The revolution began with smiles.
When Marco Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 15, his former colleagues received him with collegial deference as the media hunted elsewhere for controversy. Yet the vote that confirmed Rubio as secretary of state was noteworthy not just for its unanimity, but for its tacit rejection of decades of U.S. foreign policy.
Just listen to what Rubio told the Senate. America, he said, won the Cold War 30 years ago, but promptly succumbed to triumphalism. We sought to retain our superpower status through open immigration, free trade, and foreign intervention. The results? A border crisis, deindustrialization, endless wars, and a rising China.
“The postwar global order is not just obsolete,” Rubio said. “It is now a weapon being used against us.” Under President Trump, Rubio continued, U.S. foreign policy will prioritize the national interest. The quest for world order will be abandoned. America will secure its borders, its power, its wealth.
Rubio’s transformation from Jeb Bush’s protégé to Donald Trump’s secretary of state is one of the great political stories of our time. But his confirmation statement was not a lark. His message was a preview of what was to come.
The dramatic foreign policy reversals began with Trump’s pledges to acquire Greenland, absorb Canada, name the Gulf of America, retake the Panama Canal, and own the Gaza Strip. Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on global trade, mused over cutting the defense budget in half and stopping nuclear weapons production, and signaled his openness to a “verified nuclear peace agreement with Iran.” Trump called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator without elections,” suggested that Ukraine provoked Russia’s invasion, and bypassed Kyiv and Brussels for direct peace talks with Moscow. On February 24, the third anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, the United States voted with Russia to kill a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression. And it’s only been a month.
