The ever-diminishing role of Marco Rubio

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Rome yesterday, looking to repair relations with both the Pope and the Italian government after their spats with President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.

It is a useful mission for a secretary of state. But it does raise a fundamental question: Why isn’t Rubio leading the diplomatic effort to end the war in Iran, resolve the stand-off between Israel and its neighbors, find a solution to the war in Ukraine, or forge a more stable engagement with China — to name just a few key issues other U.S. officials are leading in his stead?

Similarly, one would be forgiven for asking to see any evidence of a well-functioning policy process that would provide the president with different options, detail their costs and benefits, and provide coherent strategies for implementation — all of which are normally the responsibility of the national security adviser, the other hat Rubio now wears?

Indeed, few people have been better positioned to dominate U.S. foreign and national security policy than the person who currently serves as both. And yet, what is most remarkable about Rubio is the increasingly shrinking role he seems to play.

The U.S. secretary of state is the nation’s chief diplomat and foreign affairs spokesperson, responsible for carrying the U.S. flag overseas and leading diplomatic efforts to resolve conflicts, prevent new ones and advance America’s national interests.

But Rubio is largely AWOL on all these efforts.

While his predecessor, Antony Blinken, traveled to the Middle East at least once a month after the region went up in flames following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Rubio has been to Israel just three times in the past 16 months. While former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger spent weeks in the region, working to forge a settlement between Israel and its neighbors after the 1973 war, Rubio hasn’t visited in over six months.

George Shultz, who was perhaps America’s best secretary of state, once said that diplomacy is like gardening: One must water the plants and pull out the weeds. In other words, one has to go there. Yet, Rubio has so far taken just 18 trips as secretary of state, spending about 75 days on the road visiting 31 countries. By comparison, in her first 16 months in office, Hillary Clinton had taken 28 trips, spent 130 days on the road visiting over 60 countries.

When you fail to tend the garden, the jungle grows.

Indeed, the war in Ukraine, which Trump claimed he would “end in one day,” has only intensified since he took office. Israel remains at war with its neighbors as fragile ceasefires fail to halt the bombing. Meanwhile, Iran has attacked all its neighbors and closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S. and Israel’s decision to go to war.

In each of these conflicts, diplomacy has been sporadic and largely unsuccessful — and in none has Rubio played the leading role one would expect from a secretary of state. Instead, it’s been the president’s friend and golfing buddy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner who have taken the lead in negotiating a durable peace in each conflict.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, left, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff attend a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan on April 12, 2026. | Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin via AFP/Getty Images

But neither Witkoff nor Kushner has the kind of deep diplomatic experience or historical knowledge required for such negotiations. And that inexperience has shown.

“Kushkoff,” as the two are known, approach negotiations like real-estate deals, drawing up multipoint term sheets — 28 points for Ukraine, 20 for Gaza, and now 14 for Iran. But the points are often vague, open to misinterpretation and full of holes, which is why no conflict has truly been ended.

Real diplomacy needs to be conducted by real diplomats, backed by the deep knowledge and experience of an entire department. But Rubio’s State Department has been sidelined. Having been deemed irrelevant or ignored, its top diplomats have either been fired or have resigned. Morale has been decimated. Even Rubio himself has given the department short shrift, noting that he visited Foggy Bottom “almost every day.”

The bigger problem, however, is that Rubio isn’t just secretary of state — he’s also national security adviser, responsible for policy coordination and oversight. And it would be one thing if his shortcomings as the nation’s chief diplomat were because he performed his other role with great aplomb and skill. But evidence for that is thin.

One of the first steps Rubio took when he settled into the West Wing’s corner office a year ago was to fire half of the National Security Council staff. And though there was a case to be made for a leaner, more streamlined staffing structure, the White House depicted these cuts as a fight between Marco and the Deep State. The result has been a frustrated staff who, diplomats and foreign officials have said, don’t know what’s going on.

These failures have become abundantly clear in Iran. Whatever policy coordinating process existed prior to the decision to go to war or since, the outcome has been widespread chaos and confusion rather than clarity and consistency. Rubio himself has given multiple, often contradictory, explanations for the war and its aims, and he has increasingly appeared out of step with the president. On Tuesday, for example, Rubio declared the war “over,” only to see Trump threaten a resumption the next day.

The jobs of secretary of state and national security adviser are simply too big for one person to handle.

While Rubio claims that they “overlap in many cases,” these roles actually fulfill very different functions. Secretary of state is an outward-facing position. By contrast, the national security adviser is inward-facing. Combining these very different roles doesn’t ensure the two “are totally in synch,” as Rubio’s spokesman has claimed. It ensures neither job is done well.

If there was any doubt about that, Rubio’s meager record in both makes that abundantly clear.