with purpose, cutting approval layers and hiring operationally minded lieutenants like Brian Bulatao and Gina Haspel. At State, he sought to translate that culture into a diplomatic ethos of integrity and ownership. “Pipehitters” became a metaphor for results-oriented professionals who combine patriotism with quiet competence. He contrasts this with bureaucrats who value process over mission and moral posturing over execution.

Whether in intelligence operations or embassy management, Pompeo insists that vision without execution is just theater. To lead effectively, you must put the right people in place, remove choke points, and reward measurable outcomes. Culture, not rhetoric, determines whether institutions act with clarity or drift into self-protection.

Drawing lines and moral foundations

Pompeo links his operational worldview to deeper moral conviction. Throughout the book he argues that peace through strength and faith-centered morality are not incompatible—they reinforce each other. Lines must be drawn clearly: on Iran’s aggression, Russian expansionism, or China’s authoritarian overreach. When nations blur those lines, deterrence collapses. By contrast, transparent boundaries backed by credible action preserve peace.

His moral philosophy is anchored in faith and the idea of inalienable human dignity. He elevates religious freedom to a core diplomatic principle, supporting global ministerials and condemning abuses like China’s persecution of Uyghurs. To him, moral leadership isn’t sentimental—it’s strategic, because nations that defend conscience become more stable and trustworthy partners.

America First and prudent engagement

Pompeo frames “America First” as disciplined realism, not isolationism. Sovereignty and selective alliances define his foreign policy architecture. Allies who share burdens—like NATO partners pressed to raise defense spending, Indo-Pacific democracies aligned in the Quad, and Middle Eastern states joining the Abraham Accords—enhance U.S. leverage. Conversely, institutions that erode accountability (UN agencies, the WHO, or ICC overreach) should be challenged or reformed.

Prudence also means restraint. Pompeo advises against open-ended interventions in Afghanistan or Syria while affirming retaliatory strength (as in the Soleimani strike). American policy must pair hard power with wisdom: act where vital interests are at stake, but never promise transformation where conditions don’t allow it.

Truth-telling and presence as statecraft

Pompeo’s “hard truth” theme summarizes his China strategy: leaders must see reality as it is, not as diplomacy wishes it to be. He distinguishes the Chinese Communist Party from the Chinese people and argues that moral clarity begins with naming the adversary precisely. His Clean Network initiative, allied cooperation with Australia, India, and Japan, and bans on Huawei reflect this doctrine of truth-based action.

Lastly, he underscores the simplest diplomatic tool: show up. Physical presence—whether in Pyongyang, the Arctic, or a tiny Pacific island—signals solidarity and deterrence. Presence changes perception and shapes outcomes. To lead globally, you must be seen where stakes are highest.

In sum, Never Give an Inch is a philosophy of leadership that unites disciplined risk-taking, relentless accountability, decisive moral clarity, and visible engagement. Whether you read it as defense of America First realism or a manual on moral foreign policy, Pompeo’s argument is unmistakable: power without principle erodes freedom, but principle without courage achieves nothing.

Pompeo begins where most leaders flinch: risk. He insists leadership is inseparable from uncertainty, whether commanding a tank platoon or running the CIA. His clandestine 2018 Easter mission to Pyongyang illustrates this. The trip—executed with minimal staff and maximum secrecy—embodied his rule that inaction can be more dangerous than action when adversaries exploit hesitation. Strong leadership accepts a measured chance of failure but refuses paralysis.

The Pyongyang principle

During his first meeting with Kim Jong Un, Pompeo used humor and steel—“I’m still trying to kill you”—to establish honesty and leverage. It wasn’t bravado; it was psychological signaling that the United States could talk and fight simultaneously. By managing risk with preparation, small teams, and redundant backups, he turned a perilous meeting into a platform for releasing three hostages and resetting negotiations.

This episode crystallizes one of his recurring lessons: risk is not recklessness. It is discipline amid uncertainty, an approach equally relevant to business or national strategy. Leaders must quantify stakes, protect their people, and design operations that allow for recovery if things go wrong.

Culture against paralysis

At CIA, Pompeo dismantled what he saw as bureaucratic timidity. He shortened approval chains by up to 70%, reintroduced operational aggressiveness, and celebrated field officers as national assets. He criticized predecessors who reduced clandestine operations and revived the ethos of “stealing secrets” as a patriotic obligation. This culture shift—faster decisions, delegated authority, performance over process—became his model for transformative leadership.

When translated to other domains, it means that you, too, should design organizations that empower doers, not memo writers. The leader’s job is not to eliminate risk but to frame it so your team can act decisively within clear parameters.

