Rex Tillerson is the opposite of Donald Trump. Will he have any sway?

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39083336

Rex Tillerson is the opposite of Donald Trump. Will he have any sway?

By Barbara Plett Usher
BBC State Department correspondent

25 February 2017

From the section US & Canada

Rex Tillerson is the antithesis of his boss, the Disrupter-in-Chief Donald Trump. He is also, in some respects, the antithesis of his predecessor, the garrulous former Secretary of State John Kerry. For the man who is the public face of US diplomacy, Tillerson keeps a remarkably low profile. Which has left staff at the State Department, and the journalists who cover it, wondering how he will fare against competing power centres in the White House, and how he will represent America to the world. Early signs have not been promising.

For the entire first month of the Trump administration the State Department has given no public briefings. It's just been announced that they're set to resume early next month after an unprecedented six-week hiatus. It was not just the matter of being absent from the cacophony of a new order asserting itself in Washington. It was the noticeable absence of an American voice to the world, a tool of diplomacy that has regularly inserted US positions into the internal debates of allies and foes alike.

Tillerson himself has rarely spoken publicly. On his inaugural trip to a G20 Foreign Ministers meeting in Bonn and again in Mexico, he read prepared statements but didn't make room for reporters' questions and didn't respond when we tried to ask them anyway.
(snip)

He does at least avoid the pitfalls of Kerry, who thoroughly embraced the public role of top diplomat, but whose shoot-from-the-hip style sometimes left his aides backtracking after he'd departed the podium. But one State Department employee says: "I think Tillerson hurts himself with this quiet diplomacy approach, because Washington is not a quiet town." This reluctance is perhaps understandable given the freewheeling approach of the noisiest voice in town, the White House. It has, at best, sent mixed signals on key foreign policy issues such as Nato, Russia and China.

But Tillerson's recent absence from Donald Trump's meetings with key foreign leaders has left many questioning just how much influence he has. State department officials point out that his acting deputy Tom Shannon was in the room for the visits of the Canadian and Japanese Prime Ministers. And that Tillerson was travelling during the official part of Benjamin Netanyahu's Washington trip, so he met the Israeli leader separately before he left. Yet while they were at dinner, the White House appeared to blindside him with suggestions it might depart from a long-standing insistence on a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.
(snip)

[Hortensis]

1. And the entire upper echelon of State is gone, with

all their expertise, and they cannot be quickly replaced, probably won't be even with retirees while he's there.

But as for who Tillerson will be as SoS, we do not know. Will he be another Cheney, a pathetically limited man who will be completely unable to meet a call to greatness, only able to sack for riches?

Exxon has its own "state department" analysts who helped him decide which areas were stable enough for Exxon to invest in, so he does have some real understanding of the planet--from a commercial viewpoint. But he has said himself that what else the governments he dealt with did was outside Exxon's area of concern.

His entire professional life has been pursuit and maximization of profits. Can he shift thinking to other goals? About stability achieved through the wellbeing of other nations?

It's way too early to say Tillerson is 45's opposite. He could turn out to share 45's outstanding characteristic, pursuit of wealth and advantage without regard for cost to others.

[NNadir]

2. The absence of any clue about foreign policy in this so called "adminstration," will...

...lead to the marginalization of the United States, a collapse of its power, if not endless war. Trump makes Czar Nicolas II look competent.

And personally, I hold the incompetence of Czar Nicolas I as being responsible for much of the tragedy of the 20th century. The difference between Czar Nicolas I and Czar Vladimir Putin, Trump's boss, is that Putin is competent, if evil. He will eat the US for lunch and spit out the bones, all because the right wing hated so many things more than they loved their country.

[JTFrog]

3. Sway in what? They are both after the fucking oil. What exactly is this author expecting? nt

[poli3]

4. Tillerson is just a figurehead

He was going to be forcibly retired from Exxon this year anyway, Kushner is the one who is really running state as shadow sos.