America Isolated: Tillerson You’re Fired
The United States of America under the leadership of the Trump administration has never been more isolated on the World Stage. I wrote last year how the election of Donald Trump was the beginning of the end for American Global Leadership. I am not the least bit surprised at the decline of American standing in World Politics and the weakening and debasing of American leadership as the pre-eminent Global Super-Power, a title and role it has held since 1945. Besides the President himself and his Cold War relic of a Defence Secretary Mattis, one big problem emerging in American Global Leadership and the quality and efficacy of American Statecraft is the ridiculous Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
If Trump is serious about making good on his 2016 foreign policy pledges then he must sack Rex Tillerson immediately and replace him with a Henry Kissinger type Secretary of State. America and the World is in desperate need of a truly great global geopolitical strategic thinker, diplomat par excellence and statesman in the form of Henry Kissinger. What the United States and the international community is getting from Tillerson is a complete light weight non-entity who knows little of multi-dimensional international statecraft. Prime exhibit A is Tillerson’s recent incoherent, factually inaccurate and frankly deeply offensive and disgusting speech to the CIA front Centre for Strategic and International Studies which is nothing more than a brains trust for Langley. Tillerson served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the CSIS for 11 years and made a point of thanking the CSIS for its ‘mentorship of me’ and ‘it [CSIS] really has been important to my ability to do what I’ve been asked to do to serve the country.’ I bet it has Mr. Tillerson and no doubt your colleagues at CSIS wrote the speech that you delivered to them on October 18th. And what a speech it was.
Tillerson seems to have a very naive, rose tainted view of India and pushing for a closer Trump-Modi partnership will be very interesting to observe. How a Hindu nationalist like Narendra Modi and a man like Donald Trump will get a long will be fascinating to observe as Tillerson’s State Department pushes for a closer Indian-American strategic partnership. Tillerson seems to believe that the Indian, American and Japanese navies working closely together in the Indo-Pacific ocean will some how be a great bulwark for stability. He also along with his boss Trump seems to think that India should play a greater strategic role in the 16 year American/NATO lost war in Afghanistan. Quite what neighbouring Pakistan has made of this American call to Indian arms in the Great Game of Afghanistan will also be fascinating to analyse as the months roll on and the Indians at the behest of the Trump administration and Tillerson State Department step up to the Afghan plate.
Tillerson dangled in front of the Indians the possibility of enhanced American military technology and equipment transfer as a reward for enhanced cooperation in patrolling the Indo-Pacific region along with the Japanese and for greater Indian involvement in the lost American 16 year war in Afghanistan. When will the Americans realise [whether it be a Democrat administration or Republican administration] that they and their NATO allies are beaten in Afghanistan and rather than attempt to entice other regional allies such as Delhi into the conflict [which will just exacerbate an already monumentally disastrous situation for the United States and NATO] it would be best to retreat and withdraw gracefully while they still have some men and equipment left to withdraw.
It was really the complete and utter garbage that Tillerson came out with regarding the magnificent People’s Republic of China and what he said contrasting it with the basket case of India that stands as the greatest load of rubbish to be spouted by an American Secretary of State in quite some time [alongside the usual trash you hear from American diplomats about the great Russian Federation]. I do not know who wrote this nonsensical Tillerson speech or who authorized it, but for these deeply offensive and frankly wrong sections alone, Trump if he is serious about improving relations with both the far more important powers of China and Russia needs to get rid of this Tillerson…..More Here