Trump likely to nominate ExxonMobil CEO as secretary of state

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is likely to announce ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, according to Andrea Mitchell, an American television journalist and Washington insider. Former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton is likely to be deputy secretary of state, she also reported, citing two anonymous sources within the Trump transition team.

When asked about Tillerson as the candidate for top diplomat, Trump spoke highly of him in a Fox News television interview broadcast on Dec. 10. “To me a great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well,” he said, likely referring to Russian President Putin and Middle Eastern leaders. “He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals for the company, not for himself.  I have tremendous respect for him. He’s a world-class player.”

Having built his career in the energy business, Tillerson started working on large oil projects in Russia in 1998 and became acquainted with Russian President Putin the next year before he was president, according to Bloomberg News. Tillerson was among the few Westerners who managed to maintain good business relations throughout the Putin administration, being awarded the Russian Order of Friendship in 2013.

Regarding the sanctions imposed by the West on the military invasion of Ukraine, he told an ExxonMobil shareholders meeting in May 2014, “We don’t support sanctions because we don’t find them to be effective unless they are very well implemented comprehensively and that’s a very hard thing to do. We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with the sanctions.”

Bolton was among the most recognized diplomats of the George W. Bush administration and a leader of the neoconservative ideology, which advocated spreading Western values and institutions to the non-Western world. In a Dec. 11 interview with Fox News, he said “it’s not all clear” that the Russians interfered in the U.S. presidential elections.

Zenon Zawada: We think it’s positive that Trump is considering for his top diplomat an experienced businessman like Tillerman, who has strong relations with the Russian establishment. This will be as good an attempt as ever to establish peace in the post-Soviet sphere. Part of why U.S. President Barack Obama’s reset failed was because experience and contacts with Russia were utterly lacking among Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Another reason is a lack of understanding of the Russian mindset and geopolitical view, which Tillerson and Michael Flynn have a better understanding of.

Trump is attempting a Russia reset of his own, even though he refuses to use the term. In his key appointments, he is recruiting both Russia hawks (Mattis, Bolton) and doves (Flynn, Tillerson) as a deliberate strategy that we would describe as “cautious rapprochement.” If U.S.-Russia relations go well the first two years, we believe Trump will keep the doves and dump the hawks. If relations sour, we think he will do the reverse.

Bolton’s comment about Russian interference not being clear, even hinting that someone in the U.S. government might have been involved, indicates he could have already abandoned his neoconservative colleagues who oppose Trump and believe in Russian interference, such as U.S. Senator John McCain. Indeed, Bolton could already be working on the Trump diplomatic team.