Rex Tillerson is one of a very small number of Americans to have been awarded the Russian Order of Friendship. Vladimir Putin pinned the badge on Tillerson himself in 2013, while the two were meeting to negotiate ExxonMobil’s $500 billion deal for Russian oil and gas rights. Tillerson’s “close relationship” with Russia was touted as one of his selling points as secretary of state, but that was before Tillerson was caught in the 24-hour whipsaw of Trump’s reversal in Syria.
Last week Tillerson went from mouthing Trump’s hands-off philosophy when it came to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, to embracing a policy that looked quite familiar.
Mr. Tillerson said that Mr. Assad could no longer remain in office, and that “steps are underway” for an international effort to remove him. On Tuesday, Mr. Tillerson seemed close to embracing the very policy the Obama administration had decided on: that Mr. Assad would eventually have to cede power, though the timeline remains unclear.
The timeline remains unclear because everything about Trump’s policy in Syria remains unclear. Tillerson has been making one set of statements, other officials have been saying something different, and Trump has refused to say anything at all since he let fly the missiles.
Mr. Trump himself has yet to clarify a welter of mixed signals emanating from Washington.
The mixed messages are leaving everyone baffled about US intent, and since Assad is Russia’s primary ally in the Middle East, and there are thousands of Russian soldiers on the ground in Syria, this is making Tillerson’s visit to Moscow a bit problematic.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov began a meeting with his US counterpart Rex Tillerson in Moscow with a warning -- do not strike the Syrian regime again.
The two top diplomats are sitting down together in Moscow on Wednesday for what are expected to be painstaking talks, after a chemical attack in northwestern Syria plunged the old Cold War enemies to a new low.
Tillerson actually skipped out on a meeting of NATO leaders to make his visit to Russia, a meeting that at the time was read as Trump underlining his Russia connections.
"I cannot fathom why the Administration would pursue this course except to signal a change in American foreign policy that draws our country away from western democracy's most important institutions and aligns the United States more closely with the autocratic regime in the Kremlin," [Representative Eliot Engel] added.
Now the missile attack in Syria is being blamed for a chill between Trump and Putin, and the meeting, like Trump’s Syria policy, is being talked up as something completely opposite what it was a week ago—the US laying down the law to Russia.
The two countries have traded barbs over last week's chemical attack, which killed 89 people, and prompted the US to carry out its first strike against the Syrian regime in the six-year conflict, taking out aircraft and infrastructure at a Syrian military air base.
Russia has claimed that the deaths were the fault of rebels, not the Syrian government. Tillerson has denied this, putting the Trump regime in the odd position of upholding the statements of military intelligence over those of Russia—in itself quite a reversal.
However, the attack was twenty times smaller than the chemical attack Donald Trump was happy to ignore in 2013, and the effectiveness of the missile attack on the Shayrat air field remains questionable. And while Russia is delivering a message of “don’t do that again,” they also seem as genuinely baffled about the direction Trump is taking, as is every other observer, foreign and domestic.
"I will be frank that we had a lot of questions regarding a lot of very ambiguous as well as contradictory ideas on a whole plethora of bilateral and international agenda coming from Washington," Lavrov said.
Lavrov isn’t the only one left scratching his head.
Before the April 4 chemical attack, the administration appeared resigned to letting Mr. Assad’s government, backed by Russia and Iran, continue gaining the upper hand in a six-year-long civil war that has claimed at least 400,000 lives. Even after the attack, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the administration would look “rather silly not acknowledging the political realities” of Mr. Assad’s grip on power.
The attack conducted by the United States has done nothing to slow Assad’s progress or arrest what currently seems to be a bloody, grinding, but nearly inevitable defeat of the remaining rebel factions. Unless the United States is willing to commit significant resources to Syria, and risk a face-to-face confrontation with Russian forces, changing the outcome there seems unlikely. Even if Assad refrains from the use of chemical weapons, his Russia-supported forces have an enormous upper hand.
It also seems unlikely that Tillerson’s famous friend, Putin, will meet with him directly during his visit to Moscow, and many Republicans have been quick to point out the apparent distance between Trump’s position and that of Russia. However, Trump’s astounding reversal on Syria and the sudden chill with Putin comes as new information is emerging about ties his team had with Russia during the campaign. Both Carter Page and Paul Manafort are in the news with fresh evidence of their involvement, while House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes’ statements are getting fresh scrutiny.
Just what Tillerson will actually say to Lavrov is up in the air. And with Trump policy shifting at a moment’s notice, it may not matter in any case.