Technology is making the world even smaller and so anyone with a smart phone, tablet or pc can keep up with developments in real time as alerts fly around the world. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson will be kept busy responding to comments and queries from around the world not only about the North Korean missile test and how the White House reacted to it in every way, but also about the Flynn resignation. News that was spread not only by the traditional news services, but in the case of the missile test, by Twitter from private citizens.
Russia again
A report today gave a good example of not only of the speed of communication, but also of how other governments can use any incident to slant the perceptions of the news.
In response to American national security advisor Michael Flynn’s resignation Monday following the Russian contact scandal, Reuters reported the comments of a senior Member of the Russian Parliament.
Konstantin Kosachev told the RIA Novosti news agency of Russia “Either Trump has not gained the requisite independence and he is consequently being not unsuccessfully backed into a corner, or Russophobia has already infected the new administration also from top to bottom”.
Without a proper interview with Kosachev it would not be possible to give all the possible interpretations to this statement, but it is a clear sign of how closely politicians around the world follow the developments in American politics, without avoiding his attempt at manipulating President #Donald Trump .
Friends and foes
This interest comes not only from America’s traditional foes such as Russia and China. Kosachev’s comment clearly indicates Russian interest and undoubtedly China was just as interested in the weekend’s developments in America. But in many ways the interest is even more intense in countries with close ties with the United States, both diplomatically and commercially.
Any adverse situation affecting the world’s major superpower can have greater effects on the foreign and commercial policies of these allies.
For these reasons Michael Flynn’s resignation as National Security Advisor and even more pertinently the unusual reaction by President Donald Trump to the North Korean missile test by effectively holding a National Security Council meeting in an unsecure setting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in front of paying guests of the resort who then tweeted images of the meeting would have raised eyebrows around the world.
With these two incidents new Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson will have his job cut out for at least the near future responding to comments from America’s allies. These reactions would almost certainly coincide with the contents of the famous “dissent memo” of a thousand senior State Department Staff in reply to the Trump Administration’s Moslem ban that is currently blocked by the courts.
Tillerson will have to address two issues with foreign governments. Naturally the first will be the Flynn resignation and its effects on relations with Russia. This will be delicate, but the second issue will almost certainly be of more interest to foreign leaders.
The Secretary of State will have to address the issue of security on the part of President Trump in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago security dinner as few if any world leaders will want to risk their conversations being picked up in unsecure settings such as the Trump owned resort.
The answers to these questions will define how foreign leaders will deal with the White House in the future.
The Trump foreign policy agenda has suddenly become much more complicated and it will be rex w tillerson’s job to satisfy America’s allies and foes that the White House will handle all its international business to the best standards possible. On the weekend the foreign policy tests of the new Administration truly began.
