Marco Rubio Has Made It to the Top

(Bloomberg Opinion) — At this early point in Donald Trump’s second term as president, Marco Rubio is riding higher than many predicted. Yet he appears simultaneously to be getting weaker and hollower by the day. That raises two questions. First, what is Rubio thinking? Second, who, if anybody, actually runs the engine rooms of American diplomacy and statecraft on behalf of the president?

When Trump picked the then-senator, a former rival for the Republican nomination in 2016, for secretary of state, Washington’s foreign-policy wonks assumed that Rubio would be among the first to be pushed out of the administration. Too stark were the differences in the two men’s worldviews — Trump’s transactional autocrats-come-hither, allies-be-damned nihilism versus the hawkish and often moralistic notions about American exceptionalism and leadership that Rubio used to hold. It did not necessarily help that Rubio, unlike Trump’s other nominees, was almost overqualified in his subject matter; Trump doesn’t like smart alecks in the room.

Instead, the first senior member of the administration to be demoted (via a transfer to the relative exile of the United Nations in New York) was National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. The one most at risk of being next is Pete Hegseth, the ever-feckless and chaos-prone defense secretary.

Rubio, by contrast, has not only held on to the State Department but added, at least temporarily, Waltz’s portfolio overseeing the National Security Council. The only other person to have both jobs synchronously was Henry Kissinger. Rubio also runs the skeletal remains of the US Agency for International Development (after overseeing its demolition, an act of geostrategic vandalism which the old Rubio would have vituperated). For good measure, he also heads the National Archives and Records Administration (although I doubt he’s doing much archiving).

The main secret to his success so far is his willingness to abandon all pride and principle in toadying up to Trump. In Saturday Night Live’s exegesis, the president expects Rubio to be his “good little Marco” and rewards him by anointing him GOAT — “the scapegoat, but it’s still a type of goat.”

And so the man who as senator railed against Moscow and stood with Kyiv nowadays sinks dutifully into an Oval Office sofa while Trump excoriates the Ukrainian president on live television. The formerly pro-migrant son of Cuban exiles is now a MAGA warrior defending the southern border against the invading hordes. The scholar of international relations who used to appreciate soft power these days gleefully vows “to aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students at US universities.

Rubio is just as zealous in gutting the bureaucracies which he’s running, but which MAGA considers parts of the deep state. Having dismantled USAID, he has also alienated many career diplomats in the foreign service, whether in the name of cost-cutting, anti-DEI reform or labor relations. Soon after taking over as National Security Advisor, he halved the council by firing about a hundred people, letting valuable expertise about the Middle East and other hotspots walk out the door.

All of this rhymes with Trump’s message and style, which Rubio has made his own. Whereas Kissinger saw the purpose of the National Security Council as giving the president recommendations, and successors such as Brent Scowcroft defined it as offering not recommendations but options, Rubio understands it to be affirming the president’s whims.

Staffing at both State and the Council now depends relatively less on expertise and more on fealty to POTUS. (In the worst case, as rumor has it, Rubio may eventually hand the NSC over to Stephen Miller, a Trump firebrand with no notable qualifications for the role.) Increasingly, these aren’t the best and the brightest but the rest and the lightest.

Above all this flux hovers another paradox: Rubio, despite all his titles, is visibly not America’s top diplomat. That would be Steve Witkoff, a real-estate tycoon whom Trump has made special envoy for all sorts of overseas crises. It is Witkoff, not Rubio, who has led negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, with Iran over its nuclear program and with Israel and Hamas over Gaza. As John Bolton, one of the four National Security Advisors in Trump’s first term, points out, not only does Witkoff have “no evident experience” in any of these matters, but “his connection to Secretary of State Marco Rubio is unclear.”

Witkoff, moreover, is just one of several envoys poaching Rubio’s portfolio, with others holding nebulous remits ranging from Venezuela to the Middle East and Britain. The ranking members of the foreign-policy committees in the House and Senate have counted “at least six” such special appointees and written to Rubio demanding “clarification” of who does what. Trump has also installed cronies as ambassadors (where foreign missions have ambassadors at all) and may listen to them more than to his secretary of state. To the extent that trade policy is a tool of national security, Rubio has no say at all.

Marco Rubio

In this light, Rubio’s early-term victories look empty, if not Pyrrhic. If his calculus in entering the administration was to position himself to run for president after Trump, his plan could backfire. First, people will notice that Rubio now is nothing like Rubio then, and voters don’t like overtly opportunistic turncoats. Second, he’s unlikely to keep doing a good job. A secretary of state should be jetting all over the world, visiting consulates, capitals and conflicts; a national security advisor should be planted near the situation room or on Air Force One, briefing the president. A secretary should run the department first led by Thomas Jefferson; an NSA must bang heads to coordinate among all relevant agencies.

For now, Rubio may just be going with the flow, shifting with the caprice of his boss. That too is a skill, one that has made the careers of many a diplomat — but also ended many more.

For Americans and people anywhere, Rubio’s career prospects should hardly be the biggest concern. That would instead be the question of who talks geopolitical, strategic, military and diplomatic sense to a president who thinks he needs no advice, even as he holds the dice for war and peace in many places. The most frightening possibility, if Rubio can’t or won’t play that role, is that nobody does.