At first blush, they seem remarkably alike: 10 older white men, all successful in their chosen fields, and all willing to serve the country if called upon by the incoming president, Donald Trump.

But take a closer look at Trump’s batch of secretary of state candidates and the similarities fade quickly. One candidate has called for bombing Iran; others believe it’s important to keep the Iran nuclear deal intact. Some are longtime admirers of Russian President Vladimir Putin; others view the Kremlin as a major threat to U.S. security. On topics ranging from China to global trade, the views of the 10, who come from both private- and public-sector backgrounds, can vary dramatically. Sometimes their opinions run counter to what Trump says he believes.


That Trump is considering a set of candidates with no real consistency of views reflects his own incoherence on foreign policy. It bodes poorly for U.S. officials and foreign leaders desperate for some sense of predictability on what America will do. It also indicates that Trump may ultimately care little about what his top diplomat thinks, relying on other advisers instead. After all, the Republican president-elect already has made moves at odds with longstanding U.S. foreign policy while largely ignoring the State Department's offers of help.

“The fact that Trump is auditioning uber-hawks and tempered internationalists, flamethrowers, statesmen and oilmen shows how much of the style and substance of Trump’s foreign policy remain up for grabs,” said Daniel Benaim, a former adviser to outgoing Vice President Joe Biden.

The 10 names being floated for the Foggy Bottom position are: former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton; Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.); former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman; Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia; retired Army Gen. David Petraeus; GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis; and Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp.

Several have long track records on foreign policy, while others have said far less on such subjects. Here's a look at where they collide and concur on key global issues facing the United States:

Russia

Trump likes Russia. He says the U.S. should cooperate more with Moscow on fighting "terrorists" in Syria, and he's dismissed U.S. intelligence agencies' assessments that Russia tried to undermine the U.S. election through cyberattacks. But Trump's secretary of state candidates have expressed deep differences over how to handle the Kremlin.

Tillerson has had a long and apparently friendly relationship with Putin going back to the 1990s, when he helped run Exxon’s Russian arm. In 2013, Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship, something noted on Tillerson’s bio at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is a trustee. Rohrabacher is considered Putin’s biggest ally in Congress, and his office has made a point to get Russia’s perspective on human rights into the record.

Giuliani has sounded both admiring and alarmed notes about Putin. He's praised Putin's ability to execute his decisions quickly, but more recently has dismissed Russia’s military might. And he has said that while “Putin is a killer,” Trump still could strike deals with him. The latter sentiment is something that Stavridis, who views Russia with suspicion, may agree with. “My prescription would be: Confront where we must, cooperate where we can,” the retired admiral said of Russia during a recent event hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Mitt Romney called Russia “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe” while running for president in 2012. | Getty

Romney and the ever-hawkish Bolton have expressed strong disdain for Russia. In 2012, when he was the GOP presidential nominee, Romney called Russia “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe” and blasted it for standing alongside "the world's worst actors." Back in 2013, before Russia had even invaded Ukraine, Bolton trashed President Barack Obama for going too easy on Putin and said it was time for the U.S. to "cause him pain."

The remaining candidates, too, have questioned Putin's intentions. Corker, for instance, helped author a law that allows for the U.S. to give Ukraine lethal military aid and expand sanctions on Moscow. Manchin also appears to have grown more hawkish on Russia. In 2012, he supported a bill to foster trade with Moscow. This year, he's touted his support of efforts to put the U.S. and its allies on a stronger military footing against Russia.

Iran

There's little love for the Islamic Republic of Iran among the secretary of state candidates, all of whose views were likely shaped in part by the fallout from the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. But there's a notable difference of degree in what the candidates are willing to argue should be done about Iran's aggressive actions in the Middle East.

The most obvious flash point is the nuclear deal that the Obama administration and several other governments struck with Tehran in July 2015. The would-be secretaries of state who spoke out about the deal either denounced or expressed reservations about it; even Manchin bucked Obama, a fellow Democrat, and opposed the deal. (Just a few months before the deal was announced, Bolton argued that the best way to stop Iran's nuclear program was to bomb the country.)

