On May 3,
Secretary of State and ex-CEO of EXXON
Rex Tillerson gave a
speech to assembled
State Department staff to interpret for them what President Trump's "America first" slogan means in practice.
Rex Tillerson, 2009
Credit: William Munoz
Tillerson led off with a few comments about "our fundamental values."
"I think it’s important to also remember that guiding all of our foreign policy actions are our fundamental values: our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated. Those are our values."
I suppose he could have added a few more "values around," ideals such as equality and unalienable rights, including to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but fine, at least he mentioned a few of the values that have in fact made America great.
Unfortunately, in his very next sentence he puts those values high up on a shelf where they can look good but can't cause any trouble:
"Those are not our policies; they’re values. And the reason it’s important, I think, to keep that well understood is policies can change. They do change. They should change. Policies change to adapt to the – our values never change. They’re constant throughout all of this."
The rest of his talk is about our policies--what we actually try to advance in the real world. According to Tillerson, they boil down to two--security and profit:
"And so we really have to understand, in each country or each region of the world that we’re dealing with, what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests . . ."
or again:
"So I give you that as kind of an overarching view of how I think about the President’s approach of 'America first.' We must secure the nation. We must protect our people. We must protect our borders. We must protect our ability to be that voice of our values now and forevermore. And we can only do that with economic prosperity. So it’s foreign policy projected with a strong ability to enforce the protection of our freedoms with a strong military."
What a great arrangement. We can have our high ideals and laudable values. We can pride ourselves on them and hold them up as examples for others to follow. But first and foremost we must "protect our ability to be that voice of our values" by projecting them with our strong military and making sure that the whole enterprise is profitable.
Despite the high-minded rhetoric, it seems to me that a person's or a nation's actions pretty much define their values. If I lie, cheat and steal, those are my values. If I abuse my wife, my kids, my students, clients or employees, those are my values. If we start preemptive wars, we value starting wars. If we kidnap people and keep them locked in Guantanamo for decades without trial, we value that. If we torture, we value that. If we kill hundreds or thousands with bombs or drones, we value that. If we close our borders to those most in need of sanctuary, we value that. Our actions, not our words, are the "voice of our values."
For a slightly different take on Trump and Tillerson's policies, which the author describes as "vulgar realism,"
click here.
If Tillerson as Secretary of State, or Trump as President, or we as a nation want to practice
realpolitik--or as
Ludwig von Rochau described it, the law of power--so be it. That's how most countries, and especially empires, act.
Let's just not wrap our iron fist and grasping hand in the
Declaration of Independence so that we can pretend to be what we palpably are not.
Note: As of August 1, 2017, a
new State Department mission statement is being drafted that clearly lays out Tillerson's new vision. Gone is the aim of fostering "a peaceful, prosperous, just and democratic world . . . for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere." As promised, the new focus is on "the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally . . .."
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