Tag Archives: state department

United States

The case for optimism in Tillerson’s State Department

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Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, will win confirmation today as the next US secretary of state.

He stumbled and mumbled in a Texas drawl through hours of cringe-worthy hearings before the US Senate’s foreign relations committee.

He refused to label Russian president Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal,’ and he dissembled about human rights abuses when asked about the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte or about Saudi Arabia. Moreover, at times, Tillerson seemed to distance himself from Trump when he failed to commit to pull out of Iran’s nuclear deal, and Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who lost the Republican nomination to Trump last year, lectured Tillerson on human rights in Russia, Syria and around the world.

Nevertheless, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson easily won confirmation yesterday by the full Senate, and he will succeed John Kerry as the next US secretary of state, despite the earlier misgivings of Rubio and several other hawkish Republican senators.

Say what you want about Tillerson, he’s never — to my knowledge — joked about an impending US invasion with the sitting Mexican president into Mexico to get the ‘bad hombres’ or hung up on the Australian prime minister after a wholly unprofessional rant about winning the election and trying to welch out of a prior US agreement.

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RELATED: Tillerson’s not a bad choice for State,
he’s just a bad choice for Trump’s administration

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But perhaps the most interesting thing about Tillerson’s nomination was that US president Donald Trump ultimately selected Tillerson and not Lee Raymond, Tillerson’s predecessor as ExxonMobil CEO. As between the two, Raymond is far more ‘Trumpier.’  He routinely denied either that climate change is man-made or that climate change is, in fact, occurring. Raymond presided over the massive efforts after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill to improve the company’s safety record, and he successfully merged his company with Mobil. But he routinely flouted SEC rules on counting oil reserves and he also presided over a human rights fiasco in Aceh, then a separatist province in Indonesia.

By all rights, Raymond was always the alpha male to Tillerson’s beta male. After taking over the reins of ExxonMobil in 2005, Tillerson promptly acknowledged that climate change is a real threat and, after the Democratic Party took control of both the US congress and the presidency in 2009, even advocated for a carbon tax (instead of the more complicated, if more popular cap-and-trade legislation).

There’s no doubt that Raymond is exactly the kind of personality that Trump respects, and Raymond — even, one suspects, at the age of 78 — would have gone into Foggy Bottom ready to disrupt. By contrast, Tillerson is a life-long Texan Boy Scout and quintessential company man who spent his entire four-decade career at Exxon. While there are real doubts about whether Tillerson will succeed, one of the biggest is whether he can shift, after so many years, to such a very different role and such a very different bureaucracy.

In a more ‘normal’ Republican administration, under Rubio or Jeb Bush or Scott Walker or John Kasich, Tillerson might be a refreshing choice at State. Instead, the Trump administration’s inexperience and Trump’s odd conciliatory relationship with Putin have only highlighted Tillerson’s own lack of diplomatic experience and Russia ties.  More than any other administration in recent memory, the Trump administration is full of government outsiders with scant experience inside the executive branch. That’s true for Trump, but it is also true for the chief of staff Reince Preibus, for chief strategist Stephen Bannon, for national security adviser Mike Flynn. So another worry is Tillerson he might simply fade alongside so many other forceful personalities, including Trump himself, Flynn, Bannon and others.

That’s not to say Tillerson isn’t bright or capable. It’s clear, above all from Steve Coll’s indispensable 2012 book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, just how knowledgeable and effective Tillerson was in negotiations around the world. At Exxon, Tillerson pursued a foreign policy designed to help his company’s interests and his shareholders, and that didn’t always line up with the interests of the US government’s foreign policy, most notably as his company chafed at economic sanctions in recent years against Russia. On at least two occasions, ExxonMobil got the better of Venezuela under Tillerson’s leadership, and Tillerson effectively sidelined the central Iraqi government in Baghdad to make a better deal with autonomous Kurdistan in the north. That’s above and beyond the more well-known ties between Tillerson and Putin over ExxonMobil’s Siberian oil deals, and navigating the longstanding relationships between his company and dictatorial oil-rich autocracies like Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Chad. (Coll’s book really is required reading for those who want to understand foreign policy in the Trump era).

Tillerson, it’s clear, knows his way around the international landscape — probably far more intimately than Trump himself, who has already gaffed his way across the globe in less than two weeks in the Oval Office. Continue reading The case for optimism in Tillerson’s State Department →

Burma/Myanmar, United States

Burmese opposition victory a policy triumph for Clinton, too

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Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as US secretary of state, traveled to Myanmar to visit Aung San Suu Kyi. (US State Dept.)
Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as US secretary of state, traveled to Myanmar to visit Aung San Suu Kyi. (US State Dept.)

With the ruling party already conceding defeat in the landmark elections that took place in Myanmar on Sunday, it seems certain that, a quarter-century after the Burmese military nullified her last election victory and placed her under house arrest, pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi will now lead her country, with her National League for Democracy (NLD) set to win a resounding victory. USflagmyanmar

Official preliminary election results will be announced on Tuesday, but the outcome now seems all but assured as more details emerge of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)’s electoral collapse.

It is, above all, a moment for the people of Myanmar to celebrate what seems likely to be the most important step yet in the transition from military rule to something that looks increasingly like a democratic state. It’s also a moment for Suu Kyi and her party to celebrate, even though her late husband’s British nationality will prevent an NLD majority to select her as Myanmar’s next president.

No matter.

Suu Kyi, barring a major hiccup in the vote counting or a sudden volte face from the military, will soon become Myanmar’s next leader.

