WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – President-elect Donald Trump's choice for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil chief Rex Tillerson, is in line with US policies on energy and national security dating back to the end of World War II, retired foreign-service officer Peter van Buren told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"At the risk of a bad joke, it is ‘business as usual,’” van Buren said. “People who seem shocked that the US chose an oil executive as a senior government official do not know their history."
"An awful lot of America's foreign policy since World War II, in the Middle East especially, has been about oil," he averred. "Much of the rest has supported American business interests and, in that sad context, Tillerson is far more in line with standard practice, just perhaps more obvious in his background and without the gloss of decades in politics."
Van Buren is the author of “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.” His next book, “Hooper's War,” an anti-war novel, is to be published in May 2017.
