Rubio, the Trump Doctrine, and the State Department Reorg
The secretary of state is taking serious steps to make the department work for the American people, not the world.
The deranged left claims that President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is chaotic and has no broad goal. So it is good to see Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a little-noticed 100-days statement, lay out the broad outlines of Trump’s foreign policy and thus his own department’s marching orders. Rubio managed to work in some “inside baseball” points as well, leaving clues as to how the State reorganization is proceeding.
Rubio, speaking next to Trump in the Oval Office, began with the bottom line up front: American foreign policy is going to be about American goals, not some sort of global largesse.
This President inherited 30 years of foreign policy built around what was good for the world. The decisions we made as a government in trade and foreign policy were basically, is it good for the world and the global community? And under President Trump, we are making foreign policy based on is it good for America. What that means is foreign policy is about three things: Does it make America stronger? Does it make America safer? Does it make America richer? If something doesn’t do those three things—and hopefully all three things—we are not doing it.
This explains Rubio’s gutting of a whole vertical stack of State Department offices on his revised organizational chart whose names begin with the word “global,” such as the Office for Global Women’s Issues. The current foreign policy system was built primarily around two ideas: that it was America’s responsibility to right all wrongs in the world to its own liking, and competition with the Russians during the Cold War to gain leverage in the developing nations of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
The latter faded with the shifts of history (though the Cold Warriors lurking in government would love to revive the Cold War using China as the punching bag). The former morphed under a succession of presidencies into things like the U.S. scolding the world about human rights (while ignoring the dark stains on our society at home) and pressing social justice programs empowering women, LGBT people, and minorities around the world in tune with woke America. That was Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
One of the main tools for enacting that kind of foreign policy is now gone, USAID. Rubio reminded everyone:
Foreign aid. We were funding some crazy stuff—crazy stuff! You tell me, how does a puppet show in some country around the world make us stronger, safer, more prosperous? So we got rid of the puppet shows and many other things. I’m sure they were very good puppet shows, and I’m sure some charity can go pay for it, but the American taxpayer should not.
The crazy projects way of doing business reached its high point in the nation-building fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan. The social justice side of things may have found its pinnacle under the Biden administration, when Pride flags and Black Lives Matter banners were displayed outside many American embassies. It is certainly true that many countries treat their minorities poorly. It is less clear, Rubio seems to say, that fixing this is America’s business.
Rubio also laid claim to his department’s role in Trump’s mass deportation plans.
I say this unapologetically—we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries, not just El Salvador, but other countries, to say, “We want to send you the most despicable human beings to your countries. Will you do that as a favor to us?” The further away from America, the better, so they can’t come back across the border. I am not apologetic for that. The President was elected to keep America safe and get rid of a bunch of perverts and pedophiles and child rapists out of our country.
He then turned to his department’s own reorganization to meet the demands of the new administration.
We have stopped student visas for people who burn down our universities and take over libraries and harass people. Why are we giving student visas to people to create disruption? We have taken away student visas from people who came here to do that.
ICE does the heavy lifting of actually arresting and physically deporting illegal aliens from the United States, but it is the State Department, through its Visa Office in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, that actually issues the visas abroad. Rubio is calling for a new vision in those visa decisions, one that looks to the anticipated behavior of the applicant once in the U.S., not just his paper qualification for the visa itself. It is a change, if fully implemented, as drastic as those following 9/11 when visa officers were repurposed from basically tourism advocates to pseudo-law enforcement.
It is simple—if you are coming to America to start riots, we will not give you, and we will take away, a student visa. By the way, every country I have traveled to, 14 countries in 14 weeks, and you know what they say to me? “Yes, that is what we would do too.” The only people that seem to disagree are a handful of federal judges and a bunch of crazy people who get paid to write a report.
The State Department legally revokes visas. In line with this, Rubio announced “his officials are evaluating whether any of the anti-Israel protesters who invaded a Columbia University building [recently] should see their temporary visas revoked.” Rubio said on X that the State Department is “reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals” after New York police made 80 arrests at the campus. A State Department spokesperson said, “We are upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process.” That is a new emphasis under Rubio. Trump critics claim this “America First” policy will collide with the upcoming World Cup matches scheduled this year in the United States. Not so, said Rubio, explaining, “We have very talented consular affairs people, but technology, working with consultants, and millions of people coming into the country for this.”
Finally, Rubio praised State’s most public-facing office, the one that issues U.S. passports to the public.
Some of us who served in Congress recognized a year and a half ago we had a meltdown under Biden. You couldn’t get a passport. We had people calling in on Friday, “My passport expires,” and in the month of March, 2.78 million Americans got their passports. That’s the largest single-month processing of passports ever.
It is more than a coincidence that Rubio in his statement called out by name only two not-so-well-known offices at State, the Visa Office and the Passport Office. Both have new heads, and both men are members of the Ben Franklin Fellowship (BFF). The BFF believes “U.S. international engagement should recognize the primacy of American sovereignty and the obligation to defend national borders… The central purpose of U.S. diplomacy is to serve the national interest. We endorse the careful husbanding of limited resources, both budget and staff, rather than engaging in perpetual, unfunded expansion.” In its own words, BFF is “a community of current and past State Department employees and foreign affairs practitioners who support traditional, Constitutional American values in international affairs.”
Layoffs are not expected to hit passport and visa processing within the Bureau of Consular Affairs. That bureau has around 2,400 domestic employees, about half of whom process passports, removing a large swath of the workforce from the RIF pool.
Rubio has seeded other BFF members at key nodes within State, most visibly as deputy secretary (Rubio’s Number 2) and as the acting head of the director general’s office, the part of the State Department that sits atop a pyramid of offices controlling internal budgets, personnel assignments, discipline, and promotions. It grants Rubio a lot of control over the department, and represents an understanding of the mechanics of the bureaucracy that his predecessors, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, never achieved.
Rubio gave no hints whatsoever that he is done making changes at Foggy Bottom. Keep a close eye on his public statements for clues for which direction he intends to take his department next.
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