WASHINGTON (AP) – Rex Tillerson’s foreign policy doesn’t sound a lot like Donald Trump’s.
At his confirmation hearing Wednesday, the former Exxon Mobil CEO selected by Trump for secretary of state called Russia a “danger” and vowed to protect America’s European allies. He rejected the idea of an immigration ban on Muslims. He treaded softly on the human rights records of key U.S. partners like Saudi Arabia.
In the words of Sen. Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s GOP chairman, Tillerson “demonstrated that he’s very much in the mainstream of foreign policy thinking.” But doing so forced the former Exxon Mobil CEO to break with a variety of the president-elect’s most iconoclastic statements on diplomacy and international security.
Again and again, Tillerson hewed more closely to longstanding, bipartisan positions on America’s role in the world, and who are its friends and foes.
That may help Tillerson win confirmation with senators who’ve expressed wariness about his extensive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it could leave him implementing a Trump foreign policy that looks little like the vision he outlined Wednesday.