Cnn
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The disarray in Donald Trump’s foreign policy team reflects chaos and the uncertainty he has imposed on the world in the last three months.
The president National Security Advisor Mike Waltz Thursday and his decision to hand over the Waltz White House portfolio to Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives at a difficult time in international relations.
THE trade war that Trump ignited China damage the economy Easy out of way. The will of the administration to forge peace in Ukraine has not yet borne fruit. And the American soft power was paralyzed by Trump’s attacks on the Allies and its weakening of American aid.
But Rubio’s most demanding challenge will be at home.
And even if he does an excellent job, it is unlikely that he will be able to impose a lot of consistency on the American foreign policy. This is because the most – and perhaps only – influence – on the world role of America is Trump itself.
The president is unpredictable, volatile and determined to pursue policies that strengthen the principles of American world leadership that have been anchored since the Second World War. He makes fun of the authorities, threatens to annex the territory of the NATO allies and addresses more foreign policy as a giant real estate agreement than Statecraft. This is one of the reasons why his envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon, manages talks on Ukraine, the Middle East and Iran – a role that has Questions already raised On Rubio’s influence on foreign policy.
The interest of Trump’s approach is not to send to the world a message on which the United States is a stable and coherent power on which we can rely. This is what its voters – who joined its assertion that the world is tearing up the United States forever – wanted.
The best case for this irregular approach was carried out by the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on “this week” of ABC News, speaking of the president’s commercial escalation on China: “in game theory, this is called strategic uncertainty,” said Bessent. “So, you are not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you are going to find yourself.”
Trump reviews have another description: total chaos.
To further complicate Rubio’s position, any policy exercised by Trump’s subordinates can be exploded at any time – as its national mandate national security team discovered it. The idea that civil servants are used to the pleasure of the president have never come before with such a guarantee of impermanence. His ad hoc management was highlighted Thursday when Tammy Bruce, the spokesperson for the State Department, was informed of the new responsibilities of his boss by Kylie Atwood of CNN during a briefing.
All this means that Rubio is confronted with enormous challenges as the first civil servant to serve both secretary of state and national security advisor from Henry Kissinger – and to do so under a president whose foreign policy is an extension of his volatile personality.
However, there are signs that the former Florida senator and 2016 candidate for the appointment of the GOP established an achievable relationship with the president. While Rubio was obviously flowing on his chair during the extraordinary resident of Trump administered to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during their notorious an oval office meeting, many observers of foreign policy thought that he could be the first Big Dog in foreign policy to leave the administration.
But he is still there – and gets more responsibilities.
Until now, a key to Rubio’s success is his desire to rent to Trump almost every time he is in front of a camera. He said on several occasions that the president calls for the fire of foreign policy and that his work is to implement the wishes of his boss.
“This president inherited 30 years of foreign policy which was built around what was good for the world,” said Rubio in front of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “In essence, the decisions we have made as government, in trade, in foreign policy, were basically, is it good for the world? Is it good for the global community? And under President Trump, we do a foreign policy now – was it good for America?….
Such positioning is at home in the United States. But when Rubio puts himself on the road – in a world that is conditioned to expect American leaders, not provocations – he is inevitably confronted at annoying moments. He was, for example, asked by journalists to explain the president’s requests to make Canada become the 51st state when it was on Canadian soil.
This is a notion that would have been considered absurd and insulting by any previous modern American president. Given the traditional conservative ideals Rubio once married, it would also have been for him when he sat foreign relations and intelligence Senate committees. But Rubio was not likely to get crostways with a president who sees everything on cable television. “There is a disagreement between the position of the president and the position of the Canadian government,” said Rubio, which somehow implies that Trump’s position was legitimate and not one of the most bizarre threats in the history of the modern United States.
Rubio’s embrace of Trump’s Dogma “Make America Great Again” dismayed some of his former Senate friends, in particular the Democrats, who voted with the Republicans to confirm it as Secretary of State 99-0. But no one who watched Rubio’s speech at the National Republican Convention last year – and his embrace of the opponent who called him “Little Marco” on the 2016 campaign campaign – could have been surprised.
Rubio has real talent. As a politically followed young Republican with Cuban immigrant parents, he was once considered someone who could expand the party’s call. But the party he has prepared for half his life to lead as a Florida legislator and senator – solidly in the solid republican tradition of strong defense, support for allies, antipathy towards authoritarianism and support for human rights – no longer exists. This is why many defenders who are disappointed with Rubio in the political center believe that he has compromised his principles of power, perhaps because of his unavailable presidential ambitions.
But Rubio’s conversion seems complete. He was at the forefront of Trump’s attempts to use foreign policy to extend his own presidential powers and a key player in the actions that test the common interpretations of the rule of law. This is especially the case because he tried to stimulate Trump’s mass expulsion program.
The Secretary of State used controversial powers to have pro-Palestinian demonstrators who participated in demonstrations against the Israeli assault on Gaza following Hamas terrorist attacks in 2023. said The fact that many people involved have taken measures harmful to American foreign policy – a categorization that suggests an almost endless range to suppress discourse among resident foreigners that the government does not like. Rubio maintains Such demonstrations violate the prohibitions to students with American visas participating in political activity in favor of groups such as Hamas.
“We do not want terrorists in America,” said Rubio on “Face The Nation” of CBS in March. “I don’t know where we got it in our head that a visa is a kind of birth right. … if you violate the terms of your visit, you will leave.”
Rubio was also deeply involved In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented migrant living in Maryland who was expelled towards a notorious prison in his native Salvador despite the ordinance of a judge that he was not sent to it. He told journalists this week that he would never say if he had spoken to President Salvadoran Najib Bukele of the case, following a decision of the Supreme Court that the government must “facilitate” the return of Garcia.
“I would never tell you,” Rubio answered a journalist who asked questions about a possible return from man. “And you know who else I will never say? A judge,” added Rubio, saying that it was “because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the President of the United States and to the executive branch, not a judge.”
It is this loyalty that seems to have attached Rubio to Trump and have led to his last promotion – even if he is still considered an impostor by certain sections of the Maga movement.
“Marco Rubio, incredible, incredible Marco. When I have a problem, I call Marco. He solves it,” said the president on Thursday.
But all those who serve Trump know that his faith can be inconstant.
Rubio’s biggest work as a face of American diplomacy is therefore not to preserve world peace, defuse a risky confrontation with China or protect the Americans. It is a question of ensuring that he does not become a problem for his mercurial boss that even he cannot solve.