Diplomacy or personal delusions by Robert Perez

It takes more than a flag pin and a press statement to run a foreign policy. And yet, with Marco Rubio’s sudden, sharp ascension as a defining force in America’s international strategy, it feels like the United States has handed the wheel to someone who’s trying to drive global diplomacy like a local Florida campaign.

In the last several months, the cuts have been fast and merciless: diplomatic staff slashed, embassies hollowed out, entire foreign service careers dismantled in the name of "efficiency" or "security" or whatever vague justification happens to be trending that week. The U.S. diplomatic corps, once a steady hand on the tiller of global order, has become a skeleton crew in a ghost ship, steered by ideology instead of intelligence.

And behind the wheel, Marco Rubio, a man whose foreign policy decisions seem to be a cocktail of Cold War nostalgia, domestic political signaling, and inexplicable hostility toward the very idea of diplomacy.

Rubio’s foreign policy is less a doctrine and more a reflex, a twitch toward confrontation, a flinch away from nuance. There’s no room for careful statecraft when you’re waging ideological wars with Twitter threads and proxy sanctions. The world is complicated, but Rubio seems to prefer it flattened into black and white: good guys and bad guys, communists and capitalists, patriots and traitors. If only it were that simple.

Take Latin America, Rubio’s pet project and preferred stage. His approach has been to cut funding to programs that support democratic reform in countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela, while doubling down on tough talk that achieves nothing except feeding headlines back home. U.S. policy in the region has been reduced to hashtags and high-fives from right-wing exiles in Miami, leaving real people and real allies on the ground abandoned in the dark.

Or consider the baffling decisions involving diplomatic personnel abroad: senior diplomats dismissed without cause, negotiations frozen mid-sentence, experienced foreign service officers sidelined in favor of ideologues or empty chairs. It’s not just short-sighted. It’s dangerous. Diplomacy isn’t a part-time gig. It requires language, cultural fluency, and relationships built over decades, none of which seem to register as valuable in Rubio’s vision of foreign policy.

Instead, what we’re seeing is the weaponization of foreign relations as a tool for domestic politics. In his world, alliances are less about shared goals and more about shared grudges. If you’re not on Rubio’s page ideologically, you’re an adversary, even if you’re a long-time ally. He’s not shaping the world to fit American interests; he’s reshaping American interests to fit a worldview stuck in the 1980s.

What’s most jarring is the tone. Diplomacy, even at its firmest, is a language of careful words, not petty insults. It’s built on trust, compromise, and backchannel communication, not press releases designed to antagonize or alienate. Rubio’s foreign policy, if we dare to call it that, feels less like statecraft and more like a performative scolding session, an endless audition for political relevance at home dressed up as strategy abroad.

And in this new Rubio era, the message to the world is clear: Don’t expect subtlety. Don’t expect engagement. Don’t even expect consistency. Just expect to be judged, lectured, or ignored depending on the day and depending on the news cycle.

It’s hard to see the long-term benefit here. America’s global standing has long rested not just on its military or economic might, but on the depth and professionalism of its diplomacy. Rubio’s razor is cutting at that foundation. And once that’s gone, once relationships have eroded and trust has dried up, no amount of saber-rattling will rebuild what was lost.

This isn’t just a shift in policy. It’s a shift in identity. The United States used to be a country that sent envoys to solve problems. Now, under Rubio’s influence, it sends signals. And the world, understandably, is learning to stop listening.

We can call it bold. We can call it disruptive. But let’s not pretend it’s working. The great irony of Rubio’s foreign policy is that while it claims to stand strong, it leaves America more isolated, less informed, and increasingly irrelevant on the world stage.

Diplomacy is slow, yes. It’s often frustrating. But it’s also the art of peace, the bridge between conflict and catastrophe. When you cut it down in the name of showmanship or partisan purity, you don’t just weaken your enemies, you weaken yourself.

Rubio may be ushering in a new era of U.S. foreign policy. But if this is the future, it’s a brittle one. And history may not be kind to the man who mistook posturing for policy and headlines for leadership.