Marco Rubio for State? Why the Florida senator should be Trump’s choice to lead on foreign policy
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Marco Rubio won’t be Donald Trump’s vice president.
But that doesn’t mean the Florida senator doesn’t have a prominent place in the Donald Trump administration — and a spot that better suits his temperament and his long-term political future.
Foreign policy has arguably been Rubio’s strongest suit in his nearly 15 years in the Senate.
While his record hasn’t been perfect, and while there would be room for him to grow in a second Trump administration, he nonetheless is uniquely ready to reorient American policy after a rocky four years of Antony Blinken’s stewardship.
Rubio has focused like no other senator on issues with Latin America — unsurprising given he is a Floridian of Cuban-American descent, with a key awareness of how socialism and communism can devastate societies. In fact, Trump’s LATAM policy was jokingly summed up in 2020 as “Make Marco Rubio Happy,” suggesting the Florida senator had significant influence on the 45th POTUS — so much so that The New York Times in 2019 described him as the “virtual secretary of state for Latin America.”
In recent years, he took a hardline position against Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, led the Senate push for improved trade ties in the Western Hemisphere via the extension of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act and led efforts authorized by former President Trump and current President Biden to stymie financial transactions that benefited Cuban military elites and the Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua.
He understands as well that a weakened US position emboldens America’s geostrategic rivals in what is traditionally the American sphere of influence, threats that range from Russian warships engaged in war games with the Cuban military to Chinese Communist Party deals with countries that end up ceding their natural resources to Beijing.
Furthermore, he is realistic about how American neglect has created openings for America’s enemies in the region, including Iran and Hezbollah — interwoven entities that seek to benefit from American weakness both near our shores and in the Middle East.
“In many cases, we have not done enough to create alternatives to what China has done in many countries,” he said, putting it mildly during an interview this spring.
Speaking of China, Rubio’s focus on Beijing isn’t limited to its influence in America; he understands its encroaching power across the Eastern Hemisphere as President Xi Jinping and his cronies continue to exert influence at Washington’s expense.
He’s noted that “no other country has ever invested so much money so fast in undermining and overtaking the United States.”
“The Soviet Union didn’t have that money. No one else has ever done it. This is the biggest challenge we have ever faced,” he said on Fox Business Network last year, going on to blast the Biden administration for being “creatures of a failed consensus that existed for 20, 25 years after the end of the Cold War” who assumed that by embracing free trade, China would import our values.
“It didn’t work out that way,” Rubio said matter of factly.
Believing America is in a race against time with Beijing, specifically regarding democratic Taiwan, he has worked to bolster the island’s defenses, calling deterring an invasion a “top priority” of his. He has also worked in recent weeks to bolster the alliance with Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
That said, there are issues on which Rubio could be stronger — and one of them is supporting Ukraine, which is a massive American commitment that can’t be abandoned as easily as isolationists might argue.
He has argued strenuously against moving money away from quality-of-life initiatives on American military bases in favor of supporting Kyiv and voted against an omnibus aid bill for Israel Ukraine, and Taiwan this year, objecting to so-called “legislative blackmail” because the measure ignored border security.
Some have suggested he’s getting closer to Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, on this issue. But a more charitable read would be that these discrete issues merit separate legislation.
Whether in the Senate or in the State Department, a Trump administration would lean heavily on Rubio when it comes to foreign policy. There are more reasons than not to formalize the arrangement.
