Marco Rubio is winning the Trump era

A man from the future emerges from a glowing portal and informs you that the winner of the primary will become the Republican president who will finally bomb Iran’s nuclear program.

“Hmm,” you say, “maybe Ted Cruz.”

But there is more, says the traveler.

The same Republican president will send weapons to support Ukraine in a brutal war against Russia Vladimir Putin.

“Okay,” you say, “then we can probably cross Trump off the list.”

And finally, your visitor informs you that this president will launch a naval blockade against socialist Venezuela, with the aim of achieving a Latin American realignment that could also undermine the ally of VenezuelaCuba.

You immediately enter a new website called prediction market and bet all your savings on Marco Rubio.

The presidency in 2026 belongs to Trump, and his administration’s language is nothing like the idealistic neoconservatism that defined Rubio’s political image a decade ago.

Depending on the document or the day of the week, Trumpism can sound like Nixonian realism, pre-World War II isolationism, or simply arrogant mercantile imperialism.

But if we look at what the administration is actually doing, not just what it says, the aggressive foreign policy we might once have expected from a President Rubio is palpably present in the policies of Trump’s second term.

There is an ongoing search for peace with Russia, yes, but almost a year after Trump promised an immediate deal, the war continues with American military support.

There is more clarity between the United States and Israel than traditional neoconservatism would favor, but the military action long desired by Middle East hawks was executed by Trump.

And although the justifications for attempting regime change in Venezuela have varied—drugs! oil! Trump’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine!—we are clearly engaged in the kind of old-fashioned anti-communist action one might expect from a son of Miami as secretary of state.

By exerting this apparent influence, Rubio has somehow avoided becoming a media obsession or a key actor in the psychodrama unleashed on the right.

He has amassed formal power (adding the portfolio of national security adviser in a Kissingerian-style consolidation) without accumulating many sworn enemies.

It helps that he has officially subordinated his political ambitions, promising to support J.D. Vance if presented in 2028.

But the lack of formal presidential intentions hasn’t stopped everyone from Pete Hegseth to Susie Wilesbecome a temporary lightning rod.

Still, Rubio remains powerful and relatively aloof, not bulletproof, but at least a little Teflon.

This makes him the most interesting figure in the administration right now.

A recurring theme in the criticism of Republican politicians of the Trump era is that, by accommodating and doing moral concessionsultimately they only earn humiliation.

Rubio, without a doubt, has had to give in to your principles.

It’s hard to imagine that he enjoyed what Elon Musk did with foreign aid or enjoy the amoral style with which White House officials are expected to speak about international affairs.

But it is also very evident what he has gained by working within the limits of Trumpism:

the power to shape foreign policy in ways consonant with their pre-Trump beliefs.

Whether that power justifies the compromises is a question; Whether you are exercising it prudently or effectively is another.

I was skeptical of Rubio’s foreign policy vision in 2016, and I remain skeptical of armed interventionism.

That said, the current government’s strategy in Ukraine—negotiating hard and shifting the burden to Europe, while recognizing that Putin might not want a deal—has reasonably balanced aggressive stance and conciliatory stance.

And the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program has not produced the feared repercussions or drawn us into a war of regime change.

Venezuela is the main test right now, the place where Rubio’s historical interests are most at stake and where the administration’s arguments for a just war They are weaker.

The regime of Nicolas Maduro It is deplorable, and its peaceful fall, under economic pressure and the threat of war, would be a triumph for the Trump administration, even if the justifications are dubious.

But it is so easy to imagine a scenario in which we end up saber rattling and destroying ships suspected of transporting drugs for no purpose, or, alternatively, acting rashly and creating a Libya in Latin America, how to imagine a smooth restoration of democracy.

But it is the nature of power that its possession tests your ambitions.

And the very fact that we are testing a regime change strategy in Latin America is compelling evidence that what never materialized in the 2016 campaign—the Marco Rubio moment—may finally have arrived.