Where is Marco?
The Secretary of State and National Security Advisor perform very different functions and too big for one person to handle. As a result, Marco Rubio is performing neither very well.
Marco Rubio has had multiple jobs almost from the start of this administration—national archivist, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and, course, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. No person can perform all of these functions at the same time. Rubio is no exception.
He has been absent in the major negotiations of this administration — Gaza, Ukraine, the Middle East, China, and others. He has traveled less than any of his immediate predecessors as Secretary of State. And there is little evidence of an effective policy process, which is the main responsibility of the National Security Advisor, as the chaos and confusion of the US war against Iran underscores.
Rubio’s ever-diminishing role in foreign and national security policy is the subject of my latest From Across the Pond column.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Rome yesterday, looking to repair relations with both the Pope and the Italian government after their spats with President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
It is a useful mission for a secretary of state. But it does raise a fundamental question: Why isn’t Rubio leading the diplomatic effort to end the war in Iran, resolve the stand-off between Israel and its neighbors, find a solution to the war in Ukraine, or forge a more stable engagement with China — to name just a few key issues other U.S. officials are leading in his stead?
Similarly, one would be forgiven for asking to see any evidence of a well-functioning policy process that would provide the president with different options, detail their costs and benefits, and provide coherent strategies for implementation — all of which are normally the responsibility of the national security adviser, the other hat Rubio now wears?
Indeed, few people have been better positioned to dominate U.S. foreign and national security policy than the person who currently serves as both. And yet, what is most remarkable about Rubio is the increasingly shrinking role he seems to play.
Read the entire article on Politico Europe.