Recruit pipehitters, not passengers

Pompeo’s personnel philosophy—“build pipehitters”—threads through this theme. Pipehitters, a term borrowed from Special Forces, are professionals who accept hard missions and execute quietly. His key hires—Brian Bulatao, Gina Haspel, Ulrich Brechbühl—illustrate competence joined with loyalty. At any scale, from startups to national intelligence, effective organizations depend on these kinds of high-trust operators. The takeaway is universal: manage risk by hiring people who can own it.

For Pompeo, success is less about continuity than course correction. He describes policy pivots—against ISIS, Iran, and North Korea—as case studies in how to recover momentum when strategies stall. The principle: when reality contradicts your plan, adapt without apology. Delay magnifies danger.

Confronting failed paradigms

Against ISIS, Pompeo supported granting commanders broader strike authority, leading to the dismantling of key terrorist networks. Against Iran, he engineered the “maximum pressure” campaign—sanctions, coalition-building, exposure of violations—after scrapping the JCPOA. And with North Korea, he replaced “strategic patience” with pressure plus engagement. These pivots rejected inertia and treated leverage as a perishable asset: once you spend it weakly, you can’t recover it.

Learning to pivot well

Pompeo codifies the art of pivoting: identify sunk costs, realign quickly, use evidence to justify the shift, and bring allies along through intelligence sharing and operational results. His collaboration with Mossad on Iranian secrets demonstrated how partnerships make pivots credible. For any leader, the underlying rule is to trade comfort for clarity—adjust faster than your adversary.

A successful pivot, in Pompeo’s model, isn’t panic; it’s disciplined acceleration toward what works. When failure no longer hides behind procedure, action becomes possible again.

Pompeo believes deterrence depends on clarity. Lines—whether against Russia’s aggression, Tehran’s terrorism, or Pyongyang’s brinkmanship—must be explicit and defended with credible tools. Inaction invites predation; firmness prevents escalation. He merges this strategic realism with Reagan’s simple maxim: peace through strength.

Case studies in deterrence

With Russia, he combined diplomatic resolve (pushing NATO to increase defense budgets by $130 billion) with withdrawal from broken treaties like INF. With Iran, he authorized the Soleimani strike as a proportionate yet unmistakable red line—signaling lethal consequences for killing Americans. Afterward, escalation cooled, demonstrating his thesis: consequences imposed clearly reestablish deterrence without spiraling war.

Clarity as moral posture

Pompeo extends this logic beyond military contexts. Line drawing also applies to moral and political boundaries: freedom versus authoritarianism, truth versus propaganda. A republic’s endurance, he argues, depends on citizens and leaders who state their principles plainly and act accordingly. Ambiguity, whether in foreign policy or public ethics, always favors the aggressor.

“No bad deals” is Pompeo’s shorthand for disciplined negotiation. He distinguishes diplomacy rooted in verification from diplomacy addicted to optics. Good deals rest on enforceable, measurable commitments; bad deals trade immediate praise for long-term loss. This philosophy underpinned his posture from Pyongyang to Tehran.

Verification over promises

In Hanoi, Pompeo and President Trump refused North Korea’s offer of partial denuclearization for full sanctions relief. To accept, he explains, would have rewarded deception and reduced future leverage. In contrast, the 2015 Iran deal—lifting sanctions for unverifiable commitments—served as his cautionary tale. Sanctions, like credibility, can only be spent once.

Negotiation as strategy, not theater

Pompeo warns against summit vanity—agreements crafted for press releases rather than policy gains. A negotiation should constrain the adversary, not flatter it. His “toolkit” stresses measurable goals, irreversible verification steps, and the discipline to walk away. For any field—business, politics, or diplomacy—the parallel holds: don’t let reputation anxiety substitute for rigorous results.

The lesson merges moral clarity and analytical precision: integrity in negotiation means refusing expediency when verification is absent.

Pompeo reframes “America First” as calibrated leadership—protect national sovereignty while empowering allies to shoulder responsibility. It’s not isolation but leverage through fairness. America’s role is to lead coalitions grounded in realism, not open-ended multilateral dependence.

Selective multilateralism

He favored cooperatives that delivered results—the counter-ISIS coalition, Quad partnership, and NATO spending drive—while exiting accords that constrained the U.S. economically (like the Paris Agreement). In his recounting, allies contributed an additional $400 billion to defense by 2024 due to sustained pressure. Pragmatic collaboration replaced virtue signaling as metric.

Sovereignty at the border

Pompeo treats immigration control as a sovereignty test. The Migrant Protection Protocols (“Remain in Mexico”) exemplify diplomacy married to law enforcement—leveraging Mexico’s cooperation to restore order at the border. It illustrates his thesis: sovereignty is preserved by enforcing norms and crafting cooperative enforcement mechanisms, not by rhetoric about openness.

