WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Marco Rubio hit the ground running in his new job on Tuesday, hosting the foreign affairs ministers of Australia, Japan and India only hours after being sworn-in as America’s new top diplomat by Vice President J.D. Vance.
Along with the United States, the three countries form the “Quad” grouping, which was revived under the first Trump presidency and was a pillar of the Biden administration’s efforts to counter China.
Rubio, a former senator from Florida, was confirmed by his erstwhile Senate colleagues in a unanimous vote Monday evening after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president earlier in the day, with Vance making the appointment official at the White House on Tuesday morning.
He then headed to the State Department in Washington’s Foggy Bottom to greet staff members, promising to make changes to the department. But he said the changes would not prove “destructive” or “punitive” to those who worked for the Biden administration.
“In our republic, the voters decide the course of our nation – both domestically and abroad – and they have elected Donald J. Trump as our president,” Rubio said, adding that the new president had laid out “a very clear mission” on foreign policy during his campaign.
“That mission,” he said, “is to ensure that our foreign policy is centered on one thing, and that is the advancement of our national interest.”
Repeating a line he used multiple times during his confirmation hearing, America’s new top diplomat defined such a foreign policy as “anything that makes us stronger or safer or more prosperous.”
The more things change…
One area where U.S. foreign policy does not look destined to diverge too sharply from that of the Biden administration is in the priority given to the “Quad,” a grouping formally convened in 2007 but which largely laid dormant until being revived under Trump a decade later.
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Led by former U.S. President Joe Biden’s “Asia czar,” Kurt Campbell, the informal security grouping turned into one of the centerpieces of the Biden administration’s strategic approach to China’s military rise.
Rubio signaled the high priority on Quad is set to continue under the Trump administration, hosting Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya only an hour after greeting his new staff.
After a meeting that lasted about a half-hour, the four officials posed for photographers in front of a display of their countries’ flags at the State Department, but Rubio declined to respond to questions shouted from reporters before ushering the group away for further meetings.
It was a new look for the grouping, with Rubio not the only fresh face.
Iwaya – who previously served as Japan’s defense minister – only took on his new role in early October as part of a change in government in Tokyo caused by Fumio Kishida’s resignation as prime minister.
Top priority
Despite the officials’ silence at the photoshoot, leaders of the Quad countries have recently appeared at pains to highlight the importance of the grouping going forward, even as their governments change.
China has derided the Quad as a relic of what it calls a U.S.-driven “Cold War” mindset and insisted that it has no designs for territorial expansion or aggression in the vast Indo-Pacific region.
But concerns remain in Washington, Tokyo and New Delhi about China’s plans for parts of the South China Sea it claims – contra to international court rulings – as its territory, as well as for the democratic island of Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a rogue province.
Showing the importance placed on the grouping in Washington’s efforts to counter China’s military rise, the three other Quad foreign ministers each also attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Wong told reporters in Washington on Sunday that Australia’s relationship with the United States was its “most important strategic relationship,” with the Quad grouping at the forefront of ties.
“It’s a demonstration of the collective commitment of all countries to the Quad, an iron-clad commitment in this time where close cooperation in the Indo-Pacific is so important,” Wong said of the invitations extended to the foreign ministers by both Trump and Rubio this week.
Speaking in Canberra hours before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5, India’s Jaishankar also said he believed Washington would continue to prioritize the Quad no matter who won the vote.
“I remind you that actually the Quad was revived under a Trump presidency in 2017,” Jaishankar said at the time, noting the group even held in-person talks in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. “That should tell you something about the prospects of it.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.