WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday insisted that the Trump administration was not withdrawing from the world, as he batted away criticism of its cuts to foreign aid and diplomatic budgets from his former colleagues in Congress, some of whom regret voting to confirm him because he has not stood up to President Donald Trump. In a sometimes feisty first testimony as the country’s top diplomat, Rubio was challenged over his role in the administration’s crackdown on immigration, Trump’s engagement with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the decision to prioritize the resettlement in the United States of white South Africans over refugees from elsewhere.

Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said the intent of changes he is overseeing was “not to dismantle American foreign policy, and it is not to withdraw us from the world,” citing his travel since taking office in January. “I just hit 18 countries in 18 weeks,” Rubio said. “That doesn’t sound like much of a withdrawal.” Trump’s administration has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world but has begun to resettle Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers in South Africa, saying they faced discrimination and even genocide. South Africa’s government denies the allegation of genocide.

No concessions

“While you’ve turned away from a genocide in Sudan and invented one in South Africa, you’ve teamed up with President Trump to throw the Ukrainian people under the bus, and have been played like a fiddle by Vladimir Putin,” Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in a blistering critique of Rubio’s about-face on many issues he embraced as a senator. “You used to speak with conviction about the importance of foreign aid as a tool to advance American values and interests. Then you stood by while Elon Musk took a chainsaw to USAID and other assistance programs,” Van Hollen said, adding that he regretted his vote for Rubio’s nomination.

“First of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Rubio retorted, before the hearing devolved into a shouting exchange, something unusual for a committee long known for bipartisanship. On Russia, Rubio said Putin had not received any real concessions in the US effort to initiate talks to end the war in Ukraine and Russia sanctions remain in place.

Aid cuts

Rubio told the committee that the $28.5 billion budget request by the Trump administration for the 2025/2026 fiscal year will allow his department to continue enacting Trump’s vision while cutting $20 billion of “duplicative, wasteful, and ideologically driven programs.” Rubio faced tough questions about the decimation of foreign aid - he was an advocate of such aid during his 14 years in the Senate - while slashing staff at the State Department and US Agency for International Development, which used to spend roughly $40 billion a year and is being folded into the State Department.

Rubio said that many of the programs he has cut did not serve US interests, and that Washington would remain the world’s most generous donor of humanitarian aid. The administration is proposing a new $2.9 billion America First Opportunity Fund (A1OF) that would take on foreign aid, building on “lessons we learned from USAID,” Rubio said.

Syria on brink

Senators also asked Rubio about Trump’s plans to unwind Syria sanctions, Rubio’s role in the administration’s immigration crackdown, the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Rubio said the current US assessment is that the Syrian government is precarious, given its wide range of challenges. He said the State Department would allow staff in Turkey, including the ambassador there, to work with local officials in Syria to determine what kind of aid they need. “It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, is maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up,” he said.

‘Voluntary’ relocations

The United States has reached out to countries about accepting “voluntary” relocations of Palestinians fleeing the Zionist entity’s offensive in Gaza, Rubio said. Responding to a question in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said: “There’s no deportation.” “What we have talked to some nations about is, if someone voluntarily and willingly says, I want to go somewhere else for some period of time because I’m sick, because my children need to go to school, or what have you, are there countries in the region willing to accept them for some period of time?”

Rubio said. “Those will be voluntary decisions by individuals,” he said. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley replied, if “there is no clean water, there is no food, and bombing is all around you, is that really a voluntary decision?” Rubio did not say which countries had been approached but denied that Libya was among them. — Agencies