When Marco Rubio first launched his presidential campaign in 2015, the then-senator championed a tough stance on Russia and decried previous efforts by United States officials to reset and 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.
A foreign policy hawk who once called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “thug”, Rubio is now overseeing seismic shifts in the US approach to the world under President Donald Trump.
Rubio is seen as a conventional politician, with traditional conservative views. 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.
The new secretary of state, meanwhile, finds himself pushing Trump’s unconventional international agenda: opening up to Russia, taking over the Panama Canal, acquiring Greenland, and “owning” Gaza. Advertisement
As the former senator spearheads Trump’s foreign policy, who is the top US diplomat and what drives him?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, sat across from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on February 18 at a meeting in the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AP Photo]
Global stage, ambition
Analysts say Rubio is motivated by a conviction that the US should play the leading role on the world stage as well as personal ambitions that saw him seek the presidency in the 2016 elections and rise through the ranks of the Republican Party.
“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, …
