If you're old enough to remember, come back with me to the 1980s and the Reagan Administration. There was this concept called arms control that liberals of that era were obsessed with, and they were very unhappy with Ronald Reagan because he a) considered the Soviet Union an enemy; b) didn't have enough talks with them in pursuit of arms control deals (Reagan mostly thought the concept was foolhardy, although he had his moments); and c) didn't put much emphasis on cultural exchanges and other such things designed to "promote understanding" or whatever.
The way Reagan saw it, the Soviets had strategic goals that conflicted with those of the United States. He didn't mind talking to them at all. In fact, he and Mikhail Gorbachev developed a very warm personal relationship that endured until Reagan's illness and death. But the talk had to work within the context of Reagan protecting America's own strategic interests, which is why he walked away from a proposed arms control deal at Reykjavik in 1985. It wasn't personal, but Gorbachev insisted that the U.S. give up strategic missile defenses and that was a dealbreaker for Reagan.
The left thought Reagan was being an unreasonable "hard-liner," and kept insisting that he should see the Soviets more as human beings and less as enemies. To Reagan, there was no distinction between the two. Of course they were human beings, and if we could do business with them in a way that served our strategic interests, we'd be happy to. But if we couldn't, it was nothing personal . . . but we couldn't.
Fast forward now to the present day. Donald Trump appears poised to nominate Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State (with the wonderful choice of John Bolton as his deputy), and the left is aghast. Why? Because Tillerson has lots of experience dealing with Vladimir Putin, and the dealings have been fruitful.
Apparently that whole business about building personal relationships with the Russians no longer applies:
Few Americans are closer with Putin than Tillerson, who has long represented Exxon's interests in Russia.
"He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger," John Hamre, a deputy defense secretary during the Clinton administration and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank where Tillerson is a board member, told the Wall St. Journal.
In 2011 Exxon beat out BP and other competitors in a historic deal giving it access to Arctic and other deposits in Russia, while allowing state-owned Rosneft its first-ever access to energy projects in the United States. The next year, "the Kremlin bestowed the country's Order of Friendship decoration" on Tillerson, the Journal reported.
The choice of Tillerson is unconventional in the sense that Tillerson has no diplomatic experience, but to my mind that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. The typical diplomat knows how to produce piece of paper that presume to bring peace to the Middle East and stup Iran from getting nuclear weapons - but in fact do neither. I don't mind giving an accomplished guy from the world of business the chance to be our lead negotiating in dealings with other countries, especially if he's going to have an experienced man like Bolton to guide him and help make sure the State Department operates as it should (in other words, not like Hillary operated it).
But as to the shrieking about Tillerson's success in dealing with Putin, people need to get something through their heads: It's the job of a CEO to work well with officials everywhere his company intends to do business. If Tillerson has worked well with Putin, it's not because Tillerson is some sort of secret Russian agent or friend of Russia's imperialist ambitions. It's because Tillerson figured out how to make Exxon Mobil's strategic interests meld with Russia's so he could do business there.
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It wouldn't be such a bad thing if America's top diplomat could do the same on behalf of our country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it appeared that Russia was moving toward free-market reforms, and that it could ultimately become a U.S. ally. The decline of Boris Yeltsin and the rise of Putin signaled a return to a Russia that sees its geopolitical interests at odds with the U.S. But there's really no reason that needs to be the case, and a smarter, tougher U.S. administration might force Putin to look at Russia's interests in different ways.
There was a time when liberals claimed to believe this was a diplomat's job. There was also a time when the left refused to believe Russia should be a concern. Like, four years ago. But all principles are negotiable if that's what it takes to cast aspersions on Donald Trump. If you never thought you'd see the day when the left's major complaint about a Republican president was that he's too pro-Russian, well, we're seeing all kinds of things this year we never thought we'd see.
