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Marco Rubio was called “Little Marco” and a “motivational artist” by his 2016 Republican primary rival, Donald Trump, but the Florida senator finally hit back at a debate in Houston. If Trump hadn’t inherited a real estate fortune, he would be a hustler “selling watches in Manhattan,” Rubio charged.
In less than a month, Rubio’s presidential bid is over. He remained bitter in the bare-knuckle fight.
But within weeks of securing his return to the White House last month, Trump tapped his one-time rival for one of the top posts in the incoming presidential administration: secretary of state.
The about-face was so shocking that even foreign allies expressed surprise — and some relief. A known amount Rubio Contrasted with the president-elect’s more controversial national security picks, such as former Fox analyst Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard’s appointment as director of defense and national intelligence, he has been criticized for his pro-Russia stance.
“Honestly, some of Trump’s nominees have made our jaws drop — but not Rubio,” said a senior official in a NATO country. “Rubio recognizes the added value of strong foreign policy experience and a strong coalition.”
It needs experience. Trump and his foreign policy team will inherit a heavy to-do list from US President Joe Biden, including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the possibility of further chaos in Syria. In the Asia-Pacific, geopolitical conflicts with China and even trade disputes with allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union will inevitably find their way into Rubio’s file.
Rubio, a veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, is known on Capitol Hill for his prejudice against China. He was one of the earliest and most vocal people to warn of the security risks posed by President Xi Jinping’s aggressiveness on the world stage.
While this has endeared him to some of Trump’s inner circle, his conventional views on national security have put him at odds with the conservative wing of the Republican Party. That includes Donald Trump Jr., whose father publicly disputed his “establishment” endorsement of Rubio as his running mate.
Trump Jr. pushed his friend and Maga ally Richard Grenell for the top diplomatic job. Grenell was instead given the vague role of “special mission envoy.”
Despite anger in some Maga circles, the selection of Rubio and Congressman Mike Waltz as national security advisers has reassured many allies.
“Obviously they are right, but they are good thinkers,” said one European diplomat. “They’ve made statements that I don’t necessarily agree with, but they’re not outside the parameters of normal policymaking options. They are pro and nato.
Both foreign diplomats and Washington’s foreign policy establishment are concerned about how influential Rubio and Waltz will be and in collaboration with other unusual or radical choices such as Hegseth, Gabbard or Sebastian Gorka, Deputy National Security Adviser, Islamophobia.
A senior NATO official weighed in on Rubio’s optimism, saying “a lot depends on who his deputies are and how strong he is on the National Security Council.”
“There are a lot of moving pieces and I’m not sure people know what their role is now. It’s going to take time to sort that out, and it’s going to be very messy,” said Aaron David Miller, who has advised several Republican and Democratic secretaries of state and is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Rubio was born in Miami but spent part of his childhood in Las Vegas, where his father was a bartender at a casino and his mother was a hotel housekeeper. Later, his mother worked in a factory and took care of her four children full-time. He briefly played football at Tarkio College in Missouri, but later transferred to a community college and then the University of Florida, where he graduated in 1993 with a degree in political science.
In the year Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who was first elected to the Senate in 2011 before his failed presidential bid, has been suspicious of America’s overseas entanglements.
We are entering an era of pragmatic foreign policy in which the world is changing rapidly. Opposition is united in North Korea, Iran, China, Russia. They are coordinating,” he said in an interview with CNN the day after the election. “We are required to be very pragmatic and wise in how we invest overseas and what we do and how we approach things.”
Prejudice against China is a recurring theme.
In the Senate, Rubio cited Beijing’s persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, its crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and its crackdown on Taiwan. In the year In 2020, China, along with other US officials, imposed sanctions on Rubio over his “disgusting” record on Hong Kong. During his time in Congress, he wrote two reports on China’s threat to America’s economic and technological power.
In the year When seeking the presidential election in 2016, Rubio was considered a neoconservative when he described the US as a “vital power”. Two days after Trump’s re-election, however, Rubio spoke instead of the US’s “limited resources.”
“There are some bad things happening in the world. But we can’t be involved in all of them. We have to choose the things that are most important to America and our security,” he said in a Nov. 7 interview with Catholic channel EWTN.
Reassuring to some Democrats and foreign diplomats, he is not arguing for a retreat. In the year In his book 2023, he wrote, “We must connect with the world.” decadeHe added that it would be “foolish” for America to try to withdraw from the world stage while maintaining its own security.
He sees a role for America in Europe, but like Trump, wants Europe to devote more to its own defense.
“As the United States engages in Europe, we want our European allies to shoulder the brunt of this burden,” he wrote. decadea survey of what he described as America’s years of decline.
Rubio is “a guy who wants to have good relations with our allies and with the world,” said Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Rubio was initially a strong supporter of Ukraine’s fight against a full-scale Russian occupation, but earlier this year he opposed more funding for Kiev, describing the conflict as a “controversy.”
“We They want to see the conflict endAnd it requires some very difficult choices,” he said.
But like Trump, Rubio has remained a hawk on Iran, seeing it as a source of instability in the Middle East. Israel, a staunch supporter of Israel, wants the US ally to “destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on”, blaming the group for the heavy toll in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its offensive.
