Tillerson has harsh words for Russians

Other Trump advisers giving mixed signals on next steps in Syria.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is taking a hard line against Russia on the eve of his first diplomatic trip to Moscow, calling the country “incompetent” for allowing Syria to hold on to chemical weapons and accusing Russia of trying to influence elections in Europe using the same methods it employed in the United States.

Tillerson’s comments, made in interviews aired Sunday, were far more critical of the Russian government than any public statements by President Donald Trump, who has been an increasingly lonely voice for getting along better 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 friction, distrust and mutual efforts to undermine each other’s reach.

“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-befriends 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 that 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 that 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 that his departure from office was not a diplomatic priority.

Meanwhile, Trump’s national security adviser on Sunday left open the possibility of additional U.S. military action against Syria but indicated that the United States was not seeking to act unilaterally to oust Assad.

In his first televised interview, H.R. McMaster pointed to dual U.S. goals of defeating the Islamic State group and removing Assad. But he suggested that Trump was seeking a global political response for regime change from U.S. allies as well as Russia, which he said needed to re-evaluate its support of Syria.

“It’s very difficult to understand how a political solution could result from the continuation of the Assad regime,” McMaster said. “Now, we are not saying that we are the ones who are going to effect that change. What we are saying is, other countries have to ask themselves some hard questions. Russia should ask themselves ... ‘Why are we supporting this murderous regime that is committing mass murder of its own population?’”

From his days as chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Tillerson knows Russian President Vladimir 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 today. 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 ceasefire. But he made it clear that 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 U.S. 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” — a line that was used often by his predecessor in the Obama administration, John Kerry. “You know, we’ve seen what violent regime change looks like in Libya and the kind of chaos that can be unleashed.”

Those remarks indicate that Trump does not yet have a grander strategy for Syria.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the Russian handling of Syria “incompetent.”