In other words, there’s no question that Tillerson is intimately familiar with the geopolitics, politics, and characters involved in many of the trouble spots that are key for American policy, including places like Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, West Africa, and Venezuela. Before being assigned to Russia, Tillerson spent three weeks in the Library of Congress reading books about Russian history and politics. He’s no dummy.
Just because he didn’t take part in international negotiations and geostrategic thinking as a State Department diplomat or member of a Senate committee doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to do those things; in fact, he has done them throughout his career, and pretty successfully as far as we can tell. That makes him exceptionally qualified. More qualified, at least on paper, than Mitt Romney, another contender for Trump’s secretary of state, whose jobs at Bain Capital and as a state governor involved comparatively very little international diplomatic work. Romney may have made an excellent secretary of state given his intelligence, his formidable negotiating skills, and his deep interest in global issues, but the point remains that, resume-to-resume, Tillerson is more qualified.
Now, let’s talk about Russia. Russia is an enormous oil producer. Doing business in Russia, given its autocratic and kleoptocratic system, requires having good relationships with key players, especially Vladimir Putin. Tillerson’s job as CEO of ExxonMobil was to improve the net present value to shareholders of his company, and that involved having a good relationship with Putin. Secretary of state is a different job, promoting different interests. Just because Putin and Tillerson had a cordial working relationship doesn’t mean Tillerson will automatically kowtow to Putin and Russia as secretary of state.
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