But it’s also a huge triumph for former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who championed Suu Kyi’s struggle in her tenure at Foggy Bottom and spent significant time and effort on building greater US-Burmese ties after years of hostility. When Clinton flew to Myanmar in 2011 to meet Suu Kyi, it was the first time that a senior US government official had set foot in the country for a half-century.

Clinton didn’t have to expend so much political capital on Myanmar. It’s not an incredibly strategic country to the US national interest, even in light of the increasing importance of the Asia-Pacific region. Goodness knows there are no votes among an American electorate that would be challenged to pinpoint Myanmar on a map. But there are (and continue to be) political downsides for Clinton if Myanmar’s transition disintegrates. That she moved so aggressively anyway to facilitate Burmese democracy is worth celebrating as part of the best tradition of American leadership in the world. Continue reading Burmese opposition victory a policy triumph for Clinton, too →

United States

Some unsolicited advice for Hillary Clinton

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clintonpresser

Instead of making awkward jokes about Snapchat or sniping about wiping her private server ‘with a cloth,’ why is it so hard for former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton — who will almost certainly be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2016, like it or not — to say something like this? USflag

“Look, in 2009, these rules were still in flux, and we actually thought a private server would be more secure than government servers. Reports of Russian and Chinese cyberattacks have borne that fear out, and it’s a multi-faceted problem I will tackle when I’m president.

“Unlike the Bush administration, which sought to hide 5 million emails from the public, I have no intentions of shielding my emails from FOIA. I respect and embrace government transparency as a fundamental value of our democracy. We have worked (and are working) with State and all other government agencies to make sure that all work-related email correspondence is archived and to confirm there were no security breaches.

“To the extent a very small amount of classified information was sent to me over four years, I take responsibility, and I will work with government officials to ameliorate any security breaches. But my actions as Secretary of State were done with the best of intentions and with the highest standards of security and propriety in mind.”

Robby Mook, are you listening?

United States

The cynical politics behind the Benghazi ‘scandal’

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gowdy

I’m always super-hesitant to jump into commentary on American politics, mostly because there’s so much to learn about politics and policy elsewhere in the world. USflag

But the decision by the US House of Representatives and House speaker John Boehner on Thursday to form a select committee to ‘investigate’ the Benghazi attacks is one of the reasons I find US politics so utterly discouraging.

A select committee is a ‘special’ committee created for a specific, targeted purpose. The House typically creates a select committee when one or more of the existing House committees don’t have enough authority or capacity to carry out that purpose. For example, between 2007 and 2011, the House, under Democratic control, authorized a select committee on energy independence and global warming.

Of all the mistakes that US president Barack Obama has made in six years in foreign policy, the Republican leadership has generally focused on the Benghazi sideshow — at the expense of more fundamental and, constitutionally controversial matters.

Why ‘Benghazi’ has become such a spectacle

It’s easy to understand why ‘Benghazi’ makes for such a sensational affair. The attack left four US personnel, including Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, dead. It left the Obama administration, just weeks before a presidential election, slack-jawed to explain why US security failed so spectacularly.

Add to that the post-Watergate alchemy, whereby shouting ‘cover-up’ can spin routine politics into scandal, a White House that’s been reluctant, perhaps understandably, to work enthusiastically with its Congressional interlocutors, and a zero-sum political environment where House Republicans show, time after time, that they are willing to take extraordinary measures to achieve certain objectives (e.g., last autumn’s government shutdown, routine debt ceiling crises).

It’s easy to see the political advantage for Republicans in opening a select committee to investigate the matter. Trey Gowdy (pictured above), the two-term congressman from South Carolina, who will head the committee, is already talking about the investigation in terms of a ‘trial,’ with Gowdy and his committee as the prosecution and the Obama administration as the defense. Continue reading The cynical politics behind the Benghazi ‘scandal’ →

United States

Handicapping the race to become the next top diplomat of the United States

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Regardless of whether U.S. president Barack Obama or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney wins next Tuesday’s presidential election, the United States — and the world — will nonetheless be preparing for new leadership at Foggy Bottom. 

Although Suffragio focuses on the politics of countries outside the United States, the U.S. secretary of state is the chief U.S. diplomat and historically — from George Marshall to Dean Acheson to Henry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright to Condoleezza Rice — the secretary of state has played a major role in setting U.S. foreign policy.  As such, the decision will have an immeasurable effect on U.S. foreign policy and, accordingly, world politics.

Obama’s current secretary of state, former New York senator Hillary Clinton, a former presidential candidate and wife of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, has said she will step down after four years, even if Obama wins reelection (perhaps in advance of another presidential campaign in 2016), though there’s an unlikely chance she’ll remain at State for a few months longer due to the recent attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

In those four years, the United States withdrew troops from Iraq, set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, has engaged an ever-more-powerful China, and adjusted to rapidly changing conditions in the Middle East after the ‘Arab Spring’ tumult, including assisting in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

U.S. senator John Kerry (pictured above, middle) and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice (pictured above, top) are routinely thought to be the top two choices in a second Obama term.  Former World Bank president Robert Zoellick (pictured above, bottom) is likewise the favorite in a Romney administration.  In some ways, Romney will have a broader choice — whether to signal in his secretary of state a more establishment, realist, moderate Republican foreign policy or a more hawkish neoconservative foreign policy.

So who’s likely to get the job under either Obama or Romney?  And more importantly, how would each potential candidate guide foreign policy?

Continue reading Handicapping the race to become the next top diplomat of the United States →