Reform global institutions

He repeatedly challenges multilateral bodies that pursue politics over fairness—the UN Human Rights Council, ICC, and WHO. His principle: engage when institutions aid stability; withdraw or sanction when they undermine accountability. Real multilateralism, Pompeo concludes, begins with sovereign equality, not endless consensus.

Pompeo’s China chapters build around a consistent warning: you can’t defeat a threat you won’t name. He separates the Chinese Communist Party from the Chinese people and portrays the CCP as an expansionist Marxist regime aiming to dominate technology, trade, and ideology. Truth-telling becomes the foundation for coherent resistance.

Expose and counter capabilities

Beijing’s leverage, Pompeo argues, stems from exportable technology infrastructure (Huawei), predatory lending (Belt and Road), and elite capture in democratic societies. His response was multi-domain: the Clean Network initiative excluding Chinese tech from allied 5G networks, export restrictions on semiconductors, and diplomatic framing that aligned allies in the Indo-Pacific. When words matched deeds, outcomes followed—Huawei’s global revenue plunged and allies joined the network.

Truth as coalition glue

Pompeo’s broader insight is that truth functions as a strategic glue among democracies. When nations admit the scale of CCP intent, they can act collectively. Concealment or euphemism delays preparation. For leaders, the application is immediate: integrity of diagnosis precedes integrity of response.

Pompeo fuses moral conviction with policy. For him, faith isn’t private sentiment—it’s the moral geometry of democracy. His belief in unalienable rights grounds his approach to diplomacy, human rights, and alliances. By framing religious liberty as both ethical and strategic, he turns values into instruments of influence.

Institutionalizing moral leadership

At State, he launched the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom and the Commission on Unalienable Rights under scholar Mary Ann Glendon. These bodies recentered rights discourse on the American founding and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, rejecting ideological “rights inflation.” The initiatives attracted broad global participation—including Muslim-majority partners like Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama—showing that moral clarity can build unlikely coalitions.

Faith in action

Pompeo’s defense of persecuted minorities—the Uyghurs, Christians in the Middle East—led to sanctions and global awareness campaigns. His critique of the Vatican’s secret deal with Beijing illustrates his readiness to challenge even religious institutions if they compromise freedom. He also recognized religious staff groups at State, signaling that faith and professionalism coexist.

For professionals, the takeaway is moral consistency: belief can inform diplomacy without coercion. When faith reveals universal dignity, it strengthens—not weakens—policy integrity.

A central trait Pompeo prizes is the courage to accept limits—own mistakes and know where America’s power ends. Accountability and prudence, he argues, guard against both arrogance and appeasement.

Accountability under crisis

COVID-19 tested global transparency. Pompeo claims that suppression of early pandemic data by Beijing and the WHO exemplified the dangers of unaccountable institutions. His call for independent investigations and the exposure of conflicts of interest (e.g., EcoHealth Alliance) stresses a broader leadership point: truth delayed is lives lost. Accountability isn’t punishment—it’s prevention.

Restraint in power projection

Pompeo applies prudence in foreign engagements. He backed limited retaliatory force in Syria, pressure without invasion in Venezuela, and conditional withdrawal from Afghanistan. The common thread is proportionate action—do enough to enforce principles, not enough to entangle a generation in nation-building. His invocation of the Founders’ warnings about entangling alliances frames restraint as patriotic realism, not weakness.

For today’s leaders, the twin disciplines of accountability and prudence define sustainable power: act boldly, measure relentlessly, and know when to stop.

Pompeo’s final lessons return to human presence and resilience. Showing up—physically and emotionally—is both diplomatic and personal strategy. At the same time, thick skin under constant attack is survival armor for public life.

Presence as influence

Pompeo recounts moments like the DMZ meeting, evacuations from Wuhan, and reopening the U.S. consulate in Nuuk. Each instance of presence changed wills and outcomes. Physical visits signal commitment where rival powers woo neglect. His rule is simple but profound: if you aren’t present, your adversaries are.

Enduring incoming fire

Alongside presence comes toughness. Pompeo details battles with media, leaks, and internal dissent—from the inspector general controversy to Ukraine-related resistance. His takeaway: distinguish between legitimate oversight and weaponized opposition, absorb hostility without obsession, and stay focused on mission. Leadership invites criticism; endurance converts it to credibility.

Together, visibility and resilience constitute the closing arc of Never Give an Inch: be seen, tell the truth, hold the line, and keep walking through the fire.