What does Donald Trump's foreign policy chief Marco Rubio stand for?

Marco Rubio was called “little Marco” and a “choke artist” by his Republican primary rival Donald Trump in 2016, but the Florida senator finally hit back on the debate stage in Houston. Trump was a fraud who would be “selling watches in Manhattan” if he hadn't inherited real estate, Rubio charged.

Less than a month later, Rubio's presidential bid ended. The bitterness from the bare-knuckle brawl lingered.

But last month, within weeks of securing a return to the White House, Trump tapped his former adversary for one of the top positions in his incoming presidential administration: secretary of state.

The about-face is so disturbing that even foreign allies have expressed surprise — and some relief. A known quantity as Rubio it contrasts with the president-elect's more questionable national security choices, such as former Fox defense commentator Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee for director of national intelligence who has been criticized for her pro-Russia stances.

“Frankly, some of Trump's nominations made our jaws drop – but not Rubio's,” said a senior official from the NATO country. “Rubio has strong foreign policy experience and understands the added value of strong alliances.”

He will need experience. Trump and his foreign policy team will inherit a difficult to-do list from outgoing US President Joe Biden, including the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the potential for more unrest in Syria. Geopolitical friction with China in the Asia-Pacific and trade friction even with allies like Canada, Mexico and the EU will inevitably find their way onto Rubio's docket.

Rubio, a veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the top Republican on its Intelligence Committee, is best known on Capitol Hill for his hawkishness about China. He was one of the first and loudest voices to warn of the security threat posed by President Xi Jinping's aggressiveness on the world stage.

While endeared to some of Trump's inner circle, his more conventional views on national security have put him at odds with the Maga wing of the GOP. That includes Donald Trump Jr., who has publicly argued against his father choosing Rubio as a running mate because of his “establishment.”

Trump Jr also promoted his friend and Mag ally Richard Grenell to the top diplomatic post. Grenell was instead given the vague role of “envoy for special missions”.

Despite anger in some Mago quarters, the selection of Rubio and Congressman Mike Waltz as national security adviser reassured many allies.

“They are clearly right-wing but good thinkers,” said a European diplomat. “They've made statements that I wouldn't necessarily agree with, but they're not outside the parameters of normal policymaking options.” They are for alliances and NATO.”

Both foreign diplomats and Washington's foreign policy establishment are wondering how influential Rubio and Waltz will be and how they will fare with other more unorthodox or radical people like Hegseth, Gabbard or Sebastian Gorka, the deputy national security adviser who was criticized as Islamophobic.

A senior official from a NATO country tempered his optimism about Rubio, saying, “A lot will depend on who his representatives are and how strong his position is in relation to the National Security Council.”

“There are a lot of moving pieces and I'm not sure people know their roles right now. It's going to take some time to sort out, and it's going to be very messy,” said Aaron David Miller, who has advised several Republican and Democratic secretaries of state and is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Rubio was born in Miami, but spent part of his childhood in Las Vegas, where his father was a bartender at a casino and his mother was a hotel housekeeper. Later, his mother worked in a factory and also took care of her four children full-time. He briefly played American football at Tarkio College in Missouri, but later transferred to a community college and then the University of Florida, where he graduated in 1993 with a degree in political science.

The son of Cuban immigrants, who was first elected to the Senate in 2011 before launching an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2016, Rubio is increasingly skeptical of US entanglements overseas.

“We are entering an era of pragmatic foreign policy in which the world is changing rapidly. Adversaries are coming together in North Korea, Iran, China, Russia. They are coordinating more and more,” he said in an interview with CNN the day after the election. “It's going to require us to be very pragmatic and wise and how we invest overseas and what we do and how we approach things.”

His hawkish relationship with China was a recurring theme.

In the Senate, Rubio cited Beijing's persecution of Uighurs in Xinjiang, a crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and pressure on Taiwan. In 2020, China imposed sanctions on Rubio, among other US officials, over his “outrageous” record in Hong Kong. During his time in Congress, he wrote two reports on China's threat to America's economy and technological power.

Rubio was seen as a neoconservative when he sought the presidential nomination in 2016, calling the US an “indispensable superpower”. Two days after Trump's re-election, however, Rubio spoke instead about the US's “limited resources.”

“There are really bad things happening in the world. But we can't be involved in all of them. We have to choose the things that are most important to America and our security,” he said on November 7 in an interview with the Catholic channel EWTN.

But it is reassuring for some Democrats and foreign diplomats that he is not advocating a retreat. “We must be in touch with the world,” he wrote in his 2023 book Decades of decadenceand added that the American temptation to withdraw from the world stage while maintaining its security “is foolish.”

He sees a role for the US in Europe, but like Trump, he wants Europe to take more care of its own defense.

“While America remains engaged in Europe, we will need our European allies to step up to the plate and shoulder much of this burden,” he wrote. Decades of decadencean exploration of what he describes as the years of American decline.

Rubio is “someone who wants to have good relations with our allies and the world,” said Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Rubio was initially a strong supporter of Ukraine's fight against a large-scale Russian invasion, but earlier this year he voted against additional funding for Kyiv, calling the conflict a “stalemate.”

“We I want to see an end to this conflictand it will require very difficult decisions,” he said.

But like Trump, Rubio remains a hawk on Iran, seeing it as a source of instability in the Middle East. A staunch supporter of Israel, he wants the US ally to “destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on”, blaming the group for the huge number of casualties in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its offensive.