After challenging Tillerson to an IQ test, Trump is now heading for Rexit

Like me, you may remember furious debates, even back to university days, about American meddling in the world. In my day, it was Ronald Reagan. We marched when he deployed medium range ballistic missiles in western Europe and sighed knowingly after he was caught secretly selling weapons to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

Quite likely you have your own mental scrapbook of American malfeasances. Vietnam may need volumes. Yet in our maturer years, most of us would acknowledge – I think – that the final tally, at least since the end of World War II, is in America’s favour. It has used its wealth and heft to keep us from dissolving into chaos. “Peace though strength”, a common description of Reagan’s approach, sounds glib, but we know what it means.

The rebuilding of western Europe after 1945 with the Marshall Plan, the creation of an international architecture for stability (the UN, the IMF, Nato and so on), the spread of free trade, democratic governance and human rights and, yes, the fall of the Soviet Union, all happened because America considered them a sine qua non for the establishment of security for all of us.

How does "peace through pandemonium" sound? Not good, I am guessing, but that is essentially the condition of Washington’s foreign policy apparatus today. We have a galloping crisis of global leadership that has America’s allies gawping in dismay. Their fear is partly born of bafflement. They don’t even know who to try to talk to when they need answers on pressing issues. Are you going to war with North Korea? Are you interested in doing a trade deal with us? Should they call Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee? He and Trump barely talk. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Err, no.

It is more, "Hello, is there anyone there?" Quite likely not. The State Department in Foggy Bottom, which is meant to be the engine room of American diplomacy, is increasingly devoid of people to pick up the phone. On the one hand, seasoned diplomats who were appalled from the moment Donald Trump used his inauguration speech to rehearse his ‘America First’ doctrine – a throwback to the isolationists who tried to keep America out of World War II – have been fleeing the building in droves. On the other, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, has simply left hundreds of senior posts unfilled. "Hello, operator, please connect me to the US ambassador to South Korea, it’s important". Reply: "I’m sorry, there is no US ambassador to South Korea."

open image in gallery

According to a head count by the New Yorker, 48 ambassadorships are vacant. All but two of the 23 Assistant Secretary of State positions – a vital layer of top, seasoned diplomats – are either empty or occupied by a temporary fill-ins. Tillerson is steering a ship bereft of officers on deck, in part because of his own mission to strip its operating budget, which he laid out within days of arriving in Foggy Bottom last winter. “These cuts will decimate the Foreign Service,” Nick Burns, a former Under-Secretary of State, told the New Yorker. “The Foreign Service is a jewel of the United States. There is no other institution in our government with such deep knowledge of the history, culture, language, and politics of the rest of the world.”

Sometimes, Tillerson, who may now rue the day he left the CEO suite at Exxon, has identified people he wanted by his side only to have the White House nix them. Which brings us to the Rex-Donald divorce proceedings. Rex, by all accounts, is headed for Rexit. That they were even scheduled to have lunch together on Tuesday seemed like a minor miracle, not least given what Trump had said on Twitter earlier in the day. If it was true that Tillerson had called him a “moron” maybe he’d like to come by the Oval Office and see which one of them is really the dunderhead, he said. “We’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”

I am not being funny. What Tillerson actually called Trump, we recently learned, was a “f***ing moron”. It happened at a private meeting of top foreign policy bods in July attended also by Defense Secretary James Mattis. Last week NBC News reported that around the same time Tillerson came to the brink of resigning but was pulled back by Mattis and others. The NBC report prompted Tillerson to hold an impromptu press conference to avow his faith in the president. If he wasn’t crossing his fingers, he should have been, given Tuesday’s IQ quip.

The undercutting of Tillerson by irascible Trump is not new. No issue is more concerning today than North Korea and the President’s repeated threats of military action to “totally destroy” it. When Tillerson told reporters a few days ago that, contrary to all impressions, he was talking directly to the regime in Pyongyang to seek a diplomatic solution to the stand-off over its nuclear weapons programme, Trump contradicted him by Tweet. “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” he averred. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” Which will be what, the world is now asking?

Corker is engaged in his own pissing match with the President, also as priceless as it is mind-boggling. It started when Corker, who had just decided he would not seek re-election next year, remarked that Tillerson, Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly, were the people that “help separate our country from chaos”. This past weekend, an angered Trump implied Corker was retiring because he’d refused to endorse him for a new term. Corker hit back. “It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning”. On Tuesday, Trump took it a step further, suggesting that an interview with the New York Times had made Corker look a ninny. “The Failing @nytimes set Liddle' Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and that's what I am dealing with!”

Consider. What do foreign adversaries of the US and allies alike think when they look to Washington these days? Do they think Tillerson is a reliable spokesperson for the president and has his confidence? Of course they do not. Can they even take Trump seriously when senior members of his own party are suggesting he needs “adult daycare” supervision to prevent the outbreak of chaos?

If you are still of the view that America is a net detriment to the world – you would be in the company of Kim Jong-un, the leadership in Tehran and of Bashar al-Assad of Syria – then you will be cheered by this escalating farce in Washington and the collapsed morale of its diplomatic service.

If you think that in this most dangerous of times it would be helpful, vital even, to have an America that is resolute, steady and responsible, then you will not be sleeping at night.