American foreign policy after Rexit

EVEN by the reality-TV standards of this White House, the manner in which Rex Tillerson was sacked as secretary of state was jaw-dropping. President Donald Trump fired him by tweet, saying that he would be replaced by Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA. He did not call him until much later, nor did he offer an explanation. Mr Tillerson’s spokesman said that he had no idea why his boss had been fired. So he was fired, too.Mr Tillerson was a poor secretary of state. Having run ExxonMobil, the tenth-biggest company in the world by revenue, he treated diplomacy like business and his department like a division ripe for restructuring. He seemed to regard his underlings as idle assets and they repaid him with their scorn (see ). So, too, did the president, at least after reports that Mr Tillerson had called him a “moron”.