Politico reported on the declining influence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio

The role of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Washington's foreign policy track is rapidly decreasing. This was announced on May 8 by former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder in an article for the Politico newspaper.

"The US Secretary of State is the country's top diplomat and foreign policy representative <...> Rubio practically does not participate in all these events," Daalder writes.

The author of the article recalls that Rubio flew to Rome the day before to establish relations with Pope Leo XIV and the Italian government after their disagreements with US President Donald Trump. Daalder appreciated the visit of the United States Secretary of State, but at the same time wondered why Rubio does not participate in diplomatic tracks on Iran, Ukraine and China.

The former ambassador to NATO also compared the activities in the foreign policy areas of Rubio and his predecessor Anthony Blinken. Daalder recalls that Blinken traveled to the Middle East at least once a month after the October 7 attacks in Israel, "while Rubio has visited Israel only three times in the last 16 months."

The author also spoke about the role of the US president's special representatives for the Middle East and Ukraine, Steven Witkoff, and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Daalder noted that they "took the lead in negotiations" instead of Rubio.

However, the analyst still believes that neither Witkoff nor Kushner "have the deep diplomatic experience or historical knowledge" necessary for such negotiations. He believes that for deeper and more thorough work to bring peace closer to both conflicts, it is necessary to involve real diplomats who rely on deep knowledge and experience that Trump's envoys do not have.

At the same time, the author of the article noted Rubio's main problem as US Secretary of State. Daalder recalled that one of Rubio's first decisions in office was to dismiss half of the staff of the National Security Council, of which he is also chairman. And although at that time these reductions were explained by the desire to optimize the department and make it more compact, this decision had a negative impact on the solution of the Iranian issue.

"Whatever the process of policy coordination was before or after the decision to start the war, the result was widespread chaos and confusion, rather than clarity and consistency. Rubio himself gave numerous, often contradictory, explanations of the war and its goals, and increasingly it seemed that he disagreed with the president," Daalder writes.

The analyst stressed that the positions of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser are too difficult for one person to perform and added that if these roles are not distributed among different people, "none of these jobs will be performed well."

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