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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Rubio the Inflexible Hawk

When it comes to foreign policy, Rubio has no flexibility at all.
Marco Rubio website

As I was reading Evan Osnos’ long profile of Rubio and his “political dexterity,” I was struck by this section near the end:

Hillary Clinton favors an activist American foreign policy, and Rubio mentioned to me that he was rereading “The Last Lion,” by William Manchester. He said, “It’s this book about Churchill. It’s really long. Only because I’m just so fascinated by the leadership he provided.” He went on, “Churchill was a guy who was largely ignored through much of the thirties as a warmonger, and a guy that was crying wolf, and Chamberlain was this heroic figure that was going to achieve peace in our time by diplomacy. And I think, in many cases, we’re kind of at a similar moment, where many of us, including myself, are warning about dangers that are percolating around the world and what they could turn into [bold mine-DL]. Whether it’s Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, or radical Islam.”

This is a revealing quote that shows just how predictable and ideologically hawkish Rubio is. Of course Rubio is reading a biography of Churchill, and of course he’s “so fascinated” by his leadership. While he may not be explicitly identifying himself as the Churchill of our time, he is using the same tired, uninspired rhetoric that hawks have been using for decades by invoking the 1930s and comparing that time to current events. Santorum has done something similar in the past when he ran for re-election and again when he ran for president in the last cycle. This isn’t just a hackneyed line. It shows how badly Rubio is misjudging the current state of the world.

It bears repeating that the world today is nothing like it was in the 1930s in terms of international security, and the “dangers that are percolating around the world” are all much less severe and threatening. In every generation there are hawks that fancy that they are issuing prescient warnings about growing foreign threats, but they usually end up proving that they are just easily provoked alarmists. Given what we’ve heard from Rubio just in the last few days since the Paris attacks, that describes Rubio very well. Judging from his first national television ad, that is how he wants to be known.

The odd thing about this part of the profile is that Rubio’s foreign policy is one area where he hasn’t usually displayed the same opportunism that we see in the rest of the article. No one would ever mistake Rubio for a realist or non-interventionist, and he has never tried to make people think that he was one. On these issues, Rubio appears to be a hard-line true believer, and at least since he has been on the national stage he has never hinted at being anything else. When Osnos asks him “if his instinct for intervention was out of step with a generation that is exhausted by war and confrontation,” Rubio responds sharply with a rote recitation of the importance of U.S. “leadership”:

He responded instantly: “We’re not Luxembourg. We’re the United States of America—the highest-profile, most important, most influential country in the world.” He went on, “And we may ignore problems that exist far away, but those problems don’t ignore us. America, in the world today, is the only nation capable of convening collective action.”

Between his excessive confidence in the ability of the U.S. to handle foreign problems, his enthusiasm for U.S. “leadership” for a “new American century,” and his extremely dangerous and confrontational approach to every international crisis or conflict, Rubio is showing that when it comes to foreign policy he has none of the dexterity or flexibility that is often ascribed to him.

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