U.S. LEADERSHIP QUESTIONED UNDER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Tillerson, as the top U.S. diplomat, is widely believed to be undercut by his big boss, President Trump, and the White House, which have taken over many of diplomatic powers from the State Department.
Trump has been using his tweet account to conduct most of the U.S. diplomacy, by tweeting almost daily on foreign policy decisions and initiatives, without prior consultation with Tillerson.
Moreover, senior White House adviser and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner overshadows Tillerson as the top diplomat in the U.S. government. Indeed, Kushner has been deeply involved in most of the crucial U.S. diplomatic duties.
When it comes to the Qatari crisis, there is also confusion over the Trump administration's real position, as the White House and State Department seem to have different responses.
From the onset of the standoff, Tillerson, a former oil executive that has close ties with many political and business leaders in the Gulf, sounded a more soft tone toward Qatar. He even pushed the Saudi-led bloc to ease the blockade on Qatar, citing humanitarian reasons.
But then Trump publicly expressed support to the Arab bloc's move to hold Doha accountable for financing terrorism and having close ties with Iran, an arch enemy for the U.S. and Gulf states. He even slammed Qatar for financing terrorism "at a very high level."
Due to limited authority and the possibility of a failure to end the feud among Gulf allies, Tillerson's spokesman R.C. Hammond had already downplayed expectation about a breakthrough, insisting that Tillerson was not playing a role of a mediator in the crisis.
"Our job is to make sure everybody continues to talk to each other," he said.
In an editorial published Tuesday, the British daily Financial Times decried the lack of a serious U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration and the Tillerson-led State Department.
"By contrast, under Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump's secretary of state, US diplomacy is missing in action," it wrote, making a comparison with previous U.S. governments.
It added that the fact that Trump is a president besieged by scandal and the State Department has failed to have a team in place "is taking a mounting toll on America's global position."
U.S. BENEFTING FROM GULF STANDOFF
However, for some Arab experts, the Trump administration is not really motivated to resolve the standoff in the Gulf sooner, as long as it benefits from it.
Some experts suspect that Trump was behind the Saudi-led quartet's move to cut diplomatic ties with Doha, which happened right after Trump's meeting with their leaders in Riyadh in May.
Medhat Hammad, professor of Iranian and Gulf studies at Egypt's Tanta University, told Xinhua that the U.S. goal is to undermine the stability of Western Asia region and contain Russia's influence via sowing confrontation and feuds, particularly between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
"The main strategic purpose of these U.S. intentions is to ruin the Russian presence in Western Asia," Hammad said.
Mokhtar Ghobashy, deputy chief of the Arab Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, echoed Hammad's views.
"All these actions give the impression that the United States acts like a guardian of the Gulf region," he told Xinhua. "The U.S. does not want other parties to have the upper hand in settling the Qatari crisis, particularly Iran and Russia."
They pointed out that the U.S. is benefiting from the situation in the Gulf, by recently securing lucrative business, investment and military deals worth billions of U.S. dollars from rich Gulf nations, which reply on U.S. political and military support.
"In principle, the U.S. is carrying out the strategy announced by Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, when he described Saudi Arabia as a dairy cow that should be milked," Hammad said.
