Marco Rubio, a senator who first launched his presidential campaign in 2015, endorsed a tough stance against Russia and decried previous efforts by American officials to bolster ties with Moscow.
Ten years later, Rubio – now America’s top diplomat – sat across from his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Saudi Arabia this week in a bid to revive relations between Washington and Moscow.
Under President Donald Trump, Rubio, a hawk in foreign policy, has been overseeing seismic changes in the US’s approach to the world. Rubio once called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “thug.”
Rubio is perceived as a traditionalist politician with traditional conservative beliefs. He is now serving in an administration whose public face is a tech billionaire with no previous political experience who is looking to radically hollow out federal agencies.
Meanwhile, the new secretary of state finds himself supporting Trump’s unconventional international goals, including “owning” Gaza and acquiring Greenland and opening up to Russia.
Who is the most important US diplomat and what motivates him as the former senator?
Ambition, global stage
According to analysts, Rubio is motivated by both his conviction that the US should lead the world and his own ambitions, which led him to win the presidency in 2016 and advance through the Republican Party’s ranks.
“He has a very traditional, hawkish view of America’s role in the world, but we’ve also seen ways in which he’s simply dispensed with long-held views since becoming secretary of state”, said Michael Hanna, US programme director at the International Crisis Group think tank.
One glaring example of Rubio’s own shifts is the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the international aid programs’ cancellation.
Rubio has long advocated for aid programs as a global component of the United States.
But Rubio, like other Republicans named to key positions in the Trump administration, has fallen in lockstep with the president, embracing his “America First” policy.
After Trump leaves office, Hanna speculated that Rubio, 53, might end up wanting to stay in.
It’s ambition, in my opinion. Being a high-profile senator is one thing, and being the secretary of state is another in terms of your profile, particularly on a global stage”, he told Al Jazeera.
The “trauma of exile”
The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio comes from humble beginnings. His mother worked as a hotel cleaner and his father worked as a bartender.
Before Fidel Castro’s revolution in the 1950s, he immigrated to the US with his parents, who both immigrated from Cuba. He also spent his early years in Miami’s Cuban community.
The staunchly anti-Castro constituency has been veering to the right of the US political spectrum over the decades, helping turn Florida into a Republican stronghold.
Rubio suggests that the Cuban immigrants he grew up around gave him his early political outlook and sense of patriotism in his 2012 memoir An American Son.
He wrote, “I was aware of how the trauma of exile, including disbelief, guilt, and a sense of loss, had impacted both their and my own lives,”
“I knew that their love, born of gratitude for the country that had welcomed them and encouraged their aspirations, and the loss that had brought them here, had made them vigilant in their watch for anything that they thought could threaten America … This is the culture that shaped my youth”.
In his 2012 book The Rise of Marco Rubio, author Manuel Roig-Franzia claims that his family’s roots and upbringing in Miami’s Cuban community “shaped his political identity.”
Rubio has advocated antagonistic policies, including harsh sanctions, against left-wing Latin American leaders who he views as autocrats or US adversaries throughout his career.
During the administration of US President Barack Obama, Rubio was a vocal opponent of the detente with Cuba.
Rubio has also backed more harsh measures taken against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
He made an apparent “regime change” threat to Maduro in 2019 that he didn’t really want to.
Amid a spike of tensions between the US and Venezuela, Rubio posted a series of photos of slain and imprisoned dictators to social media after addressing the Maduro government.
Muammar Gaddafi, the late leader of Libya, was depicted in a bloody image in one post that was later used up by rebels.
During the Libyan uprising, US and NATO fighter jets bombarded government positions there, and Rubio, a first-year senator in 2011, had demanded an even stronger US intervention.
Americana Pax
Republicans who were raised during the Reagan administration’s 1980s and the Soviet Union’s collapse have become aware of Rubio’s hawkish worldview of “might make right” according to Stephen Zunes, a professor of international studies at the University of San Francisco.
“I think he wants to see a Americana Pax,” Zunes says, referring to the concept of global peace ushered in by American dominance.
Rubio himself wrote in Foreign Affairs about his ideas for US foreign policy in 2015. A renewal of American strength will be my foreign policy’s first and most significant pillar. This is an idea based on a simple truth: the world is at its safest when America is at its strongest”, he wrote.
Rubio, a presidential candidate at the time, outlined three pillars of his foreign policy: military might, free trade protection, and “moral clarity” in “defending freedom.”
This language dates back to George W. Bush’s presidency in the 2000s, when Marco Rubio was just beginning his political career.
The Florida politician has always expressed fondness for Bush. According to him, the former president called him the first time after he was elected to the US Senate in 2010.
Rubio defended the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 amid a near-consensus in Washington that it was wrong.
“The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein is not there”, he told Fox News.
The other Bush
Rubio was just 27 when he was first elected to public office as a West Miami commissioner in 1998.
He lept from the US Senate to municipal politics in less than 13 years. He presided over the Florida House of Representatives for eight years between 2006 and 2008.
Throughout his meteoric rise, Rubio had a powerful ally – Florida’s then-Governor Jeb Bush.
