Tillerson’s gone — be afraid of what will come next

The departure of U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson has been imminent for months. He would leave by Thanksgiving, he would leave by Christmas, he would leave by Valentine’s Day. A former State Department official told me recently that Tillerson was expected to announce his departure around the first anniversary of his swearing-in, on Feb. 1.

Tillerson was said to be waiting to be free of the financial rules (his net worth is said to be US$300 million) imposed on a cabinet secretary. That was to happen after one year in office. Now he’s gone. Fired in a tweet.

U.S. President Donald Trump did not tell Tillerson he was fired, a point confirmed by a departmental spokesman. For his honesty, the spokesman was also fired.

This is how things are done in Trump’s White House, which has had more departures in its first 14 months than any other administration. Tillerson’s future at Foggy Bottom was in doubt last summer when he was reported to have called Trump “a moron,” something he did not deny.

We need not lionize Tillerson, who in a normal presidency would have been a poor secretary. He decimated the ranks of the State Department and approved the withdrawal of the United States from international environmental and trade agreements. Whatever our doubts about him, he was an adult, calm, rational and poised, which his commander-inchief is not.

With James Mattis at defence and H.R. McMaster as national security adviser, Tillerson was a check on a reckless, mercurial president. With Mike Pompeo, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, as the new secretary of state, however, the world will become more dangerous. The chances of war with Iran and North Korea will rise. The reason is Pompeo’s world view. In his career as a congressman and at the CIA, he was hawkish, deeply skeptical (he never accepted Hillary Clinton’s explanation for the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. personnel were killed) and doctrinaire. He is a radical conservative who came to office in 2010 as a member of the Tea Party.

A believer in regime change in North Korea, it is unlikely Pompeo will endorse the summit that Trump announced last week. Many in Washington doubt the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un will take place in May as planned. We’ll see.

Pompeo will want concessions. The North Koreans are unlikely to offer any.

More alarming than North Korea is the danger to the multi-party anti-nuclear agreement with Iran, signed in 2015. Trump loathes the agreement. So does Pompeo.

With Pompeo’s encouragement, Trump is expected to reopen that agreement in May. He is unable to make the distinction between containing Iran’s support for terrorism, which the agreement does not do, and stopping its nuclear program, which it does.

Indeed, the evidence is that the agreement is working, which is why Trump wants to destroy it. After all, it’s another part of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s legacy — with affordable health care, environmental and industrial regulation, the Paris Agreement on climate change — that he cannot abide.

Egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in even more legal trouble than Trump, the U.S. president will demand concessions from Iran or re-impose economic sanctions. Iran will refuse, withdraw from the agreement and restart its nuclear program. Let us be clear: Dismantling the agreement is the worst thing Trump can do diplomatically as president — worse than withdrawing from the Paris Accord, NAFTA or the TPP. It is an assault on collective security and world order. Pompeo will give Trump permission.

But Pompeo — assuming he is confirmed by a divided Senate, which is likely but not certain — will not be alone. McMaster is likely to leave, too, to be replaced by John Bolton, the flamboyant hawk Trump has been consulting on North Korea, which Bolton, like Pompeo, thinks can be addressed militarily.

Bolton and Pompeo will reinforce the worst angels of Trump’s nature. They will validate his rages, ignite his impulses and feed his conspiracies. Be afraid. Mike Pompeo will make Rex Tillerson look like Otto von Bismarck.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.