A look at the contributing causes to Tillerson’s firing,
Rex Tillers on spent a tumultuous year at the helm of the State Department, frequently undercut by the presiden the disagreed with on key foreign policy issues and derided by many of his employees who blamed him for marginalizing their role and diplomacy itself. Here are some questions and answers about his ouster Tuesday.
What led to his exit?
Tillerson’s departure followed months of disagreements with the White House over staffing and administrative matters at the State Department, which has a large back logo fun fifi ll ed jobs. But what may have done him in was a fatal disconnect over what Trump saw as Tillerson’s conventional approach to policy matters.
Trump told associates he wanted a secretary of state who looked the part, and he liked Tillerson’s camera-ready image and acerbic Texas drawl, real as barbed wire from a man who was named after two 1950s Western movie stars, Rex Allen and John Wayne. He also liked Tillerson’s Exxon résumé.
But the two men never clicked. For Tillerson, despite weekly lunches and frequent phone calls, Trump remained unpredictable and sometimes inscrutable. For Trump, Tillerson became an embodiment of “establishment” naysayers.
What will be his legacy?
Tillerson has no singular foreign policy cause or achievement to his claim, but he had worked to open the door to talks with North Korea. Although Trump dismissively said last year that Tillerson was wasting his time trying to talk to “Little Rocket Man,” the summit Trump agreed to last week is partly born of Tillerson’s efforts.
A part of his legacy is in his pushback to Trump policies Tillerson considered unwise and argued against, a battle he did not often win. In private meetings with Trump, he told him he thought the United States should stay in the Paris climate agreement and should not break away from the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has threatened to do this spring.
Tillerson also opposed the unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy there. Though he signed documents last week authorizing the renovation of an existing consulate, a relatively modest step that theoretically could be reversed in the future, he made clear that security — not politics — was his fifirst concern.
Who will now be key foreign policy voices?
Tillerson’s exit leaves Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, along with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and White House Chief of Staffff John F. Kelly as the most prominent foreign policy voices, and all are roughly aligned with Tillerson.
Trump said Tuesday that with CIA Director Mike Pompeo as secretaryof state, he will be “getting close” to the Cabinet he wants and that he hoped to have the changes in place before his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
What other changes might be coming?
Tillerson’s firing could be a prelude to big policy changes. It comes just two months before the next deadline for the Iran nuclear deal, when Trump must decide whether to reimpose nuclear-related sanctions as he has said he is inclined to do, effectively with drawing from the multilateral agreement made in 2015 by the Obama administration and other world powers. Tillerson’s departure further suggests that Trump is already out the door on the agreement.
Although Tillerson supported the approach to the war in Afghanistan that Trump announced last week, he felt no need to frame U.S. goals in the same maximal terms as the commander in chief.
Where Trump pro claimed on Aug. 21 that “our troops will fight to win,” Tillerson laid out a more modest agenda.
“I think the president was clear this entire effort was intended to put pressure on the Taliban, to have the Taliban understand that you will not win a battlefield victory,” Tillerson told reporters last year. “We may not win one, but neither will you.”