President Donald Trump is on the way out of office—perhaps even earlier than the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. But the legacy he leaves behind—not just in terms of increasingly polarized domestic politics but also in terms of foreign policy—will greatly shape the next administration right out of the gate.
The Trump administration spent years ramping up the confrontation with China, with little to show for it. The “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran only redoubled Tehran’s development of nuclear materials. Russian efforts to undermine NATO have continued undeterred. And U.S. relations with traditional allies have grown more frayed.
Just before a Trump-inspired mob stormed the U.S. Capitol this week, Foreign Policy spoke with Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, about his former boss, the state of the world, and the challenges facing the Biden administration. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Foreign Policy: You served at the pleasure of the president but at the same time were charged with advancing U.S. national interests. Did you ever find those two things at odds with each other?
Rex Tillerson: Yes. There were multiple occasions where, in my view, the actions the president wanted to take were not consistent with our national security objectives. But I want to be quick to add here that he’s the president. He got elected; I got appointed. I did get confirmed by the Senate, and I had the authority and the legitimacy that go with that office, but I also had to be true to myself and true to my own beliefs, and when the president asked me to take this job, he was asking me for help. And I told him on multiple occasions, “Look, I’m here to help you, and if I can’t help you, if I’m not helping you, then I need to move on.”
FP: Was it difficult to get a message through to the president? How did you navigate that when the stakes were so high?
RT: His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this.
Trump’s “understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited.”I had to constantly evaluate my last conversations with him—what seemed to resonate, what seemed to get across, what didn’t—and I would try different approaches with him. I used to go into meetings with a list of four to five things I needed to talk to him about, and I quickly learned that if I got to three, it was a home run, and I realized getting two that were meaningful was probably the best objective. So I began to adjust what I went into a meeting with and what I attempted to explain and describe, and then I started taking charts and pictures with me because I found that those seemed to hold his attention better. If I could put a photo or a picture in front of him or a map or a piece of paper that had two big bullet points on it, he would focus on that, and I could build on that. Just sitting and trying to have a conversation as you and I are having just doesn’t work.
FP: If you’re having a hard time briefing him, and he’s not reading the briefings on important subjects, how does one make an informed decision then?
RT: Well, that’s the key. I’m not sure many of those decisions were well informed.
