[Newsmaker] Tillerson: Top US diplomat seeking balancing role in Trump administration

Published : Dec 14, 2017 - 16:27 Updated : Dec 14, 2017 - 18:22

Surrounded by former generals, hawkish politicians and a hard-mouthed command-in-chief, US State Secretary Rex Tillerson has been trying to find a balance in the Trump administration’s approach to resolve a nuclear standoff with North Korea.

While President Donald Trump and his security aides have warned about the North’s relentless nuclear ambition and floated the idea of a preventive strike against it, the US top diplomat has offered a softer line and called for a diplomatic solution.

Despite the skepticism that whether the secretary represents the administration's stance on foreign policy, regional stakeholders have showed cautious hopes on Tillerson’s new diplomatic overture of “unconditional talk” with North Korea amid the concern about Trump’s unpredictability and ineptness in foreign affairs.

“South Korea and the US are on the same page to resolve North Korea’s nuclear issue peacefully,” said Unification Ministry spokesman Baek Tae-hyun on Wednesday. “If (Tillerson’s proposal) serves that purpose, we are hoping that the talk will take place soon.”

US State Secretary Rex Tillerson. Yonhap

South Korea’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae showed a more measured tone, saying Tillerson’s remark is “reiteration” of US policy principle that North Korea must suspend nuclear provocations and return to the negotiating table.

A day earlier in Washington, Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without preconditions, a proposal appeared to deviate from Washington’s previous stance that Pyongyang must first abandon its nuclear arsenal for any negotiations to take place.

His comments drew a welcoming response from those countries close to North Korea -- China and Russia. The Chinese foreign ministry hoped there would now be “meaningful steps towards dialogue and contact” between the US and the North.

Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also welcomed the statement, saying the secretary’s remark has “impressed them far more than the confrontational rhetoric that they have heard up to now.“

Often being described as “the worst secretary of state ever” by US media outlets, Tillerson has nevertheless thought to be among the few senior officials trying to make the case that a diplomatic solution is more effective than military options to resolve nuclear standoff with North Korea.

Alongside his latest proposal of direct talks with North Korea, Tillerson has also sought to open lines of communication with Pyongyang in a bid to seek a possible way forward beyond decadeslong nuclear confrontation.

But such ideas have been immediately dismissed by President Trump, who called it “a waste of time” and his National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, one of the most hardliner among the administration in his approach to North Korea’s nuclear threat.

”I know there‘s some reporting yesterday about Secretary Tillerson said we’re open to initiating negotiations, but those negotiations are not -- or talks, you know -- would be, are not an end in and of themselves,” McMaster said Wednesday in remarks at the Jamestown Foundation.

Since taking office In February as a State Secretary, Tillerson has been under criticism for not being committed enough to his job as he has yet to offer a clear vision of US foreign policy and fill top positions at the State Department.

Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University, said although Tillerson “may not be very good at his job,” some of the criticism could be unfair given his tough task as a top diplomat at the Trump administration.

“Tillerson is serving a president who is genuinely clueless about foreign policy yet seems to think he’s some sort of a strategic genius… Given the president he serves, how effective could Tillerson possibly be?” Walt wrote in his article in Foreign Affairs.

By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)