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.
If Tillerson thinks that India with its extreme high levels of grinding poverty, disease, pollution and rigid backwards caste system and family dominated political system is an example of an American style flourishing Western free market democracy then maybe Tillerson has a point. America after all with its lack of social mobility, 1% banana republic controlled wealth elite, grinding rust belt poverty, high rates of drug addiction, extreme gun violence, extreme inequality, millionaire and billionaire bought Congress/political parties/White House, corrupted sleazy Hollywood entertainment industry and deep racial problems does indeed resemble aspects of Indian society, economy and culture. So perhaps America and India really do have a great deal in common. It is just not the spin and gloss that Mr. Tillerson likes to put on it and thinks it to be.
Surely among the 320 plus million American citizens Trump can find a Chief Diplomat and Secretary of State in the mould of the prodigious and prestigious Dr. Henry Kissinger. A Dr. Henry Kissinger type Secretary of State is precisely what the Trump administration needs to make good on Trump's pledges to forge a new constructive partnership and alliance with the Russian Federation and enhance not diminish relations with the planets burgeoning 21st century Superpower the People's Republic of China. Dr. Kissinger as President Nixon's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and then President Ford's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State forged a dynamic and creative Architecture for Peace in the 1970s engineering the wise Detente with General-Secretary Brezhnev's USSR and overseeing the truly trans-formative 'Opening to China' with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai. It is quite clear for observers and experts in American politics and policy that Secretary Tillerson does not enjoy the full confidence ofthe President of the United States, a very precarious, if not dangerous position for the American Secretary of State to be in. Does Secretary Tillerson speak with the full confidence and authority of President Trump? Only Donald Trump has the power to clarify and correct this incongruous and ridiculous Washington DC mess with a change in Secretary of State. Donald....it is about time you uttered your famous catch phrase that made you into the pseudo celebrity you are – 'Rex...you're fired!'
posted by Satish Sharma at
19:35
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