Tillerson leads from shadows of State Department

Washington

HENRY Kissinger slipped into the State Department last week for a quiet lunch in his old office with Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil chief executive, who has all but covered himself in a cloak of invisibility in his first six weeks as secretary of state.

Describing his impressions, Mr Kissinger, perhaps the United States' most famous diplomatic strategist, chose his words judiciously. "The normal tendency when you come into that job is to increase your visibility and to show that you are present and in charge," he said in an interview. "He wanted to first inform himself of all the nuances. I was impressed by the confidence and self-assurance that he showed." But in the Washington of Donald Trump, where foreign policy proclamations often appear first on Twitter, and where White House advisers are still battling for dominance, this approach can be seen as brilliant, mystifying or a prescription for powerlessness.