Marco Rubio had been called “Little Marco” and a “choke artist” by his 2016 Republican primary rival Donald Trump, but on the debate stage in Houston, the Florida senator finally responded. Rubio accused Trump of being a huckster who would “sell watches in Manhattan” if he had not inherited a real estate fortune.
Less than a month later, Rubio's presidential campaign ended. The bitterness resulting from the naked quarrel continued.
But last month, within weeks of his return to the White House, Trump appointed his former rival to one of the most important positions in his incoming presidential administration: Secretary of State.
The sudden turnaround is so stark that even foreign allies expressed surprise — and some relief. known quantity e.g Rubio This contrasts with the president-elect's more controversial national security picks, such as former Fox commentator Pete Hegseth for defense, and Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee for director of national intelligence who has been criticized for his pro-Russian stances.
“Frankly, some of Trump’s nominations impressed us, but not Rubio,” a senior official from a NATO country said. “Rubio has strong foreign policy experience and recognizes the added value of strong alliances.”
He will need experience. Trump and his foreign policy team will inherit from outgoing US President Joe Biden a difficult to-do list, including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the possibility of further unrest in Syria. Geopolitical frictions with China in the Asia-Pacific region, and trade frictions even with allies such as Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, will inevitably be linked to the Rubio file.
Rubio, a veteran member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is known on Capitol Hill for his tough stance on China. He was one of the first and loudest voices to warn of the security threat posed by President Xi Jinping's aggressiveness on the world stage.
While that endeared him to some of Trump's inner circle, his more traditional views on national security put him at odds with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. Among them is Donald Trump Jr., who publicly opposed his father's selection of Rubio as his running mate because of his “establishment” credentials.
Trump Jr. also pushed his friend and MAGA ally Richard Grenell to take the top diplomatic post. Instead, Grenell was given the vague role of “special assignments envoy.”
Despite anger in some MAGA quarters, the selection of Rubio and Congressman Mike Waltz as national security adviser reassured many allies.
“They are clearly right-wing, but they are good thinkers,” a European diplomat said. “They have made statements that I don’t necessarily agree with, but they are not outside the realm of normal policy-making options. They are pro-alliances and pro-NATO.”
Both foreign diplomats and the foreign policy establishment in Washington have questioned how influential Rubio and Waltz will be and how they would fare in conjunction with other unconventional or radical picks like Hegseth, Gabbard, or Sebastian Gorka, the deputy national security adviser who has been criticized as Islamophobic.
The senior official from a NATO country tempered his optimism about Rubio, saying: “A lot will depend on who his deputies will be and how strong his position is with regard to the National Security Council.”
“There are a lot of moving pieces and I'm not sure people know their roles now. It's going to take time to solve this problem, and it's going to be very messy,” said Aaron David Miller, who has served as an adviser to several Republican and Democratic secretaries of state and now works 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 casino waiter and his mother was a hotel housekeeper. Later, his mother worked in a factory and also took care of her four children full-time. He played American football for a short time at Tarkio College in Missouri, but then transferred to community college and then to the University of Florida, where he graduated with a degree in political science in 1993.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio, who was first elected to the Senate in 2011 before launching his failed presidential bid in 2016, has become increasingly suspicious of American entanglements abroad.
“We are entering an era of pragmatic foreign policy where the world is changing rapidly. Adversaries in North Korea, Iran, China and Russia are uniting. They are increasingly coordinating,” he said in an interview with CNN the day after the election. “It will require us to be very pragmatic and prudent.” “On how we invest abroad, what we do and how we handle things.”
His tough stance on China has been a recurring theme.
In the Senate, Rubio pointed to Beijing's persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, its crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong, and its pressure on Taiwan. In 2020, China imposed sanctions on Rubio, among other US officials, over his “awful” record in Hong Kong. He wrote two reports while in Congress about China's threat to the United States' economy and technological power.
Rubio was considered a neocon when he sought to run for president in 2016, when he described the United States as an “indispensable power.” But two days after Trump's re-election, Rubio spoke out instead of the United States' “limited resources.”
“There are some really bad things going on 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 broadcaster EWTN.
However, it is reassuring to some Democrats and foreign diplomats that he does not call for retreat. “We must engage with the world,” he wrote in his 2023 book. Decades of decadenceAdding that the American temptation to withdraw from the world stage while maintaining its integrity is “foolish.”
He sees a role for the United States in Europe, but, like Trump, he wants Europe to do more to defend itself.
“While America will remain engaged in Europe, we will need our European allies to stand as equals and bear the bulk of that burden,” he wrote in his letter. Decades of decadencea survey of what he described as years of American decline.
Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Rubio is “someone who wants to have good relations with our allies and the world.”
Rubio was initially a strong supporter of Ukraine's war against a full-scale Russian invasion, but voted against additional funding for Kiev earlier this year, calling the conflict a “stalemate.”
“we Do you want to see the end of this conflict?“It's going to require some very difficult choices,” he said.
But like Trump, Rubio remains a hawk on Iran, which he sees as a source of instability in the Middle East. A staunch supporter of Israel, he wants the US ally to “destroy every Hamas element he can get his hands on,” blaming the movement for the massive death toll in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its attack.
