Marco Rubio was called “little Marco” and a “strangle artist” by his 2016 Republican rival Donald Trump, but on the stage of the debate in Houston, the senator from Florida pushed back. Trump was a watch salesman in Manhattan “if he didn't get rich in real estate, Rubio charged.
Less than a month later Rubio's presidential bid was over. Bitterness from the desert that has been released.
Last month, however, within weeks of confirming his return to the White House, Trump beat his former opponent to one of the highest positions in his incoming presidential administration: secretary of state.
The face is so startling that even foreign allies express surprise – and relief. A known quantity such as Rubio He is opposed to the president-elect's choices with more national security concerns, such as former Fox defense commentator Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee for director of national intelligence who has been criticized for his stance on Russia.
“In all honesty, some of Trump's nominees have made our jaws drop – but not Rubio,” said a senior official from a NATO country. “Rubio has strong foreign policy experience and understands the added value of strong relationships.”
You will need experience. Trump and his foreign policy team will inherit from the outgoing US President Joe Biden a series of difficult tasks, including the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the possibility of chaos in Syria. Political tensions with China in the Asia-Pacific, as well as trade tensions with allies such as Canada, Mexico and the EU will certainly lead to Rubio's filing.
A veteran of the Senate foreign relations committee and the top Republican on the intelligence committee, Rubio is well known on Capitol Hill for his pro-China sentiment. He was one of the first and loudest voices warning about the security threat posed by President Xi Jinping's aggressiveness on the global stage.
While that has endeared him to Trump's inner circle, his conservative views on national security have put him at odds with the conservative wing of the Republican party. That includes Donald Trump Jr, who publicly argued against his father in choosing Rubio as his running mate because of his “establishment” qualities.
Trump Jr also pushed his friend and fellow Maga Richard Grenell for a top diplomatic job. Grenell was instead given the vague role of “special mission officer”.
Despite the outrage in some parts of the Maga, the selection of Rubio and congressman Mike Waltz as national security adviser has convinced many.
“Obviously they are right, but they think well,” said a European diplomat. “They have made statements that I disagree with, but they are not outside the bounds of normal policy making choices. They are supporters of the alliance and NATO. ”
Both foreign diplomats and the establishment of foreign policy in Washington have asked how much influence Rubio and Waltz will have and how they will proceed in cooperation with other unusual or radical elements such as Hegseth, Gabbard or Sebastian Gorka, the deputy national security adviser who has been criticized as. Islamophobic.
A senior official from a NATO country expressed his hopes for Rubio, saying, “a lot will depend on who his deputies are and how strong his position will be on the National Security Council”.
“There are a lot of moving pieces and I'm not sure people know their roles right now. It's going to take time to fix that, and it's going to be really bad,” said Aaron David Miller, who has advised several Republican and Democratic secretaries 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 also took care of her four children full time. He played football for a short time at Tarkio College in Missouri but later transferred to a 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 who was first elected to the Senate in 2011 before launching an unsuccessful presidential bid in 2016, Rubio has been deeply skeptical of the US's foreign policy.
“We are entering an era of active foreign policy where the world is changing rapidly. The opponents are united in North Korea, Iran, China, Russia. They've been communicating more,” he said in an interview with CNN the day after the election. “It's going to require us to be very pragmatic and careful and how we invest abroad and what we do and how we approach things.”
His exploits in China have been a recurring theme.
In the Senate, Rubio mentioned Beijing's persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, its destruction of democracy in Hong Kong and its pressure on Taiwan. In 2020, China imposed sanctions on Rubio, among other American officials, because of his “difficult” record in Hong Kong. He wrote two reports while in Congress about China's threat to the US economy and technological power.
Rubio was considered a neoconservative when he sought the presidential nomination in 2016, when he described the US as a “necessary power”. Two days after Trump's re-election, however, Rubio spoke instead of the “limited resources” of the US.
“There are really bad things happening in the world. But we cannot be involved in all of them. We have to choose the things that are most important to America and our security,” he said in an interview on November 7 with the Catholic channel EWTN.
The confirmation of some Democrats and diplomats of other countries, however, does not discuss going back. “We must join the world,” he wrote in his book 2023 Decades of Deathadding that America's attempt to withdraw from the world stage while maintaining its security is “foolish.”
He sees a role for the US in Europe but, like Trump, wants Europe to provide more for its security.
“While America will remain in Europe, we will need our European allies to step up to the plate and carry much of this burden,” he wrote. Decades of Deathresearch into what he described as America's decadent years.
Rubio is “a person who wants to have good relations with our allies and the world”, said Senator 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 invasion of Russia, but he voted against additional funding for Kyiv earlier this year, and has described the conflict as “permanent”.
“We you want to see if the conflict endsand it will require very difficult choices,” he said.
But like Trump, Rubio remains a hawk on Iran, seeing it as a source of instability in the Middle East. A loyal supporter of Israel, he wants the US ally to “destroy everything of Hamas that they can get their hands on”, placing the group with the largest number of deaths in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its offensive.