WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not been shy about his desire to see the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Infamously, the former Florida senator even posted a series of photos of slain ousted leaders, including bloody former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in 2019 amid heightened tensions between the US and Maduro’s regime.
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But Rubio’s vision of a tough approach to Latin America and a years-long pressure campaign against leftist leaders only came to fruition in the second administration of US President Donald Trump, culminating on Saturday with the illegal abduction of Venezuela’s longtime leader Maduro.
Experts say Mr. Rubio relies on his ability to exploit the overlapping interests of competing actors within the Trump administration to achieve this, even though his broader ideological goals, including the overthrow of Cuba’s communist government, are likely to remain constrained by the administration’s competing ambitions.
“It took a lot of political skill on his part to ignore other voices in the administration and elsewhere who were saying, ‘This is not our conflict. This is not what we stand for. This is going to shake our foundations,'” Alejandro Velasco, an associate professor of history at New York University, told Al Jazeera.
These topics included U.S. President Donald Trump’s interest in opening up Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s desire for a more punitive military approach abroad, and adviser Stephen Miller’s obsession with immigration and mass deportations.
“In this way, Mr. Rubio was able to coordinate quite diverse agendas that were not completely competing, all with a focus on Venezuela as a way to advance specific objectives,” Velasco said.
“America First” hawk
Rubio, a traditionalist hawk who has regularly supported U.S. military intervention in the name of spreading Western democracy and human rights abroad, initially appeared unfit to be President Trump’s top diplomat for a second term.
His selection comes after an election period defined by President Trump’s vows to end foreign wars, avoid U.S.-backed regime change and pursue a broader “America First” axis.
But the actual shape of President Trump’s foreign policy bears little resemblance to that vision, with the administration adopting so-called “peace through strength” principles, which observers say has widened the scope for military adventurism. So far, the Trump administration has launched bombing campaigns against Yemen and Iran, attacked militant groups in Nigeria and Somalia, and attacked suspected drug-smuggling ships in the Caribbean.
The Trump 2.0 approach aligns more closely with Rubio’s vision for America’s role abroad, having long supported maximum pressure sanctions campaigns and various forms of American intervention to topple governments.
The U.S. Secretary of State’s personal ideology traces back to his roots in South Florida, where his family settled in the 1960s after leaving Cuba three years earlier under Fidel Castro’s regime, which Velasco described as a “virulently anti-communist” political environment.
“I think for him it started with the issue of Cubans in places like Florida finally realizing their hopes and dreams of returning to their homeland under a capitalist government,” Velasco explained.
“Then we’ve moved on to what this means more hemispherically: a much larger change that will not only increase, but actually solidify, U.S. hegemony in the region as we head into the 21st century.”
“The vacuum was one he filled.”
The two struck up a pragmatic working relationship after running against Trump in the 2016 presidential election, with the future president deriding his opponent as “Little Marco” and Rubio deriding Trump as a “fraud.”
Mr. Rubio ultimately endorsed Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 vote, helping him win Florida. During Trump’s first term, Rubio was considered the president’s “shadow secretary” for Latin America, an unusual role that ultimately influenced Trump’s confirmation of Maduro’s opponent, Juan Guaido, as interim president.
Analysts say Rubio’s approach to Venezuela has always been aimed directly at undermining economic aid to Cuba, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the island’s 67-year-old communist government. After Maduro’s abduction on Saturday, Rubio quickly pivoted to the island nation, telling reporters: “If I lived in Havana and was part of the government, I would be worried.”
Still, in the early months of President Trump’s second term, Mr. Rubio appeared largely sidelined, with the president instead favoring close friends and family members to spearhead major negotiations on ceasefires in Gaza and Ukraine.
During this time, Rubio was slowly building up a sizeable portfolio. In addition to serving as secretary of state, Rubio also became acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which President Trump disbanded, and acting archivist of the U.S. National Archives. Most notably, he became Acting Secretary of National Security, becoming the first top US diplomat since Henry Kissinger to also hold an influential White House role.
Mr. Rubio ended up in a power vacuum in the White House, said Adam Isacson, director of the defense oversight office at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
“Mr. Rubio is someone who understands Washington better than the Grenells and Witkoffs of the world,” Isakson told Al Jazeera, referring to Trump’s special envoys Richard Grenell and Steve Witkoff.
“At the same time, other big players in the White House like Stephen Miller and (Office of Management and Budget Director) Russ Vought weren’t as interested in foreign policy, so he was the one to fill that void,” he said.
Rubio, on the other hand, regularly pivoted to stay in President Trump’s good graces, demonstrating his ability as an “ideological weather vane,” Isacson said. The National Security Strategy released by the White House in December exemplifies that approach.
The document, drafted by the national security adviser with final approval from the president, contained little harsh language toward Russia, despite Rubio’s previous hardline stance on the Ukraine war. Despite Rubio’s long-standing support for the system, he supported watering down U.S. foreign aid. There were few words about the human rights that Rubio used to portray himself as a champion early in his career.
But it included a “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which is consistent with Mr. Rubio’s worldview in seeking to restore America’s “superiority” over the Western Hemisphere.
Pyrrhic victory?
Indeed, the overthrow of Maduro’s government has so far been a partial, if not dramatic, victory for Rubio, and far from the comprehensive change he has long championed.
At a press conference shortly after Maduro’s abduction, President Trump gushed about his support for exiled opposition leader Maria Colina Machado, who is loyal to Rubio’s vision for the future of Venezuela. Several news agencies later reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had determined that installing a rebel figure would cause widespread chaos in the country.
Mr. Rubio has so far been a key figure in negotiations with Mr. Maduro’s former vice president and successor, Delcy Rodriguez. Delcy Rodriguez is an avid supporter of the Chavismo movement founded by Hugo Chavez, which Rubio has long denounced. President Trump has emphasized working with the government to open the oil industry to the United States, and the prospects for an election remain remote.
The Secretary of State has no official role in relation to Venezuela, but some US media outlets have given him the less-than-honest title of “Viceroy of Venezuela.”
Mr. Rubio is tasked with promoting the administration’s often-contradictory message on news programs, retracting President Trump’s claims that the United States “runs” the South American country, while promoting the administration’s often contradictory message that Mr. Maduro’s abduction was an act of law enforcement, not regime change, an act of war, or the acquisition of the country’s oil.
“He appears to be completely lying,” Lee Schlenker, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible States, told Al Jazeera.
“Even he doesn’t seem to believe a lot of the rhetorical and discursive pretexts that are being developed around things like drugs, narco-terrorism, law enforcement-only operations, enforcement of Justice Department indictments,” he said.
Having to work with Rodriguez and reportedly Venezuela’s security czar and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello “has thrown cold water on Rubio’s widespread illusions,” Schlenker added, noting that Rubio’s end goal remains “the end of the Chavismo project.”
Mr. Rubio is also likely to face further reality testing over his anticipated efforts to overthrow what he is likely to claim is a weakened Cuba.
The island, which lacks the economic resources of Venezuela and is not known for drug trafficking, is seen as far less attractive to President Trump and many of his allies.
“Compared to Venezuela, there are many reasons why President Trump is not interested in attacking Cuba,” Schlenker said.