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

The deal has formally been in effect for nearly a year, and Iran has dismantled its nuclear infrastructure in return for sanctions relief. Trump has trashed the deal as being poorly negotiated, but he's been unclear on whether he'll pull the U.S. out of it. Some of his potential secretary of state picks are more strident than others about what Trump should do.

Bolton believes Trump should dump the deal during his first few days in office, writing that it would be a "courageous but necessary decision" to reassure America's Arab and Israeli allies that the U.S. has their back against the Iranian regime. Giuliani has argued that Trump isn’t bound by the deal, saying he is free to “disavow” it or renegotiate it.

On the Hill, Rohrabacher has been a sharp critic of Iran on multiple levels. Corker, meanwhile, tried and failed to block the nuclear deal in Congress, but now the Tennessee senator says Trump shouldn't rip up the agreement but rather enforce it while pursuing other ways to punish Iran for its non-nuclear aggression.

Petraeus has suggested the deal doesn't have the teeth it needs, and he's argued in recent weeks that the U.S. needs to do more to reassure its Middle East allies. To that end, Stavridis has called for a formal treaty with Israel to further solidify that alliance in the wake of the Iran deal. He has misgivings about the agreement, but has said: “Is it a good deal? A bad deal? At this point, what matters is that it is a done deal.”

David Petraeus has suggested the Iran nuclear deal doesn't have the teeth it needs and that the U.S. must reassure its Middle Eastern allies. | AP Photo

Huntsman, too, has expressed unhappiness with the terms of the nuclear deal, but it's not clear whether the former Utah governor would tell Trump to rip up the agreement. When he ran for president during the 2012 cycle, Huntsman suggested he'd be willing to take military action against Iran to stop it from obtaining nukes. But, as a former diplomat, Huntsman may have concerns about how abandoning the agreement would rattle America's global relationships.

Romney opposed the nuclear deal, but he has rebuked others for using, in his view, over-the-top rhetoric in skewering Obama over it. Meantime, Tillerson’s remarks on Iran appear to be largely limited to business dealings — and he hasn’t ruled out doing business in the oil-rich country. “We'll wait and see if things open up for U.S. companies. We would certainly take a look, because it's a huge resource-owning country,” he told CNBC in March.

China

Few countries get Trump as riled up as China. The president-elect has pledged to label China a currency manipulator, risking a trade war for what he says is an attempt to put American workers first. His recent decision to speak with the president of Taiwan, a move that ran counter to decades of U.S. foreign policy, has already upset Beijing. But Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, a position that some argue will ultimately strengthen China by removing the U.S. as an economic power-broker in Asia.

Although among conservative Republicans there's a growing sense that the U.S. has kowtowed to China far too long, some of Trump's candidates for secretary of state may be more cautious than he is about angering the Asian behemoth.

Huntsman, a Republican who served as U.S. ambassador to China during Obama's Democratic administration, has argued against waging a trade war with the Chinese, warning it will backfire on American workers. (He's also backed the TPP.) In recent months, Huntsman has said the U.S. should get tougher with the Chinese, especially over their theft of intellectual property, but he's also warned that a move to designate China a currency manipulator would lead to retaliation by Beijing.

Sen. Bob Corker has largely tried to avoid trade wars with Beijing. | Getty

While auditioning for the Foggy Bottom gig, however, Huntsman downplayed the impact of Trump's call with Taiwan's leader. Rohrabacher cheered the call.

Corker has warned that China's territorial claims in the South and East China seas are a strategic threat to the United States. But Corker, who came to politics from the business world, also has tried to avoid trade wars with Beijing. In 2011, the Tennessee senator opposed a measure that sought to punish China over currency manipulation. However, Romney — also a businessman — took a tough line on China during the 2012 campaign, to the frustration of other Republicans in the business community, signaling willingness at the time to label China a currency manipulator.

