Rex Tillerson’s end of year verdict: diplomacy’s a ‘hard job’
CNNStory highlights Tillerson has faced criticism over his handling of the State Department The secretary of state said he is "learning to enjoy" his job Washington CNN — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson touted the State Department’s accomplishments this year, but conceded that it has yet to score an outright “win,” saying that the work of diplomacy isn’t that simple. Tillerson said he’s “quite satisfied” with his progress on diplomacy to curb North Korea’s nuclear program and added that he has told Defense Secretary James Mattis that if the secretary of state runs out of diplomatic options, he will have failed. “We want them to make the right choice.” “Not the path we want to take” Diplomacy will continue for as long as it can, with the aim of creating meaningful engagement with Pyongyang, Tillerson said, but he added that, “we have a strong military presence standing behind us … if North Korea makes bad choices, we’re prepared.” “That’s not the path we want to take,” Tillerson said. It will probably be many years before we can declare final victory,” Tillerson said, offering a more nuanced view than Trump offered at the White House on Tuesday, during the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, when he said that, “we’ve had more success with ISIS in the last eight months than the entire previous administration has had during its entire term.” Tillerson touched on Russia as another major challenge, saying that Moscow “chose through hybrid warfare to interfere with democratic processes here” in the US, but that despite that, the Trump administration would continue to find areas where the two nations can cooperate.
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