Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived at the State Department for the first time in his new job on Tuesday, taking the reins of the main agency leading US foreign policy at a time of violent global crisis and as other countries are beginning to align with President Trump.
After greeting staff at a formal gathering, Mr. Rubio went to a meeting with his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia to discuss issues in the Indo-Pacific region, a region that, in his eyes, is being dominated by China. Wants to dominate.
The State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, which operate under Mr. Rubio’s authority, have begun freezing the distribution of foreign aid money, following an executive order signed on Monday by Mr. Trump.
The move immediately impacts programs aimed at alleviating hunger, disease and wartime suffering around the world, as well as programs that help countries achieve economic development.
At 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Vice President J.D. Vance swore in Mr. Rubio as secretary of state. He arrived at the State Department’s flag-decorated entrance hall at 1 p.m. to thunderous applause as hundreds of staffers were eager to catch a glimpse of him and his wife, Jeanette Rubio, and their four children. Lisa Kenna, a career diplomat who serves as Mr. Rubio’s acting secretary, as she previously did for Mike Pompeo in the Trump administration, introduced the new secretary.
Mr. Rubio thanked the many diplomats working abroad, then laid out Mr. Trump’s foreign policy goals: “That mission is to make sure that our foreign policy is focused on one thing, and that is our national interests.” “Progress, which he has clearly done through his campaign, is defined as anything that makes us stronger or safer or more prosperous,” he said.
“There will be changes, but these changes are not destructive, they are not punitive,” he said.
He said that around the world “things are moving faster than ever”, and the department must act at the “speed of relevance”.
“We need to move faster than ever because the world is changing faster than ever,” he said, “and we have to take a view of what some people call ‘looking around the corner’, but we What is really needed is thinking about where we will be in five, seven, 10 or 15 years.”
The analysis of a turbulent world and American foreign policy challenges echoes the concerns that Mr. Rubio’s predecessor, Antony J. Blinken expressed this in several of his final public interviews.
“We all have this intravenous feed of information, and we’re getting new inputs every millisecond, and the pressure to just react is more intense than ever,” Mr. Blinken said in an interview with David Remnick on Jan. 14. ” Editor of The New Yorker. “And no one has the distance, the buffer, to really reflect and try to think before taking action. At least it’s really hard to do. The pace at which things are happening is very difficult.”
Mr. Rubio also sent a cable to department staff outlining his approach in language that was clearer than the language he used in his public appearances. Leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties have been guilty of “emphasizing ideology over common sense” since the end of the Cold War, he wrote, but that will now change.
He said that “mass migration is the greatest issue of our time,” and that the department will no longer take actions that would “facilitate or encourage it.” Diplomacy, especially in the Western Hemisphere, “will prioritize securing America’s borders,” he said.
He also said the department would end practices aimed at increasing diversity in the workforce, and diplomats would no longer “promote political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad.” Also, he said, the department will terminate any program “Open the door to censorship” for other Americans.
His final directive on priorities states that the government will no longer pursue “climate policies that weaken America” but will instead strive for “energy dominance” while “supporting sensible environmental protections.”
The meeting at State Department headquarters on Tuesday afternoon between Mr. Rubio and top diplomats from the Asian countries that make up a non-military alliance, known as the Quad, came after the three foreign ministers accepted invitations from Mr. Trump’s allies. It was determined some time later. Attend Monday’s inauguration. Following the Quad talks, Mr Rubio held bilateral meetings with each of the foreign ministers. Japanese officials later told reporters they hoped their prime minister would meet Mr Trump in Washington by March.
Mr. Rubio was the first Cabinet secretary nominated by Mr. Trump to be confirmed. He has been representing Florida in the Senate since 2011 and serves on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees. The Senate approved him unanimously on Monday evening.
Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has been particularly vocal on the need to confront the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Trump’s executive order on foreign aid is the presidential directive that has the most immediate impact on the operations of the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an order Freezing any disbursements of foreign aid funds and designation of new funds pending a 90-day review under guidelines to be issued by the Secretary of State.
This means that hundreds of millions of dollars that would normally go to support programs across the continent – programs that provide basic daily sustenance for many people – are being halted.
A US official said that non-governmental groups and contractors who are spending money on the programs are struggling to figure out what to do, and many programs in poor and war- or disaster-stricken parts of the world ended abruptly. Can happen.
The executive order states that the 90-day evaluation will look at “programmatic efficiency and consistency with the foreign policy of the United States.”
It states, “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy is not consistent with American interests and in many cases is contrary to American values.” “They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are in direct contradiction to harmonious and stable relations within and between countries.”
