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Gingrich on the foreign policy challenges facing Trump |
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not meet with U.S. Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson when the former Exxon Mobil CEO visits Moscow on
Wednesday, a move that could signal tensions between Washington and the
Kremlin.
The Kremlin’s decision to avoid the meeting is
notable. In 2013, Putin personally awarded Tillerson the Order of
Friendship- which is a top state award in the country, Reuters reported.
A Russian spokesman did not indicate why the two will not meet.
Tillerson is emerging from the shadows with a leading
public role in shaping and explaining the Trump administration’s
missile strikes in Syria. And, he’s set for an even higher-profile
mission, heading to Moscow under the twin clouds of Russia’s U.S.
election meddling and its possible support for a Syrian chemical weapons
attack.
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Tillerson was visible during last week’s announcement
of the response to the gruesome chemical attack, fielding questions
from reporters on and off camera, and then captured in an official White
House photo seated next to President Trump as they heard the result of
the
59 cruise missiles that struck a Syrian military base.
Tillerson was a prominent fixture during the most
important foreign policy period in Trump’s young presidency: a two-day
summit with Chinese President Xi that coincided with the strikes against
Syria. He was by Trump’s side during his meetings with Xi and spoke
publicly multiple times to address both issues.
It was Tillerson who delivered the Trump
administration’s first blistering condemnation of Russia in the hours
after the strikes. Standing in a cramped conference room alongside
national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Tillerson said Moscow had
“failed” to live up to its obligations under a 2013 agreement to strip
Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. “Either Russia has been
complicit or Russia has simply been incompetent in its ability to
deliver on its end of that agreement,” he said.
On Sunday, he made his first network television
interview appearances. In one interview, Tillerson said he sees no
reason for retaliation from Russia for the U.S. missile strikes. Russia
maintains a close political and military alliance with President Bashar
Assad’s government and has been accused of supporting its attacks
against Syrians opposed to Assad’s rule — something Moscow adamantly
denies.
Tillerson said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that
Russians were not targeted by the strikes. He also said the top U.S.
priority in the region hadn’t changed and remained the defeat of Islamic
State militants.
Then he headed to Europe to gather with the foreign
ministers of the other major industrialized nations before venturing on
eastward to become the first Trump Cabinet member to visit Moscow — and
possibly meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The criticism from the foreign policy establishment’s left and right that has dogged Tillerson’s tenure is dying down.
Tillerson had faced questions about whether he
understood that his new position meant he was now the face of the United
States to the world, that he had to answer no longer to a small group
of top shareholders but to more than 320 million Americans.
The secretary of state must be “the spokesman for
American foreign policy,” said Eliot Cohen, a senior State Department
official during George W. Bush’s presidency. “This is the
administration’s first crisis but it won’t be their last by a long shot,
so he’s going to have to get used to this.”
Joining Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in
Palm Beach, Florida, Tillerson was supposed to focus on the informal
summit with Xi. Instead, he was thrust to the forefront after photos of
the bodies piled in heaps in Idlib, Syria, dramatically altered the
agenda.
Only a week earlier, Tillerson had alarmed U.S.
allies by indicating the U.S. was no longer interested in pushing for
Assad’s removal from power.
In the hours leading up to Trump’s decision to order
the strikes, Tillerson was among the most forward-leaning of Trump’s top
aides in suggesting the U.S. would deliver an “appropriate response.”
He challenged Russia publicly in a way Trump appeared scrupulously to
avoid and said of Assad early Thursday: “It would seem that there would
be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.”
After the cruise missiles crashed down in Syria,
Tillerson was calm and commanding in a question-and-answer session with
journalists.
Cohen, a conservative critic of Trump’s foreign
policy who has chided Tillerson for his reticence, said he saw Tillerson
growing into the job. “I suspect you’ll see more of him as he grows
more comfortable in dealing with the press and in his relationship with
the president and the administration’s national security team,” Cohen
said.
Beyond Syria are disputes over Russia’s 2014
annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and support for pro-Russian
separatists in eastern Ukraine.
At the same time, Tillerson carries to Moscow the
weight of FBI and congressional investigations into Russia’s
interference in last year’s presidential election. The Trump campaign’s
possible ties to the presumed Russian meddlers are also under scrutiny.
“This is going to be Tillerson’s biggest test to
date,” said Julianne Smith, a National Security Council and Defense
Department official under President Obama.