Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state may not toe the line on key policies

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Rex Tillerson testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing to become US secretary of state. Photo: Reuters

Published: 6:32pm, 12 Jan 2017Updated: 10:16pm, 12 Jan 2017

Rex Tillerson’s foreign policy doesn’t sound a lot like Donald Trump’s. At his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, the former Exxon Mobil CEO selected by Trump for secretary of state called Russia a “danger” and vowed to protect America’s European allies. He rejected the idea of an immigration ban on Muslims. He treaded softly on the human rights records of key US partners like Saudi Arabia.

In the words of Senator Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Republican chairman, Tillerson “demonstrated that he’s very much in the mainstream of foreign policy thinking”. But doing so forced the former Exxon Mobil CEO to break with a variety of the president-elect’s most iconoclastic statements on diplomacy and international security.

Again and again, Tillerson hewed more closely to longstanding, bipartisan positions on America’s role in the world, and who are its friends and foes. That may help Tillerson win confirmation with senators who’ve expressed wariness about his extensive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it could leave him implementing a Trump foreign policy that looks little like the vision he outlined on Wednesday. Take a look at where Tillerson’s views didn’t quite match those of his would-be boss:

RUSSIA

Tillerson adopted a tough tone toward Moscow, apparently attempting to rebut the perception that he’s too close to Putin. The Russian leader previously awarded Tillerson his country’s “Order of Friendship” following Exxon’s deals with Russia’s oil industry. But on Wednesday, Tillerson called Putin’s Russia a threat to the United States.

Whereas Trump as a candidate played down Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, arguing the population there was pro-Russian anyway, Tillerson said the annexation was illegal and amounted to “a taking of territory that was not theirs”.