Secretary of State Marco Rubio entered the State Department on Tuesday for the first time in his new job, taking over the reins of the largest agency that conducts American foreign policy at a time of violent global crisis and as other nations begin to align themselves with President Trump.
After greeting the workers at the ceremony, Mr. Rubio entered the meeting with his colleagues from India, Japan and Australia to discuss the issues of the Indo-Pacific region, an area, in his eyes, China wants to dominate.
The country’s government department and the United States Department of International Development, which works under Mr. Rubio, has begun to stop the release of foreign aid money following the executive order signed on Monday by Mr.
The move immediately affects programs aimed at ending hunger, disease and wartime suffering around the world, as well as those that help countries with economic development.
Mr. Rubio was sworn in as secretary of state at a brisk 9:30 a.m. Tuesday by Vice President JD Vance. He arrived at the State Department’s flag-draped lobby at 1 p.m. to applause, as hundreds of workers strained 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, as he did for Mike Pompeo in the first Trump administration, introduced the new secretary.
Mr. Rubio thanked many diplomats working overseas, then set the goal of Mr. Trump on foreign policy: “That goal is to make sure that our foreign policy is focused on one thing, and that is to advance our national interests, which they clearly have done.” he described his campaign as anything that makes us strong or safe or successful,” he said.
“There will be changes, but the changes are not intended to harm, they are not intended to punish,” he added.
He said “things are moving faster than ever” around the world, and that the department must act “at the pace of keeping up.”
“We need to move faster than ever before because the world is changing faster than ever,” he said, “and we have to have a vision that some say ‘look around the corner,’ but we really need to think about where we will be in five, seven, 10 or 15 years.”
That analysis of the troubled world and the challenges of American foreign policy is consistent with the concerns of Mr. Rubio, Antony J. Blinken, expressed it in his last few public interviews.
“We all have this information being fed into our veins, and we’re getting new input every millisecond, and the pressure to react is more intense than ever,” Mr. Blinken in an interview on Jan. 14 and David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. “And no one has the distance, the barrier, to really try to show and think before you act. At least it’s very difficult to do that. The speed at which it is happening is very difficult.”
Mr. Rubio also sent a cable explaining his vision to department staff in language that was more modern than he used in his public appearances. Since the end of the Cold War, he wrote, the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties have been guilty of “emphasizing ideology over common sense,” but that will change now.
He said “mass migration is the most important issue of our time,” and the department will no longer take steps “that will help or encourage you.” Diplomacy, especially in the Western Hemisphere, will “prioritize protecting America’s borders,” he said.
He also said that the department will end practices aimed at increasing the diversity of the workforce, and diplomats will no longer promote “political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and are not very popular abroad.” He also said the department would end any programs that “open the door to censorship” for other Americans.
The meeting at the headquarters of the Ministry of State on Tuesday afternoon between Mr. Rubio and senior politicians from Asian countries, who form a non-military coalition known as the Quad, were scheduled for some time after the three foreign ministers accepted invitations from Mr. Trump’s aides. attend Monday’s opening. Mr. Rubio held bilateral meetings with each of the foreign ministers after the Quad talks. Japanese officials told reporters afterward that they hoped their prime minister would meet with Mr. Trump in Washington in March.
Mr. Rubio was the first cabinet secretary named by Mr. Trump is confirmed. He has been in the Senate representing Florida since 2011 and served on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He was unanimously approved by the Senate on Monday evening.
Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has been outspoken about the need to confront the Chinese Communist Party.
The decision of Mr. Trump on foreign aid is a presidential order that has had an 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 executive order halting all foreign aid spending and new funding pending a 90-day review under the guidelines to be issued by the secretary of state.
That means that hundreds of millions of dollars that used to go to support programs across continents – programs that provide basic daily food for many people – are being stopped.
Private groups and contractors who have been using the money for programs are scrambling to figure out what to do, and many programs in poor and war-torn parts of the world could end abruptly, a US official said.
The high command said the 90-day evaluation will look at “the effectiveness of the programs and their consistency with the foreign policy of the United States.”
“The United States’ foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases against American values,” it said. “They are working to undermine peace in the world by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are in direct conflict with stable relations within and between countries.”
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