How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler
As secretary of state and also national security adviser, Rubio is, at least in theory, the most powerful American diplomat since Henry Kissinger. But compared to Kissinger, whose militant interventionism defined an entire generation of America’s international relations, Rubio often appears like a member of the president’s support staff. As Trump lurches from one crisis to the next, Rubio — calm, articulate and able to project the earnest charm of a boy scout — justifies his policies, soothes his shaken allies and puts the best face to initiatives he would have denounced only a few years ago.
In the days following the attack on Venezuela, many observers inevitably made the comparison with Iraq, another oil-rich country where the United States toppled a strongman, causing a quagmire that lasted for years. Rubio insisted during a series of appearances that the situations were not at all the same. On “Face the Nation,” he said: “A lot of people analyze everything that happens in foreign policy through the prism of what happened from 2001 to, you know, 2015 or ’16… We’re not in the Middle East. And our mission here is very different.”
Since Trump began his second term, his “America First” foreign policy has brought about a historic shift in the country’s place in the world, as the United States abandons its traditional commitments to pursue its immediate self-interests. The sprawling network of alliances, treaties and foreign aid programs that the United States built at the end of World War II is being radically altered or simply abandoned. Since January, the United States has cut tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian and development aid, withdrew from landmark agreements such as the Paris climate accord and reduced reporting on human rights abuses. Entire ministries have been gutted. In their place is a highly personalized approach, largely dependent on the whims of Trump, whose foreign policy reflects a harsher, more miserly and less forgiving country.
Rubio, at fifty-four, is the unlikely executor of this policy. Before joining the Trump administration, he spent his career defending America as a leader among global democracies; the son of Cuban immigrants, he was a champion of aid to poor countries. Some observers say Rubio is struggling to provide consistency and balance in a tumultuous administration. “He is doing his best to moderate Trump’s worst impulses,” a European foreign minister told me. “He understands the issues. He whispers in Trump’s ear. But his influence is limited.” Others are less charitable. They believe that Rubio is presiding over the transformation of America into something of a rogue nation, just as an axis of authoritarian rivals, led by China, rises to challenge the world’s democracies. “Destroying our allies, destroying state and foreign aid, tariffs — the damage will take years to undo, if it can ever be undone,” Eric Rubin, a retired ambassador who headed the State Department’s diplomatic union, told me. “I hope this ruins his career.”
By most standards, Rubio is in a privileged position: His White House office is just steps from the Oval Office. But this is not the position he hoped to occupy. In 2016, Rubio ran for president and lost to Trump in the primary. He now serves his former adversary, an unstable leader who regularly denigrates the institutions that Rubio supported during his career. “At the end of the day, he has to be one hundred percent loyal to the president, and when the president zigzags, Rubio has to zigzag too,” a former Western diplomat told me. “He must have swallowed a lot of shit.”
The 2016 election is the only one Rubio has ever lost — an anomaly in a carefully managed rise. In 1999, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, from a predominantly working-class district in West Miami; although he did not live in the district when the seat opened, he moved there in time to campaign. Just four years later, he announced he would run for Speaker of the House. Florida recently imposed term limits and many prominent House members are retiring. Management was open and Rubio wanted it.
“I knew it. He carries a scribe.”
Cartoon by Paul Noth
Many in Florida politics thought the time was right for a Cuban-American speaker, but Rubio faced a difficult problem. For years, public school teachers in Florida’s cities have been paid more than those in rural areas, to compensate for their higher cost of living. A powerful group of lawmakers, mostly from rural North Florida, wanted wage equalization across the state. No presidential candidate had supported the change; Gaston Cantens, a Cuban-American lawmaker who represented Miami, refused to do so in the previous presidential race and eventually dropped out. But Rubio was accommodating. “The rural legislators got their formula, and in return they went with Marco,” a former high-ranking Democrat in the legislature told me. “Cantens was a carcass on the side of the road. » Rubio won. THE Florida Bulldoga regional newspaper, later calculated that the change had cost Miami teachers nearly $1 billion. “The one constant in Marco Rubio’s career is that he betrayed all his mentors and all his principles to seize power,” one Miami political figure told me.
In Florida, term limits make it harder for elected officials to gain depth of experience, and Rubio’s legislative record is relatively thin. For his first speech as speaker, he placed a book titled “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future” on each legislator’s desk. The pages were blank; Rubio said he wanted to fill them with proposals collected from voters. That effort resulted in a few dozen successful, if mostly marginal, pieces of legislation, including one that expanded scholarships for private school teaching and another that created an advisory committee to help make government more efficient. “Give him credit,” a lobbyist working in Florida told me at the time. “He didn’t have a lot of ideas himself. It was a smart thing to do.”
