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Rex Tillerson: 'America first' means divorcing our policy from our values
Source: The Guardian
Rex Tillerson: 'America first' means divorcing our policy from our values
Secretary of state speaks of separation between American values
and policies that support its interests, a distinction that alarms
former diplomats
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday 3 May 2017 22.46 BST
The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Donald Trump’s “America first” approach to the world means decoupling US foreign policy from values such as human rights and freedom.
Addressing state department diplomats and staff, Tillerson said there were times when insistence that foreign countries abide by US values got in the way of the pursuit of national interests.
“I think it is really important that all of us understand the difference between policy and values,” the secretary of state, a former oil executive, said as part of what he described as an “overarching view” on Trump’s “America first” mantra, a phrase denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its links to 1940s Nazi sympathiser.
“Our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated – those are our values. Those are not our policies.
“In some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals,” Tillerson said. “If we condition too heavily that others just adopt this value we have come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance on our national security interests our economic interests.”
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Secretary of state speaks of separation between American values
and policies that support its interests, a distinction that alarms
former diplomats
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday 3 May 2017 22.46 BST
The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Donald Trump’s “America first” approach to the world means decoupling US foreign policy from values such as human rights and freedom.
Addressing state department diplomats and staff, Tillerson said there were times when insistence that foreign countries abide by US values got in the way of the pursuit of national interests.
“I think it is really important that all of us understand the difference between policy and values,” the secretary of state, a former oil executive, said as part of what he described as an “overarching view” on Trump’s “America first” mantra, a phrase denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its links to 1940s Nazi sympathiser.
“Our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated – those are our values. Those are not our policies.
“In some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals,” Tillerson said. “If we condition too heavily that others just adopt this value we have come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance on our national security interests our economic interests.”
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/03/rex-tillerson-america-first-speech-trump-policy
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