Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined the State Department on Tuesday for the first time in his new role, taking over the reins of the key agency that conducts U.S. foreign policy in the face of a violent global crisis and as other countries begin to engage with President Trump.
After greeting employees at the ceremony, Rubio entered a meeting with colleagues from India, Japan and Australia to discuss issues in the Indo-Pacific, a region that, in his eyes, China is trying to dominate.
The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which operates under Mr. Rubio's authority, began halting foreign aid spending following an executive order signed by Mr. Trump on Monday.
The move will have an immediate impact on programs aimed at alleviating hunger, disease and wartime suffering around the world, as well as programs that support countries' economic development.
Mr. Rubio was sworn in as Secretary of State by Vice President J.D. Vance at 9:30 a.m. on a frigid Tuesday morning. He was greeted with applause when he arrived at the State Department's flag-adorned foyer at 1 p.m., with hundreds of staffers waiting to catch a glimpse of him, his wife, Janet Rubio, and their four children. Lisa Kenna, a career diplomat who, like Mike Pompeo during the first Trump administration, is Rubio's executive director, introduced the new secretary.
Mr. Rubio thanked the many diplomats working overseas and described Mr. Trump's foreign policy goals: “Through my campaign, I defined myself as something that makes us stronger, safer and more prosperous,” he said.
“Change will occur, but the change will not be disruptive and it will not be punitive,” he added.
He said “things are moving faster than ever” around the world and the ministry needed to act at “the appropriate speed.”
“We need to move faster than ever because the world is changing faster than ever. And we need to have a perspective that says, 'Look around the corner.' We need to have, we really need to have,” he said. We are thinking about where we will be in 5, 7, 10, and 15 years. ”
This analysis of a world in turmoil and the challenges to U.S. foreign policy echoes concerns expressed by Mr. Rubio's predecessor, Antony J. Blinken, in some of his last public interviews.
“We all have information flowing through our veins, new input coming in every millisecond, and we just have to react,” Blinken said in a Jan. 14 interview with David Remnick. The pressure to do so is stronger than ever.” Editor of New Yorker magazine. “And no one has the distance or buffer to seriously reflect and try to think before acting. At least, it's much harder to do in practice. Things happen. Speed is much more difficult.”
Mr. Rubio also sent a cable to department employees outlining his vision in more direct language than he has used in public. Since the end of the Cold War, Democratic and Republican leaders have been guilty of “placing ideology over common sense,” but that could now change, he wrote.
He said that “mass migration is the most important problem of our time” and that his ministry would no longer take any action that would “facilitate or encourage it”. Diplomacy, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, “will be prioritized to protect America's borders,” he said.
He also said the department would eliminate practices aimed at increasing workforce diversity and that diplomats would no longer be allowed to take on “political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad.” He said he would not promote it. Similarly, the department said it would discontinue programs that “open the door to censorship” for other Americans.
The Tuesday afternoon meeting at State Department headquarters with Mr. Rubio and top diplomats from Asian countries that form the non-military coalition known as the Quad came a short time after the three foreign ministers accepted an invitation from Mr. Trump's aides. It was planned. He will attend the inauguration ceremony on Monday. After the Quad talks, Rubio held bilateral talks with each foreign minister. Japanese officials later told reporters they hoped the prime minister would meet Trump in Washington by March.
Mr. Rubio is the first Cabinet member nominated by Mr. Trump to be confirmed. He has represented Florida in the U.S. Senate since 2011, serving on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on Monday night.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has been particularly outspoken about the need to confront the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Trump's executive order on foreign aid is the executive order that has had the most immediate impact on the operations of the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Trump on Monday signed an order halting the disbursement of foreign aid funds and the designation of new funds pending a 90-day review under guidelines issued by the Secretary of State.
This means that hundreds of millions of dollars that would normally go to continent-wide aid programs, programs that provide basic daily food to many people, will be frozen.
Nongovernmental organizations and contractors who have used the money for programs are scrambling to figure out what to do, with many programs in poor, war- and disaster-stricken parts of the world potentially facing an abrupt end. US officials said.
The executive order said the 90-day evaluation would consider “the effectiveness of the program and its consistency with U.S. foreign policy.”
“The U.S. foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with U.S. interests and are often antithetical to U.S. values,” the report said. “They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas abroad that are diametrically opposed to harmonious and stable relations at home and between nations.”