Whoever thought that filling an administration with a bunch of CEOs who haven’t had to answer to anyone for decades was a great idea—was almost certainly a CEO who hasn’t had to answer to anyone for decades. So what happens when an oligarch hires an oligarch? Nothing. Literally nothing.
Three foreign ambassadors — one from Asia and two from Europe — said they had taken to contacting the National Security Council because the State Department does not return their calls or does not offer substantive answers when it does.
Tillerson has two problems. One is Donald Trump. It’s hard to pretend to do policy for someone who doesn’t have any policy. When Tillerson offered to act as a mediator between the Saudis and Qatar, Trump blew up his efforts.
President Trump openly sided with the Saudis, first on Twitter, then again at a news conference. Mr. Trump called Qatar a “funder of terrorism at a very high level” just as the State Department was questioning whether the Saudis were using the terrorism charge to cover for “long-simmering grievances” between the Arab nations.
Tillerson’s other problem is Rex Tillerson. His unwillingness to trust people he didn’t bring in the door himself matches Trump’s own paranoia, but Tillerson adds a micromanagement style that has the State Department bogged in an ill-timed, uncoordinated “reorganization.”
“It’s not that he’s a weak secretary of state or a strong one — he’s in a different category,” said Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is writing the second volume of his history of American foreign policy. “I have a hard time thinking of one who has come in with little foreign policy experience and has less interest in surrounding himself with the people who know something about the regions and issues that he has to deal with.”
Tillerson might as well be Trump’s less orange twin. Like Trump, he thinks he doesn’t have to ask anyone for any advice, because he believes he already knows everything. After all, he already flew all over the planet in a private jet meeting billionaires, despots, and billionaire despots to sign oil deals. How can that not be a perfect education on everything that’s important around the globe?
But unlike Trump, Tillerson started as an engineer, and instead of tweeting in his spare time, he likes to tinker with all the knobs and buttons. His insistence on a State Department decimation/reorganization plan that he has to sketch down to the paperclip placement before anything can move, means that seats are sitting empty, functional organization is utterly confused, and allies are simply writing off any meaningful dialog with the United States.
Mr. Tillerson, for example, recently shut down the office of the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan — whose role had been diminished since Richard Holbrooke had the job during President Barack Obama’s first term — and has yet to appoint an assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, at a time when the Taliban’s return and Pakistan’s instability are major concerns.
Pakistan still just have to put its near-civil-war on hold until Tillerson finishes organizing little paper desks on his office diagram. There are priorities, after all.
There is also no one in line for the Asia policy job, just when there is talk about whether the North Korea crisis will be defused by negotiation or steam toward conflict.
Trump is, of course, frustrated with Tillerson. But then, Trump is frustrated with everyone. And Tillerson was CEO of Exxon while Trump was only CEO of … Trump. Tillerson is also irritated with Trump.
Running one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, Mr. Tillerson had complete authority. … Accustomed as he is to having the final word, it was clearly jarring for Mr. Tillerson, during a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, to be out of sync with Mr. Trump’s tweets on the Qatar crisis. “I’m not involved in how the president constructs his tweets, when he tweets, why he tweets, what he tweets,” the secretary said.
Apparently, what God had in mind for Rex Tillerson, was a lot of frustration. All around.