Secretary of State Marco Rubio Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member and all the members of the committee for having me. I have a written opening statement. I'll submit it. I'll try to cut the five minutes in half if I can. Let's just get right to the point.

I think that I would characterize the last 16, 17 months at the State Department as two things - a history of tremendous successes combined with ongoing and difficult challenges. And we will always have ongoing and difficult challenges in the world. Let me walk through them one by one.

India and Pakistan were on the verge of an all-out war. The State Department and I personally were involved in de-escalating that conflict and bringing it to an end, a war between two nuclear powers.

Thailand and Cambodia were involved in a war - Cambodia, a country we haven't normally had close relations with in a very long time. The U.S., the President personally, played a pivotal role - not once but twice - restoring ceasefires and ending that conflict.

Obviously the war in Gaza was brought to an end. Not only that, but all the hostages that remained were released, both the bodies and those who were alive.

Armenia and Azerbaijan - that conflict ended. Not only did it end, but it ended with an agreement that I signed the MOU on yesterday, creating a new prosperity route, the TRIPP route, which will provide extraordinary opportunities for both countries, especially for Armenia, while respecting their sovereignty, to really benefit from that.

The Shield of the Americas was stood up. That means over 14 countries in the hemisphere - 14 countries in the hemisphere - have signed up to partner with us on counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and security matters. And we believe that that number will grow over the next few months as elections change leaderships in various countries.

We held the Rare Earths Ministerial¹ that was attended by over 30-some-odd countries from around the world, all who were signing up for an American-led effort to ensure that critical supplies of rare earth minerals around the world are available for our emerging economies and we don't remain overly dependent on China.

We also announced the Pax Silica proposal, which is growing, but it's at 14 members now. These are 14 countries that are cooperating with one another to protect the supply chains critical to AI and AI development in the future.

In Venezuela, we now have a functioning and open embassy. We have people traveling there for the first time. It's not where it needs to be, but it is a long ways from where it was five months ago and poses nearly - not nearly the threat it once posed to America's national security. We're not satisfied with where it is, but we've come a long way. We are certainly better off than we were five years - five months ago.

On the - on Nigeria, where we were all - many were very concerned about violence against Christians. We are now actively in counterterrorism cooperation with the Nigerian Government and Nigerian security forces, including a joint operation a couple of weeks ago that took out the number two leader of global ISIS operating from inside of the country, and that continues.

The Pacific Islands - small Pacific Islands, under constant pressure and threat from China - have received more attention from this administration than they received in the last 10 years combined. And deliverables are coming along the way.

The Quad, an important alliance in the Indo-Pacific between India, Japan, Australia - we've had multiple meetings of those - of that group, including a meeting just last week in India and a follow-up that's going to occur later this year, including a leaders' meeting before the end of the year.

As I speak to you now for the second consecutive day and for the first time in many, many years, the leaders of the legitimate Government of Lebanon and leaders from the Government of Israel are seated at the State Department for the second day in a row, and hopefully today will produce a joint statement and an action plan on a track for security in that country, independent from Hizballah, independent from nefarious influence. They had similar meetings last week at the Pentagon at the military level.

We have signed 32 health compacts; 32 countries have signed health compacts with the United States, where our aid to those countries will not just be dollars distributed to an NGO who then will go into the country and impose programs. Instead, we are partnering with 32 countries, many of them in the African continent, in which we will empower their native and domestic health industries and national health systems, so that they can - not only are we treating the acute situations on the ground of people that are sick, we are helping them build the capacity and the capability to do this for themselves.

This is what these countries want. They do not want to be perpetual aid recipients. They want to be able to be able to take care of their people one day, and we are helping them as part of our aid to build that infrastructure.

I could go on, but let me just say another point. We are better today than we have ever been at disaster relief. Today, the United States can respond to disasters around the world on a humanitarian basis faster and more effectively than they ever have because of our reorganization. And the proof is our response in Jamaica, our response to two typhoons in the Pacific. Our ability to quickly deploy within 24 hours and bring aid, directly coordinating with the governments, to people is better than it has even been because we cut out bureaucracy, we cut out the middleman, and we went right to the point.

We still have challenges. On Sudan - it remains a very frustrating situation. We remain deeply engaged with the Quad in these negotiations. As many of you are aware, unfortunately Sudan has turned into a proxy war between multiple countries, and the divisions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia have truly complicated our ability to bring that to an end. What we're focused on there now is identifying two cities - or four cities, two on each side, that will serve as points of distribution for humanitarian aid.

But the inability - not - the real frustrating thing about Sudan is that one side or the other will agree to something but then they will not comply. But we remain focused on that, and we have people that work on that full time. We even had a donor conference just about a month and a half ago, where we - hundreds of millions of dollars in pledges for not just humanitarian aid but reconstruction. We're focused on that. It's an ongoing challenge.

On DRC and Rwanda, they signed a peace agreement. Unfortunately, compliance has not been good. We've had to impose a few sanctions. On the Rwandan side, we are starting to see some compliance. It's moving - not moving fast enough, but we're hoping to see compliance at some point in the middle part of next month in withdrawing the Rwandan troops from there. Of course, we still have the M23 problem that has to be addressed.

So, this is a host of issues. We could go on. Obviously, the ongoing challenges of Iran remain - as we - I'm sure we'll speak about extensively in your questions today.

So, I apologize. That took four minutes and 55 seconds, but I tried to talk as fast as I could. Thank you.

1. Critical Minerals Ministerial ↩︎

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