Rubio described the Chinese regime as ’the most potent and dangerous, near-peer adversary’ the United States has ever faced.
The atmosphere was congenial as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) faced the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in a confirmation hearing on Jan. 15.
Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, testified before a committee he has served on for 14 years. He addressed foreign policy questions from friendly colleagues on both sides of the political aisle to move forward with his confirmation process, with the chair and the ranking member of the committee concurring that he is qualified for the job.
As the son of Cuban immigrants who fled communism and built a stable life in the United States, Rubio was critical of the challenges presented by communist regimes such as China. He promised a robust foreign policy agenda that prioritizes U.S. interests and restores the global order that Beijing and other adversarial nations have weaponized to their advantage.
Below are some key takeaways from the hearing, which lasted nearly five hours.
US First
Trump has often described an “America First” outlook when weighing foreign relations.
In his opening remarks before the committee, Rubio offered his vision of this America First foreign policy concept. He set the scene by describing a trend since the end of the Cold War—that the United States has moved away from advancing its own national interests to instead serve a “liberal world order.”
Rubio said that in serving this post-Cold War global order, the United States has taken on trade, immigration, and national security policies that have “shrunk the middle class, left the working class in crisis, collapsed [U.S.] industrial capacity, and … pushed critical supply chains into the hands of adversaries and of rivals.”
While the United States has often placed the global order above its core national interests, other nations—namely, China—have acted in the opposite way, Rubio said.
“We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into the global order, and they took advantage of all of its benefits, and they ignored all of its obligations and responsibilities,” he said.
By Eva Fu, Ryan Morgan
