Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not been shy about his desire to see the toppling of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n Infamously, the former Florida senator even posted a series of photos of slain deposed leaders, including a bloodied former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, as tensions with the US and Maduro\u2019s government spiked in 2019.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But it was not until the second administration of US President Donald Trump that Rubio\u2019s vision of a hardline approach to Latin America and his longtime pressure campaign against leftist leaders was realised \u2013 culminating on Saturday with the illegal abduction of longtime Venezuelan leader Maduro.<\/p>\n Experts say Rubio has relied on an ability to capitalise on the overlapping interests of competing actors within the Trump administration to achieve this, even as his broader ideological goals, including the ousting of Cuba\u2019s communist government, will likely remain constrained by the administration\u2019s competing ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took a tremendous amount of political skill on his part to marginalise other voices in the administration and elsewhere who were saying: \u2018This is not our conflict. This is not what we stand for. This is going to upset our base,’\u201d Alejandro Velasco, an associate professor of history at New York University, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Those agendas included Trump\u2019s preoccupation with opening Venezuela\u2019s nationalised oil industry, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth\u2019s desire for a more pugilistic military approach abroad, and adviser Stephen Miller\u2019s fixation on migration and mass deportation.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s the way that Rubio was able to bring into line not quite competing, but really divergent agendas, all of them to focus on Venezuela as a way to advance a particular end,\u201d Velasco said.<\/p>\n A traditionalist hawk who has regularly supported US military intervention in the name of spreading Western democracy and human rights abroad, Rubio initially appeared to be an awkward fit to be Trump\u2019s top diplomat in his second term.<\/p>\n His selection followed a campaign season defined by Trump\u2019s vow to end foreign wars, eschew US-backed regime change, and pursue a wider \u201cAmerica First\u201d pivot.<\/p>\n But the actual shape of Trump\u2019s foreign policy has borne little resemblance to that vision, with the administration adopting a so-called \u201cPeace Through Strength\u201d doctrine that observers say has resulted in more room for military adventurism. That has, to date, seen the Trump administration launch bombing campaigns against Yemen and Iran, strike armed groups in Nigeria and Somalia, and attack alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n The approach of Trump 2.0 has more closely aligned with Rubio\u2019s vision of Washington\u2019s role abroad, which has long supported maximum-pressure sanctions campaigns and various forms of US intervention to topple governments.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The US secretary of state\u2019s personal ideology traces to his South Florida roots, where his family settled in the 1960s after leaving Cuba three years before the rise of Fidel Castro, in what Velasco described as an \u201cacerbically anti-communist\u201d political environment.<\/p>\n \u201cI think for him, it started as a question of finally making real the hopes and dreams of Cubans in Florida and elsewhere to return to their homeland under a capitalist government,\u201d Velasco explained.<\/p>\n \u201cIt went from that to what this could represent, if we think about it more hemispherically \u2013 a bigger shift that would not only increase, but in fact ensure, US hegemony in the region for the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n After tangling with Trump in the 2016 presidential election, in which the future president deridingly dubbed his opponent \u201cLittle Marco\u201d while Rubio decried him as a \u201ccon man\u201d, the pair forged a pragmatic working relationship.<\/p>\n Rubio eventually endorsed Trump ahead of the 2016 vote, helping to deliver Florida. In Trump\u2019s first term, Rubio came to be seen as the president\u2019s \u201cshadow secretary\u201d on Latin America, an atypical role that saw the lawmaker influence Trump\u2019s eventual recognition of Juan Guaido as interim president in opposition to Maduro.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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A hawk in \u2018America First\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Vacuum was his to fill\u2019<\/h2>\n
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