On this path, China will control how Americans live in a decade: Marco Rubio

Warns of Taiwan crisis by end of decade. On Ukraine, Rubio said that the official US policy must be to call for an end to the war in Ukraine

Washington: Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s pick to be the US Secretary of State, has said that if current trends continued, China would control the health, security, prosperity and lives of Americans in a decade. He also warned that the US will have to deal with China’s president Xi Jinping invading Taiwan by the end of the decade unless Taiwan’s defences were bolstered and China was forced to conclude that the costs of invading Taiwan would be higher than the benefits.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing at Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. (AFP)

“The Chinese Communist Party is the most potent and near-peer adversary that this country has ever faced. It is a geopolitical, strategic, technological, military adversary..the bulk of the book about 21st century will be about US and China,” Rubio said.

China threat

He said that the US had allowed China to pretend to be a developing country and engage in unfair practices; it had allowed China to engage in grotesque human rights violations and even slave labour; and China was now dominating the entire critical mineral supply chain. “If we stay on this road, in less than ten years, what matters to Americans will depend on whether China will allow us to have it,” he warned underlining the critical need for America to invest in industrial capacity at home.

Rubio, a senator from Florida, was speaking at his confirmation hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC). Widely respected across the partisan divide on the Capitol Hill, Rubio has been a long-term member of the SFRC and was the senior most Republican member in the Senate Intelligence Committee. He had competed against Trump in the Republican primaries in 2015-2016, before becoming a Trump ally and close adviser in his first term. Trump had considered him as a vice presidential pick in this election, and Trump has said opting for him as Secretary of State was an easy decision for him. Rubio, however, has always held a more expansive view of US role in the world compared to Trump’s more radical isolationist supporters.

Foreign policy insight

Offering the first elaborate and authoritative insight into how the Trump administration viewed the world, and its broad policy position, Rubio said that the US must continue supporting Israel, call for an end to the war in Ukraine, and while being committed to Nato, get European countries to invest more in their defence.

More broadly, he defined the Trump approach as placing American national interest at the centre. He said that every dollar that America spends abroad, and every position it takes globally, will now be judged on three parameters; will it make the US stronger, safer and more prosperous. This, however, he said, did not mean the US would be isolationist, but that it would pursue a policy of common sense based on American national interests.

Taiwan policy

On Taiwan, and its presence in international forums, Rubio said that the Taiwan Relations Act and six assurances was the basis of US policy. He expressed concern about how from Asean to Latin American countries, China had weighed in on countries to deprive Taiwan of a voice on international platforms. And on what is termed the “porcupine” strategy for the defence of Taiwan, Rubio said, “Porcupine strategy means the cost of invading Taiwan is higher than the benefit for China, that a China may still prevail but the price would be too high to pay. It is deterrence and critical to defending Taiwan.”

Rubio then referred to Xi’s writings and speeches for his domestic audience and how Taiwan was a “foundational and definitional issue” for the Chinese leader. “Unless something changes in the equilibrium where costs are higher than benefits..we will have to deal with this by the end of the decade.”

On Ukraine, Rubio said that the official US policy must be to call for an end to the war in Ukraine, with a realistic appraisal that neither can Russia take over Ukraine nor can Ukraine fully back Russia. He, however, acknowledged that this would be difficult to translate, a sign that the President-elect’s team is waking back on Trump’s claims that he would be able to end the war immediately.

Rubio, whose parents migrated from Cuba in 1956 to the US, and who grew up relatively poor, will be the first Hispanic to become America’s top diplomat.

In his opening remarks, Jim Risch, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, identified China as America’s most important adversary, underlined its links with America’s other adversaries including Russia, Iran and North Korea, and how China was working against America in every continent.

Jeanne Shaheen, the senior most Democratic member of the committee, also said that she believed Rubio had the ability to do the job but was concerned about US approach to Europe, Nato and Ukraine under Trump.

The bipartisan support and tone of the hearing was radically different from that of Trump’s Pentagon pick, Peter Hegseth, who provoked opposition from all Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.