Rex Tillerson Channeling Bill Rogers: Hello! Anybody There?
Secretary of the Links (r.) & Nixon
Secretary of ?
It's easy to forget Bill Rogers, Secretary of State for four long years under Richard Nixon. The president sidelined his old friend and confidant as he concentrated foreign policy in the White House under Henry Kissinger. The two blindsided Rogers on their secret negotiations with China as well as those with Hanoi on ending the Vietnam war. There are no biographies of Rogers who is best remembered as Secretary of the Links for having spent so much of his time golfing. Among Rogers' few memorable statements on diplomacy was, "Making foreign policy is like pornographic movies…more fun doing it than watching it." The State Department became a marginal player on foreign policy under the fifty-fifth Secretary of State.
This appears to be happening again under Secretary Rex Tillerson. He was absent at President Trump's meetings with the leaders of Israel, Canada and Japan; blindsided on a travel ban that has angered much of the Muslim world; an anti-immigrant policy that has riled Mexico; and Trump’s nod toward a one-state solution on the Israel-Palestine issue. The White House nixed his choice for Deputy Secretary. Of almost four dozen top State Department posts, only one has been filled: Tillerson's. Indeed, the president told Fox News, “In many cases, I don’t want to fill those posts… They’re unnecessary.” The administration summarily fired two dozen senior officials shortly after assuming office. On March 7, the Department held its first (vacuous) press conference since Trump's inauguration. Tillerson breezes by reporters refusing to answer their questions. And he's banishing reporters on his upcoming trip to Asia, his second travel abroad since taking office.
Tillerson must compete on the foreign policy front with three highly competent retired generals: Defense Secretary Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary Kelly and the brilliant new National Security Advisor, Gen. McMaster. Moreover, Trump's personal Rasputin, Steve Bannon and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both novices in statecraft, also fancy having a strong hand in national security.
Add to Tillerson's Harvey the Rabbit work style an attitude from conservative Republicans toward the State Department that ranges from indifference to outright hostility. State has been paired with that other pariah of the right, the EPA, for radical budget cuts (37 percent) to help defray a surge in defense spending. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer sniped that Foreign Service officers who objected to Trump’s travel ban “should either get with the program, or they can go.” Scarier still was the McCarthyite call by the White House's liaison with conservative House Republicans, Peter Teller, to “Go after the State Department folks too. Everybody talks about the civil service domestically, but no one talks about the Foreign Service. Let’s go after the Foreign Service.”
A State Department diplomat told The Atlantic, "They really want to blow this place up. I don’t think this administration thinks the State Department needs to exist. They think Jared [Kushner] can do everything." Another said, "Not much information is coming up to him. And nothing is flowing down from him to us."
George W. Bush gave the military greater responsibility over foreign policy at State's expense. And Barack Obama concentrated foreign policy-making in a bloated National Security Council at the White House while he and Hillary Clinton treated the department as a patronage waste dump, leading to its further irrelevance. Trump et al. appear to want essentially to put the nation's foreign ministry out of business altogether. Rex Tillerson seems to have been hand-picked to act as handmaiden in this effort.
If Mr. Tillerson indeed starts taking his job seriously, he has little time to play catch up. As the political establishment and the world write off the new Secretary and his agency, a kind of institutional gangrene sets in, impervious to recovery. In such a scenario, Secretary Tillerson will be seen as sleep walking in his job, following in the foot steps of his fellow somnambulist, William P. Rogers.