Trump underlines his bulldozer diplomacy by choosing Tillerson as US secretary of state

With the designation of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as US secretary of state, and presumed designation of former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton as his deputy, Donald Trump is sending a message to the world: the US is open for business (presumably to the highest bidder), it will be carrying a big stick, there will be no speaking softly and the operative word will be “bulldozer”. There will effectively be no subtlety, no negotiation and no shades of grey: starting in January, it will be Trump’s way or the highway.

For those Trump voters who might have imagined he would assemble a team attuned to the needs of the blue-collar worker or the man in the street, it should be becoming crystal clear that they have been hoodwinked. Instead, the Trump administration is turning out to be the domain of big business, billionaires and Goldman Sachs. How anyone could have imagined that a man who has never worked a blue-collar day in his life or associated with ordinary people until his run for the presidency would be transformed into the champion of the working class always defied logic. Given that Trump has so far refused to divest himself of his business interests during his presidency, it is plain to see that he plans to enrich himself and his family on the backs of the American economy. Tillerson’s appointment would be consistent with that objective.

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The very idea that Trump would propel Tillerson to the role of secretary of state is a real slap in the face to the rest of the world. America’s presumed top diplomat-in-waiting has no experience in government, or outside Exxon Mobil. He is best known for arranging a multibillion-dollar deal with Russia’s Rosneft to jointly drill for oil in the Arctic and Siberia, until it was sidetracked by the Obama administration’s sanctions against Russia in return for the forced annexation of Crimea.

Tillerson knows how to get a deal done, but there is no evidence that he has any of the skills ordinarily associated with a diplomat, such as tactfulness, sensitivity, discretion, finesse, judiciousness or prudence. Perhaps that is the point – Trump did not want to put in place a secretary of state with traditional skills of diplomacy, because, to him, the world is about extracting maximum advantage from one’s allies and opponents, not arriving at solutions where all parties’ needs are met.

By comparison, Bolton has good diplomatic credentials. Apart from his brief stint at the UN, he was an undersecretary of state, has held a number of other positions in government and at prestigious think tanks in Washington, and won praise for his work in establishing the Proliferation Security Initiative. However, some critics claim Bolton has tried to spin intelligence to support his political views. His bluntness has earned him a variety of enemies, with Iran’s foreign ministry having called him “rude”, and North Korea’s government having referred to him as “human scum”. This is not a particularly good place to start if one of the Trump administration’s foreign policy objectives is to make progress with America’s most ardent foes. It would appear that his objective is exactly the opposite.