Tillerson jabs at Russia over chemical weapons use
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took a hard line against Russia on the eve of his first trip in office to Moscow, declaring in interviews broadcast Sunday that the country had been “incompetent” in allowing Syria to retain chemical weapons and accusing Russia of using the same techniques to influence elections in Europe that it had employed in the United States.
Tillerson’s comments were far more critical of the government of President Vladimir Putin than anything that has been said in public by President Donald Trump, who has been a lonely voice for repairing ties
with Russia. They seemed to reflect Tillerson’s expectation, which he has expressed privately to aides and members of Congress, that the U.S. relationship with Russia is already reverting to the norm: one of contention and distrust.
“This was inevitable,” said Philip H. Gordon, a former Middle East coordinator at the National Security Council who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Trump’s early let’s-be-friends initiative was incompatible with our interests, and you knew it would end with tears.” The Russians’ behavior has not changed, Gordon added, and they “are using every means they can — cyber, economic arrangements, intimidation — to reinsert themselves around the Middle East and Europe.”
Yet as Tillerson arrived in Italy to meet with foreign ministers before making the first visit to Moscow by a top Trump administration official, the administration was sending conflicting signals about U.S. policy on Syria and the future of relations with its patron, Russia.
Tillerson said explicitly that the U.S. attack last week on a Syrian air base was intended solely to halt future chemical attacks and not to destabilize or overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad. Instead, he said defeating the Islamic State remained the first priority. Only then, he said, would he turn to a cease-fire process leading to elections, so that “the Syrian people can decide the fate of Assad.”
But the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, suggested such a process was doomed as long as Assad was in power. “We know there’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime,” she said on CNN. “If you look at his actions, if you look at the situation, it’s going to be hard to see a government that’s peaceful and stable with Assad.”
That statement stood in contrast not only to Tillerson’s comments but also to her own remarks a week ago — before Assad carried out his latest chemical weapons attack on civilians — in which she insisted his departure from office was not a diplomatic priority for the United States.
Still, the overall tone of suspicion and condemnation of Russia’s actions in Syria indicated Trump’s top national security advisers were nudging him back to a more traditional Russia policy. From his days as chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Tillerson knows Putin and once received a friendship award from him, and he is aware of the suspicions surrounding those ties and has gone the furthest in the administration in separating himself from the Russian leader.
But that presents a difficult task for Tillerson when he arrives in Moscow Tuesday. While he must offer sharp warnings to his counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, and to Putin if they meet — it was unclear Sunday whether a meeting had been scheduled — he must also find a way forward with them in countering the Islamic State and then dealing with Assad.
The Trump administration’s Syria policy has been difficult to parse. Tillerson, in his first television appearances since taking office, seemed to describe two different strategic objectives: halting chemical attacks and ultimately negotiating a cease-fire. But he made it clear he had no intention of backing a military intervention that would overthrow Assad. That suggested that as long as the dictator used conventional means to kill his own people — barrel bombs instead of sarin gas — the United States would keep its distance.
“I think what the United States and our allies want to do is to enable the Syrian people to make that determination” about Assad’s fate, Tillerson said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”