Tillerson leads from shadows of State Department

WASHINGTON — Mr Henry Kissinger slipped into the State Department two weeks ago for a quiet lunch in his old office with Mr Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil chief executive, who has all but covered himself in a cloak of invisibility in his first six weeks as Secretary of State.

Describing his impressions, Mr Kissinger, perhaps the United States’ most famous diplomatic strategist, chose his words judiciously. “The normal tendency when you come into that job is to increase your visibility and to show that you are present and in charge,” he said in an interview.

“He wanted to first inform himself of all the nuances. I was impressed by the confidence and self-assurance that he showed.”

But in Washington, this approach can be seen as brilliant, mystifying or a prescription for powerlessness.

Mr Tillerson has skipped every opportunity to define his views or give guidance to US diplomats abroad, limiting himself to terse, scripted statements, taking no questions from reporters and offering no public protest when the White House proposed cutting the State Department Budget by 37 per cent without consulting him.

He suffered in silence, said State Department officials, when Mr Trump called, in a matter-of-fact way, to reject Mr Tillerson’s choice for deputy Secretary of State. He has been absent from the White House meetings with key world leaders, and when the State Department issued its annual report on human rights, he skipped the announcement.

Defenders say Mr Tillerson has been accomplishing far more behind the scenes, including arranging for the first trip of a Saudi Foreign Minister to Iraq in more than a quarter-century — his first foray into the sinkhole of Middle East politics.

“He’s already developing plans to begin ratcheting back (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s nefarious behaviour,” said Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an interview. These steps would represent the first known effort by the new administration to face off against Mr Putin.

“He’s won status and the respect of the president, of (national security adviser, Lieutenant-General) H R McMaster, and talks all the time to Mr Jared Kushner (President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who has emerged as a prominent voice on US foreign policy),” said the senator.

“He doesn’t mind at all that these stories are being written about him being missing. When he’s ready to talk, you will be very highly impressed.”

Tomorrow, Mr Tillerson will leave for his first truly fraught diplomatic mission: A trip to Japan, South Korea and China, at a moment when open conflict with North Korea is a growing possibility, and when the administration is planning Mr Trump’s first meeting with President Xi Jinping of China.

The trip is so vital that the “principals” committee of the National Security Council is set to convene today to discuss the North Korean threat and how to deal with China, so that Mr Tillerson speaks from a consensus strategy.

But do not expect to hear much about that strategy from the secretary before he arrives in Asia: The State Department has told reporters that they cannot ride on the plane. The decision appears to be unprecedented for a major diplomatic trip. Even four decades ago, when Mr Kissinger was conducting shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East and opening up China, he was delivering spin to reporters on the plane and offering up diplomatic tutorials.

“All his predecessors have travelled with press,” said Mr Nicholas Burns, who served as spokesman, ambassador and undersecretary of state in Republican and Democratic administrations. Failing to do so, he noted, creates the risk that the secretary of state will be defined by the country he is visiting — especially a place like China.

Within the State Department, Mr Tillerson, 64, got off to a promising start with a warm, humble greeting to staff members in the drab headquarters’ flag-draped foyer on his first day on the job. He talked about his upbringing and his wife’s belief that he had been preparing for this job his whole life, even if he had not known it.

But few have heard from him since. Those who have say they regard him as an impressive manager who knows how to run a crisp meeting, take in a variety of views and give little away about his own.

“He forces everyone to boil their memos down to a page or two, so they really have to think about what their message is,” said one official who has dealt with him frequently in recent weeks. “He’s already met with two of the most important Chinese officials. He knows a lot about some countries many secretaries don’t know about,” including Indonesia and others that have energy assets. He understands what embassies do, because ExxonMobil often relied on them for help.

But he is also introverted, a bit standoffish. He never met in person with Mr John Kerry, his predecessor. “These guys came in to drain the swamp,” said one career State Department official, “and it’s clear that they are under orders not to cooperate or deal with swamp creatures.”

So, for thousands in the State Department, Mr Tillerson has come to be viewed as the phantom of Foggy Bottom, scarcely glimpsed and known mostly for his directives to wipe out some of the department’s top jobs.

The biggest concern among diplomats and many in Congress is that when Mr Trump talks about bolstering the US’ commitment to its national security, he does not have diplomacy in mind.

Longtime diplomats often cite a line uttered four years ago by the new Defence Secretary, James Mattis, when he was in charge of Central Command. “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition,” said Gen Mattis at the time. As one diplomat who has met frequently with Mr Tillerson since he took office noted recently: “Rex clearly agrees with that. He just won’t say it.”

(But a senior State Department official said Mr Tillerson did say it, to Mr Trump, over dinner a little more than a week ago.)

On his first trip, to Europe, Mr Tillerson went out of his way to reassure allies of the US’ commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, doing little to repeat the “America First” notion that Mr Trump has promoted. In Asia, Mr Tillerson is scheduled to visit the Demilitarised Zone on the border with North Korea, and it seems almost unimaginable that he would repeat Mr Trump’s warning as a candidate that the US may pull back from the region.

So why is the man many in the State Department call T Rex so quiet? Secretaries of state from both parties have relished their role as chief spokesman for US values.

Ms Madeleine Albright made her name describing the US as the “indispensable nation” that needed to intervene in the Balkans. Mr Colin Powell took the lead in making the case for invading Iraq (words he later regretted).

Mrs Hillary Clinton, under former president Barack Obama, highlighted human and women’s rights in particular. Mr Kerry narrated his own role as relentless negotiator, sometimes using background briefings to read aloud from copious handwritten notes he had taken while haggling over the Iran nuclear deal and the removal of chemical weapons from Syria. In indiscreet moments, he talked about his differences of view, mostly on Syria, with Mr Obama.

There are several theories about Mr Tillerson’s reticence.

One is that his silence is highly strategic: He wants to cement key relationships in private, make sure he is aligned with a mercurial president and let the policy process at the National Security Council play out before making any grand pronouncements.

The second is that he is waiting for the battles at the White House to burn out. In short, he wants to sidestep Mr Stephen Bannon, the president’s top strategist, who believes that China’s rise can be halted and that Iran should be vigorously confronted, and work with Gen Mattis, Mr Kushner and Gen McMaster. Mr Corker said: “He’s already reached an agreement with Mattis to come to agreement and present ideas together,” something that Ms Condoleezza Rice and Mrs Clinton often did with their defence counterpart, Robert Gates.

The third is that he sees the job as more akin to what he did at ExxonMobil: Cut your deals, say as little as possible and take the heat.

Clearly, Mr Tillerson will not have much of a staff for a while. Not a single undersecretary or assistant secretary — the people who make the policy wheels turn — has been nominated, and only a couple of ambassadors have been named.

Some say the problem is not with Mr Tillerson, but those he works for.

“Rex Tillerson is off to a slow start, but the White House is partly to blame,” said Mr Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, whom the administration considered for a top post. “The president needs to give the secretary the staff he wants; protect, not decimate, his budget; and make clear to the world that it is the secretary and no one else who speaks for the administration when it comes to foreign policy.”

Mr Kissinger, at 93, is philosophical about most things, including Mr Tillerson. “I would expect that as foreign policy evolves, Rex Tillerson will become an increasingly prominent exponent of it,” he said. “When I first came to Washington (as national security adviser to former president Richard Nixon), you would find me mentioned in The New York Times maybe 10 times.”

A computer index suggests that the actual number in his first year was about 228, but who is counting? Mr Tillerson, in a sign of progress, has already exceeded that figure this year. THE NEW YORK TIMES