Stavridis has been a particularly strong advocate of the TPP, seeing the agreement as a means to keep China in check. Tillerson doesn’t have an extensive record on China policy, but he is a staunch proponent of free trade, even serving as a member of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, a group that strongly supports expanding international trade.

Bolton has pointed to China's rise as a reason to avoid U.S. defense cuts, while also suggesting that further empowering Taiwan could be an antidote to Beijing's territorial moves. Manchin, meanwhile, has been extremely wary of Chinese economic competition; he's among a group of senators trying to block the takeover of a U.S. aluminum products company by a Chinese firm. Petraeus, whose military career has largely focused on the Middle East and South Asia, has said relatively little about China, but has warned against Chinese cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure.

One reason some of the would-be secretaries of state may urge Trump to be careful on China is because of Beijing's influence on North Korea. Trump himself has mentioned North Korea, which is forging ahead with nuclear and missile programs, as a major threat. Angering the Chinese could lead them to be even more lax in imposing sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang.

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Stavridis says North Korea is “the most dangerous country in the world” and has pointed to the challenge posed by Pyongyang as an area of potential cooperation between the U.S. and Beijing. “Our best shot at a diplomatic solution is to negotiate alongside China to increase the sanctions to a level with real impact,” he wrote in January.

U.S. policy-makers have yet to come up with a good solution to the North Korean dilemma. But, true to form, Bolton has thrown convention to the wind. He's argued that the U.S. should try to persuade China to support the reunification of the Korean peninsula, in the hopes of replacing the North Korean leadership "with one that will renounce nuclear weapons."

Terrorism

The need to crack down on terrorism, especially purveyors of it such as the Islamic State, is one area on which Trump has been remarkably consistent. And he's likely to get little push-back on the broad notion from the contenders for secretary of state, or, for that matter, the Democratic Party.

But how he goes about it is where he may face significant differences with his top diplomat.

Stavridis and Petraeus, both military men, have come out against the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture that Trump has said he'd like to bring back. Huntsman, too, opposes such practices. During his 2012 presidential run, however, Romney refused to classify waterboarding as torture, infuriating liberal groups. Manchin, meanwhile, has expressed sympathy for U.S. officials who were in "panic mode" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorized torture, but he's also said "we've got to be above that."

Trump has shown no desire to shut down the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. He will likely get support on that front from Bolton, who has criticized Obama's efforts to close the facility. Romney, too, has in years past spoken out in favor of keeping the facility open, and Rohrabacher has been unreceptive to arguments that it should close.

Giuliani has demonstrated little appetite for curbing some of the tougher military tactics Trump has advocated. Asked about the president-elect's call to “take the oil” in Iraq, Giuliani replied, “Until the war is over, anything's legal."

Rudy Giuliani has demonstrated little appetite for curbing some of the tougher military tactics Donald Trump has advocated. | Getty

However, Giuliani and other possible secretary of state picks, from Rohrabacher to Corker, have been critical of Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, a position he took during the campaign last year and has somewhat modified since. Over the summer, Giuliani sought to take credit for Trump’s alterations to the proposal, as he went from calling for an outright ban to advocating a focus on people who come to the U.S. from countries grappling with terrorism.

"I can tell you what I would do, which is set up a much more intense vetting process for people coming in from countries with large concentrations of people who want to kill us," Giuliani said at the time.

That list of countries would likely include Syria, which is mired in a civil war. Trump has opposed welcoming Syrian refugees to the United States, citing security concerns. That puts him at odds with Stavridis, who co-wrote an op-ed over the summer urging America to take a bigger role on the issue of refugees and dismissing proposals to limit the number of Muslims who enter the country.

Also during the campaign, Trump questioned whether certain NATO member states were making big enough contributions to the military alliance. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, has been vocal in recognizing the key role other countries — in particular, other NATO members — have played in fighting with the U.S. against terrorism. But Stavridis and Bolton have signaled openness to reforming the institution, which U.S. officials in both parties consider a pillar of Western security.