Jeb, the son of former president George W. Bush and the brother of former president George W. Bush, saw in Rubio a promising young politician.
Jeb gave Rubio a golden sword that he held up in front of his fellow lawmakers while he was in office, and he received it with a wide smile. Jeb proverbially anointed Rubio as a “conservative warrior”.
Whether or not the two were close friends or just friends has a history, but they have since publicly expressed their admiration for one another. Rubio was a good choice for him because he had already started his first local election campaign.
But it wasn’t just Bush. Politicians from Florida who knew Rubio when he was starting to forge his way in politics say it was obvious that he was going somewhere.
Congressman Carlos Jimenez stated to NPR last month that when he first heard Rubio speak for the first time in his career, he already knew he “has it” – referring to something unique.
“Marco Rubio not only exemplifies the American dream. He embodies the Republican Party, according to Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart.
2016 presidential run
Rubio, a young, eloquent, and combative politician with a compelling personal story from a growing demographic base, appeared to be a rising star in the Republican Party from the moment he took to the stage.
Mitt Romney’s campaign less than two years after his election, considered him for the vice presidential spot in 2012 because he made it to the Senate with such fanfare.
When 2016 came around, Rubio threw his own hat into a crowded ring of Republican candidates seeking the presidency.
His interactions with his future boss, Trump and his ally, Bush, were notable.
When Rubio attempted to occupy the establishment lane in the primary that was viewed as reserved for Bush, he put his previous political ties aside.
The two exchanged attacks on the debate stage and campaign trail, but Rubio’s blows came off as more efficient, showing his willingness to dispense with old allies to get ahead.
Jeb has no prior foreign policy experience, Rubio said in February 2016: “I thank God every day that George W. Bush was president.
Rubio may have helped to bring Bush’s campaign to a successful conclusion.
The Floridian also came after Trump at a time when other candidates were avoiding confrontations with the sharp-tongued businessman.
Rubio also criticised the current president for having no prior foreign policy experience. He made fun of his “small hands,” calling him a “con artist.”
The real estate mogul already had Rubio, at one point his closest rival in the primaries, in his crosshairs.
He called him “Little Marco Rubio” and made fun of him at every turn, accusing the then-senator of wearing excessive makeup, drinking excessive amounts of water, and sweating frequently, among other things.
Despite the rivalry’s personal nature, Rubio supported Trump despite his legal issues when he was nominated and backed him once more in the campaign year of 2024.
By endorsing Trump, Rubio appeared to acknowledge the president’s Republican takeover and chose to work within the party system.
His stance toward Bush and Trump contrasts favorably with Rubio’s pragmatic approach, which includes working with former adversaries and working with former allies.
Rubio said that the world is more complicated than the question’s premise when he was asked about it this week after the talks with Russian diplomats.
“I don’t view diplomacy that way. In the end, diplomacy, in my opinion, depends on what we do. He claimed that it is based on kept commitments.
advocacy for Israel
Days earlier, Rubio painted a black-and-white picture of the Middle East conflict, suggesting that the direction forward for US policy toward Russia and its invasion of Ukraine was complex.
While meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rubio heaped praise on Israel, calling it a “free enterprise democracy”.
The Middle East would be a safer and better place, he said, “if there were more countries like that in the Middle East.”
The top US diplomat, on the other hand, called Iran the region’s “single greatest source of instability.”
He also praised Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza as “bold”.
Rubio was viewed as a wise choice in the Trump administration despite the professor’s claim that he has “extreme” views on Israel-Palestine and other regions of the world. In January, the Senate approved Rubio with a 99-0 vote.
“If any other person was president,]Rubio] would be considered pretty extreme. He is merely perceived as reasonable in comparison to some of these other appointees, Zunes said.
Rubio has a long history of standing up for Israel. He has introduced measures to penalise companies that boycott Israel over its mistreatment of Palestinians and rebuked Latin American leaders critical of the US ally as “pro-Hamas”.
The modern Republican Party has embraced a reviled and centrist Israel, which has become a nearly unquestionable tenet.
Israel has long been seen as a proxy for US influence in the Middle East, especially during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union supported Arab governments there.
The rise of evangelicals – who back Israel for theological reasons – as a major Republican constituency cemented right-wing support for Israel over the past decades.
Views changing
While Rubio may share Trump’s views on Israel-Palestine, his history of advocacy for internationalism, foreign aid and a leading US global role may not bode well with what Trump seems to want to achieve – a nationalistic withdrawal from the world stage and unilateral pursuit of perceived US interests.
The secretary of state’s position appears to have been revised.
Rubio once fought fervently for aid to Ukraine, but last year he declared that the US was funding a “stalemate in Ukraine” as skepticism about its role grew in right-wing circles.
Recently, he even spoke of an inevitable “multipolar world” – which appears to contradict his previous statements about the need for the US to be the supreme global power.
Rubio may be undergoing ideological transformation, but it’s unclear whether he is simply carrying out the duties assigned.
Rubio is required to channel Trump as secretary of state. He doesn’t set foreign policy, he conducts it on behalf of the president.
Zunes claimed that Rubio was aware when he first started out advocating for positions he didn’t support.
Source: Aljazeera
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