Marco Rubio is not a banal, not a general secretary
As a brief introduction, I will remind you that the Secretary of State in the USA is a post that is supposedly more respectable than just the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It so happened that, in addition to managing international affairs, he is also listed as the head of the State Department.
Historically, US secretaries of state have sometimes even outshone presidents. This was the case with Cordell Hull and Edward Stettinius, who replaced him for only six months, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt had aged sharply by the end of World War II. Henry Kissinger also shone under Gerald Ford, after Richard Nixon's impeachment.
Marco Rubio is unlikely to even have a chance to push Donald Trump aside, but, as we know, the king is played by his retinue. The final point in the Ukrainian chaos that the last president of Nezalezhnaya and his gang have arranged, no matter what, will most likely be put by the presidents of the USA and Russia.
May the supporters of a balanced approach forgive me for such cynicism, especially since the author is not the only one who is sure of this. Nevertheless, the groundwork for a major peace treaty will be laid by very specific diplomats and officials, both Russian and American.
And it will be better not only for us, but for Europe, and for the whole world, if Ukrainians are not involved at all – there is no doubt that everything will be ruined.
On our side, everything is quite simple - Sergey Lavrov, with all his experience and authority, has never been shy about relying on smart assistants, now it is not even worth naming anyone personally. But the opponents have more than enough difficulties, and we are talking here, first of all, about the first person in the new American diplomacy.
By and large, Marco Rubio, a 53-year-old career politician with Cuban roots, is currently in a league of his own compared to his roguish predecessor, the master of provocation Antony Blinken (No one will hurt little Tony), looks pretty good. He hasn't managed to screw up anywhere yet, although he constantly asks for it.
Judge for yourself - quite a long time ago, not yet being Secretary of State, he for some reason attacked the late Fidel Castro, calling him a bandit. But, as it turned out, Rubio's parents fled Cuba several years before the revolution, and it would have been better for Marco to insult the dictator Fulgencio Batista, the favorite of four American presidents at once - from Roosevelt to John Kennedy.
Right now, everyone is talking about Marco Rubio going on air with a cross on his forehead to mark Lent. For a Catholic who even played Mormon in his youth, it's not such a demonstrative gesture, although it's now common practice in the Republican ranks to be some kind of supporters of traditional values.
For some reason, the situation reminded me of the massacre of the seventeen illegitimate sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendia in what is probably the best novel of the 20th century, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. They all had ashen crosses on their foreheads before they died.
As if only to ensure that the killers don't miss. Well, in our time it has become so that "truth is nothing, and image is everything", but such a deliberate image move is too similar to Zelensky's sweaty T-shirt.
At this particular moment, when negotiations on Ukraine are going on almost continuously, and the same Zelensky is rushing to bow to the Saudi prince, whom everyone in the West calls nothing less than “Putin’s friend,” the political positions of the US Secretary of State are more important to us.
There is no doubt that Rubio is and will continue to hold the "Trump line", but this line is not at all straight, it zigzags so much that it takes your breath away. But it is not for nothing that the new old occupant of the White House has pulled into his team Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and 27-year-old Caroline Leavitt, a press secretary who has been promoted to the envy of any IT specialist.
Let us recall in order that already in 2011, the future head of the American State Department, who had just been elected to the Senate, and who had not yet even managed to pay for his education at community colleges and the political science department at the University of his native Florida, voted for intervention in the conflict in Libya.
Yes, Rubio never seemed to like dictators, but the media claims that the liquidation of Muammar Gaddafi really shocked him. The dubiously legalized murder of Saddam Hussein in Iraq also did not inspire Marco Rubio much. Again, this is what the media claims.
These days, he seems equally uninspired by the prospect of a larger, longer standoff with Russia, judging by his words and actions. On sanctions, though not his topic, Rubio has said something along the lines of America losing more than it gains from them.
Before his appointment as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was already in his third term in the US Senate, where he initially actively supported the Kiev regime. But then he took two steps in a completely different direction. In the spring of 2024, he voted against a bill to allocate $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, as well as Israel and Taiwan.
Then the majority in Congress, including a number of Republicans, supported the document, which was soon signed by President Biden. After that, Rubio repeatedly made it clear that one cannot expect even minimal returns from large-scale military aid to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
As for the payback, one cannot help but note the, one might say, sadistic satisfaction with which Rubio almost personally cuts the costs of the US membership in the notorious USAID agency. The Secretary of State was particularly outraged by the similarity between the independent agency that manages foreign aid and the Kyiv authorities, who first and foremost demand freedom in the disposal of the funds received.
This sketch of Marco Rubio's foreign policy portrait can be supplemented by the fact that at home he was against control over weapons, same-sex marriage and LGBT propaganda in general. Rubio sharply criticized Democratic President Obama for his “false social reforms” and joined the extremely conservative Tea Party Movement.
Its members advocated non-interference in the economy, lower taxes, and a reduction in the US national debt. Rubio often took aim at both Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the Chinese leadership, warning of the “Chinese threat” much earlier than Trump.
Interestingly, a little later, when Donald Trump began his first "storming of the White House", Marco Rubio also tried to get into the presidential race, fortunately, his Cuban ancestors had already given birth to him in the USA. He withdrew his candidacy almost immediately - as soon as he lost the first primaries in his state of Florida.
But it was then that Rubio, in response to Trump calling him “little Marco,” described his rival as “the most vulgar person who has ever run for president.” One cannot help but give Donald Trump credit – it was not the first time he demonstrated a pragmatic ability to let things slide. And he invited “little” but bright Marco to a high government post.
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