US absent from G20 meeting in South Africa

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will skip a two-day G20 meeting of foreign ministers according to the AP on February 19th.
Rather than attending the meeting, Rubio headed back to the U.S after talks were held with Russia in Saudi Arabia over a peace deal in Ukraine.

According to the US state department, Rubio briefed France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the European Union of his absence.

Rubio’s absence can be seen as another indicator of the shift in the US’ foreign policy relations.

According to Rubio, the meeting would be an opportunity for South Africa to promote, ‘diversity, equality and climate change’.

Rubio took to X to write, ‘My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.’

The U.S’ absence is also a sign of the countries shift in relations with South Africa.

Donald Trump criticised South Africa’s foreign policy anti-American claiming the countries anti-Israel policy to be misguided.

Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s foreign minister was keen to stress that the U.S would be involved ‘in one form or another’, claiming that Rubio’s absence was ‘not a complete boycott of the G20 meeting’.

Oscar van Heerden, a senior researcher on the University of Johannesburg commented that: “No one wants to be on the wrong side of the United States,” said Oscar van Heerden, senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre of African

Diplomacy and Leadership. “But I think everyone also realises that what drives the foreign policy of the United States is not necessarily what drives the foreign policy of the European Union or the other members of the G20.”

The U.S’ absence will do little to alleviate Europe’s concerns about the Trump regimes foreign policy ambitions.

The absence comes after a tumultuous week in which Trump claimed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was a ‘dictator’ and that Ukraine could have ended the war at any stage in the past three years.