He Used To Be Marco Rubio

Or was this always him?

Do you remember Senator Marco Rubio, that ardent spokesman for Western values, American engagement abroad, international alliances and foreign aid? No? Fortunately, Mr. Internet forgets nothing, and we can remind ourselves of who the Secretary of State was before he yoked his political future to a gross cynic who admires nothing save power.

Before we do, however, we need to look back in order to give a decent burial to the principles for which Rubio once stood. That tradition goes by many names, but I prefer to call it “conservative internationalism,” in order to distinguish this view from other varieties of both conservatism and internationalism. In the years after World War II, when America had reached the pinnacle of world power and yet was suddenly faced with the global threat of Communism, Republicans divided into three camps on foreign policy. Isolationists like Senators Robert Taft of Ohio or former president Herbert Hoover adhered to what was known as an “island nation” doctrine, proposing that we withdraw to our boundaries in order to guard against Soviet incursion. On the other end of the spectrum, exponents of “rollback,” most notably the NYU philosopher James Burnham and William Buckley, favored taking the fight to the Russians even at the risk of a new war.

The very large group in the center, whose leading figure was perhaps John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, fully accepted George Kennan’s “containment” doctrine and the global mission mapped out by Harry Truman, including the establishment of Nato and other regional alliances. What principally distinguished the conservative internationalists from liberals like Arthur Schlesinger or Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, was their skepticism towards global bodies like the United Nations, their more ideologically-driven hostility to Communism and their greater openness to military confrontation. Dulles spoke openly of the use of strategic nuclear weapons, even boasting of his nuclear “brinksmanship” against China. Eisenhower himself blanched at such language, and managed to contain Soviet advances without risking World War III.

Rubio thought he was John Foster Dulles—but he’s roadkill, like Colin Powell

What Republicans Thought When They Were Sane

It was this tradition that nourished Ike’s vice-president Richard Nixon, who as president would champion détente with Russia and an ambitious policy of global engagement led by Henry Kissinger. The fall of the Soviet Union scrambled these familiar lines and produced a new schism. The new exponents of rollback, many of them ex-liberal “neoconservatives” like Paul Wolfowitz or Norman Podhoretz, argued that America could use its unchallenged military and economic power to remake the world in its image through aggressive democracy promotion and military force. Those who argued for restraint, like Kissinger, thought of themselves as “realists.” George W. Bush came into office as a realist, like his father, but was alchemized by the shock of 9/11 into the leading exponent of “the Freedom Agenda.” Many of the Republican foreign policy thinkers and legislators of the ensuing era had a foot in both camps.

Marco Rubio, who served in the Florida House of Representatives during Bush’s tenure and was elected to the Senate in 2010, is the post-Bush statesman par excellence, inflected through the right-wing fervor of the Cuban emigré community. He endorsed Barack Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya to prevent atrocities and criticized Obama for declining to back the rebels in Syria. At the same time, he opposed Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as a dangerous giveaway to an unappeasable rival. The young senator laid out his worldview in a 2012 speech at the quintessentially mainstream Brookings Institution. America, Rubio said, needed a “robust and muscular foreign policy” because “what happens all over the world is our business.” It was America’s destiny to defend and sustain the liberal world order that underpinned free markets as well as individual liberty. The world looked to the United States for leadership; yet we could lead only through “partnership with other like minded nations.” And leadership included not just military power but diplomacy and foreign aid, which Rubio called “a very cost-effective way, not only to export our values and our example, but to advance our security and our economic interests.”

In his 2016 presidential campaign, Rubio emphasized the need to stand up to emboldened autocracies, above all Russia, which had begun its campaign of aggression against Ukraine. As president, Rubio vowed–in an article in Foreign Affairs–he would “isolate Russia diplomatically” and squeeze it economically, while providing Kyiv weapons that Obama had refused to furnish. In the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, Rubio endorsed bills to hold Russian president Vladimir Putin accountable for war crimes and to impose severe sanctions. He introduced the “PUPPETS Act” to sanction anyone who sought to establish a Russian proxy regime in Ukraine.

Rubio was a charter member of the Ukraine steadfastness front–until April 2024, when he voted against the Biden Administration’s $95 billion aid package. He improbably attributed the decision to the breakdown of negotiations over immigration–a failure orchestrated by Donald Trump, now the all-but-certain GOP candidate for president. In September, speaking on “Meet The Press,” Rubio blamed Biden for refusing to acknowledge that Ukraine could not win the war and preparing for negotiations. Perhaps Rubio had soberly concluded that the military stalemate could not be broken; but it is at least as likely that he was sending a signal to Donald Trump–who, he said, had a better shot than Biden at achieving peace owing to his gift for deal-making. Nevertheless, Rubio said that he felt confident that, like himself, Trump wanted Ukraine “to have more leverage in that negotiation,” presumably through battlefield victories.

Rubio Makes His Peace With Lunacy

Well, apparently not. Trump has shattered the Western alliance on Ukraine and quite possibly destroyed any chance of a settlement Ukraine could live with by cozying up to Putin and making extortionate demands of Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky–all at a moment when Ukraine is suffering military reversals. Secretary of State Rubio headed talks with Russians that excluded both Zelensky and the Europeans. Trump appears to be prepared to accept an agreement that would restore American investments in Russia in exchange for accepting Russian territorial gains in Ukraine–and leaving security guarantees to Europe.

Rubio has assured European leaders that Trump will do no such thing. But does he believe it, or does he simply recognize that issuing empty reassurances to quondam allies is part of his job? Or is, perhaps, unwilling to acknowledge the role he is about to play in violating his own deepest principles? Or maybe those principles don’t run so very deep. The senator who once insisted that “what happens all over the world is our business” now observes that Ukraine is on another continent and thus does not affect “the daily lives of Americans.” Rubio once preached the virtues of the post-war order; now he has yoked himself to a president who reviews foreign territory he covets—Greenland, Gaza, Canada—are baubles to be seized.

A generation ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell had to decide whether to resign or to defend George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq, which he considered foolhardy. He took the latter course, telling himself that loyal soldiers don’t defy their Commander-in-Chief. It’s true that resigning wouldn’t have stopped Bush, but it still would have been the right thing to do. Secretary of State Rubio may soon find himself standing at the same Rubicon. Would he have the courage to resign rather than betray Ukraine as well as the foreign policy tradition to which he is heir? Don’t count on it.