When Marco Rubio, then a Florida senator, appeared as a potential nominee for secretary of state, many people in the human rights community were cautiously optimistic. Compared to other potential nominees, Rubio was known in Congress as a strong, if inconsistent, advocate for human rights. He knew the inner workings of U.S. human rights structures and could be counted on to speak forcefully to the government’s obligation to protect human rights, often reaching across the aisle to do so and demonstrating that rights are nonpartisan.
Fast-forward to today, and Secretary of State Rubio appears to have completely abandoned the principles that he apparently held in the Senate. Though he once proclaimed that “[t]he United States must remain adamant in the defense of human rights,” as secretary of state, Rubio rarely mentions rights—unless to impugn them as part of some so-called woke agenda. Instead, he has taken on a different slogan: “We are not here to play social worker. We are here to win.”
With so much focus on the administration’s militarized and often unlawful foreign policy—including the invasions of Venezuela and Iran and hundreds of extrajudicial killings in airstrikes at sea—it’s easy to overlook the destruction that Rubio has caused to the diplomatic system that offers alternatives. But over the past nearly 18 months, Rubio has led an all-out assault on human rights in U.S. statecraft, mostly bypassing Congress to do so.
