GOP Sen. Marco Rubio said Tuesday he’s concerned about National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes treating foreign policy as if it were a novel, instead of focusing on long-term strategic interests.
Responding to a topic that’s grabbed the attention of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment, Rubio told Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran he had “kinda skimmed through” David Samuels’s profile piece on Rhodes written in The New York Times, but added he was already aware of most of it, anyway.
What many observers in the foreign policy community objected to in the Samuels piece is the way Rhodes gleefully described hoodwinking members of the press into functioning as pawns, in order to forward the Obama administration’s take on the Iran deal. Jeffrey Goldberg, in particular, wrote a long email to editor Jake Silverstein at The New York Times, saying Samuels likely listed him as one of the manipulated reporters because of a prior grudge Samuels has against Goldberg.
Rubio added to the chorus of opposing voices by hinting at Rhodes’s somewhat devious approach to communicating administration priorities.
“The president wanted a deal, they did a deal, and Ben Rhodes figured out how to sell it to the American public. I’m not sure that’s the right way to make foreign policy, but that’s the way the administration approached it,” Rubio said.
Rubio also expressed consternation about Rhodes’s creative writing background taking precedence over thoughtful and strategic foreign policy.
“I’m concerned about foreign policy being written as a novel as opposed to what’s in the long-term interest of the United States,” Rubio said.
Rubio pointed to Cuba and Iran in particular as examples of foreign policy-as-novel gone awry.
“The deal with Iran and the deal with Cuba was more about an additional exhibit at the Obama presidential library than it was about some stable foreign policy that could be sustained over the long term,” Rubio added.
According to Rubio, an understanding of Persian history leads one to the conclusion that Iran will continue seeking dominance over its neighbors via development of nuclear capabilities.
“Once you reach that point, as North Korea learned, you become immune to international pressure,” Rubio said. “They can’t invade you, there’s things they can’t do to you anymore because you may hit them.”
Without a serious proposal forcing Iran to stop nuclear development, Iran will achieve full sovereignty, and the Iran deal definitively is not that proposal.
In an interview on Fox News in September, 2015, Rubio said he would immediately kill President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and increase sanctions on the regime backed up by serious military force if Iran continues to ignore warnings to halt nuclear development.
Cuba is another case where Rubio thinks the Obama administration’s foreign policy failed miserably, and while he said he did not want to be overly disrespectful towards Rhodes, he had some hard remarks to deliver.
“He’s clearly a smart, intelligent person, but for example on the issue of Cuba, when you send a speech writer to negotiate with trained intelligence officers, you usually get a bad deal.”
The audience laughed.
The deal with Cuba, as far as Rubio is concerned, dissipated any leverage the U.S. had over Cuba to “nudge” the country towards democracy.
“Instead, the Cuban regime is now seeking a way institutionalize this form of government they have and make it permanent for future generations of leaders,” Rubio said.
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