The timing for the potential rollout of the nomination of Exxon Mobil Corporation CEO Rex Tillerson couldn’t be worse. The Washington Post’s blockbuster story published last Friday about the CIA assessment that Russia attempted to intervene in the presidential election would subject the oil executive to especially sharp scrutiny from both Republicans and Democrats in any confirmation process. Tillerson’s chances and the controversy over Trump’s very public dismissal of the intelligence establishment’s reported findings regarding Russia shouldn’t obscure another important insight: Trump’s controversial views about Russia and Vladimir Putin are not mere Twitter fodder. He’s very serious about choosing a top diplomat who will pursue a policy that will prioritize détente with Moscow.

When Trump’s secretary of state sweepstakes began in the days after the election, the press focused obsessively on the politics of the pick as with Trump insiders opposing Mitt Romney. But the interesting thing about all of the rumored finalists was that none of them agreed with Trump on Russia or any other part of what seemed like his vaguely neo-isolationist worldview. I noted that there wasn’t a bit difference in terms of policy positions between the 2012 GOP nominee and Trump ultra-loyalist Rudy Giuliani or other contenders like John Bolton or General David Petraeus. The members of that quartet were all firm supporters of an internationalist policy and, more importantly, a tough stand on Russia. None had any sympathy for Trump’s stated foreign policy views.

By contrast, Tillerson, whose candidacy for the post only became known as the assumed frontrunners apparently faltered in the eyes of the contest’s sole judge, is someone with no foreign policy resume except as a stout advocate of good relations with the Putin regime. Tillerson’s friendship for Putin is so pronounced the Russians literally gave him a medal for it.

Much of Tillerson’s appeal for Trump may rest in his take-charge, deal-making business executive style that, along with military experience, seems to be a major factor in many of his appointments. Negotiating skills are not to be dismissed when discussing the qualifications of any secretary of state, especially when one recalls the way John Kerry got taken to the cleaners by Iran in the nuclear negotiations. But in Tillerson, Trump has found a possible secretary of state that shares his view that Russia is a potential partner for the U.S. rather than its chief geostrategic rival.

One may forgive Tillerson’s determination to make as much money for Exxon Mobil’s stockholders in partnership with Putin’s corrupt, autocratic regime as he could. But his enthusiasm for the task reflected seems antithetical to the primary tasks of any American secretary of state. Though Trump seems to believe it’s all about making deals, the State Department must also uphold American values. That means advocating for human rights, democracy and opposition to the efforts of Russia to re-assemble the old Soviet empire at the cost of the freedoms of the peoples of Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Ukraine. A possible secretary of state whose main foreign policy experience lies in ignoring and/or downplaying those concerns signals trouble for American allies and good news for Moscow.

George F. Will once decried those American businessmen who rushed to do business in the Soviet Union as a result of Richard Nixon’s détente policies as evidence that they “loved commerce more than they loathed communism.” The same appears to be true of those who prize good relations with Putin more than the freedoms of Moscow’s former subjects. If Tillerson is nominated, the Senate will have to ask whether Trump’s pick is ready to take up the task of defending the nation against a Putin regime whose foreign policy centers on undermining U.S. interests and discrediting democracy in Europe and perhaps even in America.

Mainstream members of his party have been cheered by Trump’s cabinet picks that, taken as a whole, seem to indicate that the new government will be a normal conservative Republican administration. But when it comes to foreign policy, Trump appears determined to pursue a policy shift in which Russia will be appeased and perhaps positioned to balance increasing tensions between the U.S. and China.

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