The choosing of Exxon mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as America’s next Secretary of State – which is expected to be confirmed today — seems a typical Donald Trump move: crass, profoundly annoying to the president-elect’s enemies, yet at the same time perhaps very clever.
The political class is, naturally, aghast: a corporate titan in charge of American diplomacy. The horror! Environmentalists are disturbed, too: an oil exec as Secretary of State – what about the planet? And nervous Russia watchers are appalled most of all: at Exxon, Tillerson has cultivated close ties with Vladimir Putin, which of course taps into fears that the Trump presidency will be a puppet operation for mastermind Vlad in the Kremlin.
Tillerson’s work at Exxon suggests a ruthless operator who put the interests of his company first and foremost, even if it meant shaking hands with authoritarian thugs. For instance, as Steve Coll has been quick to point out in the New Yorker, Tillerson ‘defied State Department policy and cut an independent oil deal with the Kurdish Regional Government, undermining the national Iraqi government in Baghdad.’ Tillerson justified the deal by saying ‘I had to do what was right for my shareholders’.
But is such a cut-throat style necessarily a terrible thing in a Secretary of State? Donald Trump has always said he would put ‘America First’. It’s one of the reasons he won the election. Perhaps, as Secretary of State, Tillerson’s mission will be exactly that: to do for the Stars and Stripes what he did for Exxon, even if it means cutting deals with authoritarian thugs.
Trump may be a barrel of contradictions: he seems all over the place, ideologically, and yet he is strangely consistent. On foreign policy, he has been quite clear all along: national interest comes first. In his first major foreign policy speech as a serious presidential candidate, delivered to the National Interest magazine, no less, he made clear that America’s financial and strategic advantages would no longer be sacrificed for the ‘false song of globalisation’.
Choosing Tillerson as Secretary of State suggests Trump wasn’t making that up. America will no longer be the world’s policeman, officer Nice Guy, often sacrificing its own advantages in the name of global growth. From now on, America will look after itself, and the rest of the world is just going to have to deal with it.
Comments