Marco Rubio is the new US Secretary of State: The war in Ukraine must end

(Patria) - The Senate voted to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State in President Donald Trump's cabinet, the first high-level official of the new administration approved by that congressional chamber.

The confirmation vote took place just hours after Trump was sworn in as president.

The largely bipartisan vote was 99 to 0, with no senator voting against the nomination.

Rubio had been a Republican senator from Florida since 2011, and his nomination received strong support from a number of Democrats in the Senate, who called their colleague highly qualified for the role.

Rubio will play a key role as a high-ranking official in the new administration.

During his confirmation hearing, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called him "well qualified to serve as Secretary of State."

During questioning by senators, Rubio expressed his support for NATO – as well as for a bipartisan bill he co-sponsored that states the US cannot withdraw from the alliance without Senate approval or an act of Congress.

Rubio also spoke about the need for the US to take a firm stance toward China during his confirmation hearing, calling the Chinese Communist Party a "powerful" and "dangerous" adversary.

- They are a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an economic rival, a geopolitical rival, a scientific competitor now, in every area, it is an extraordinary challenge and I believe it will define the 21st century - Rubio said.

- Much of what we need to do to confront China is here at home. It is not just abroad, but also at home - he said.

- We must rebuild our domestic industrial capacity and we must ensure that the United States does not rely on any other nation for any of our critical supply chains.

Responding to questions about Russia's war against Ukraine, Rubio said it is "unrealistic to believe" that Ukraine can push Russian forces back to where they were before the 2022 invasion and that the official US stance should be that the war must end.

Rubio added that he and Trump agree the war should end and criticized the Biden administration for not setting a "clear end goal" for the war.

- What Vladimir Putin did is unacceptable, there is no doubt about that, but this war must end and I think the official policy of the United States should be that we want it to end - Rubio said.