That’s seems to be the motto at the Gray Lady these days, judging from a recent column by Tufts Professor Daniel Drezner, The Evolution of Marco Rubio, dispassionately describing the transformation of a standard-issue Republican hawk, Florida Sen. Mario Rubio, now “tabbed” to be Trump’s secretary of state, into a standard-issue MAGA clone, with a special interest in mindlessly harassing “evil” left-wing Latin American regimes, entirely for domestic political profit rather than actually contributing to constructive change in those countries.
Now, it’s true that Dan wrote his piece before Donald Trump repeated, now as president elect, his assertion that the members of the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol that he commanded should be sent to prison, but, even so, Dan’s take, which, Dan tells us, the Times solicited, strikes me as excessively “bland”—even “Bezosesque”, one might say.
Not too long ago, Professor Dan, whom I have subjected to a near unending succession of alternating praise and ridicule, told us quite bluntly, in a piece titled No One Should Kid Themselves About Trump's Second-Term Foreign Policy, that Donald Trump was, well, a monster, a take with which I fully agree. But now Dan gives us a long take on a dude who will undoubtedly be Trump’s soulless minion on all things foreign that displays all the moral content and passion of a large slice of Chocolate Decadence chocolate cake with two scoops of Chocolate Decadence chocolate ice cream, washed down with a “forty” of Olde English. For example, Dan tells us
Mr. Rubio’s own hawkishness will mesh well with the MAGA view on Latin America; expect to see lots of American force used in that region to combat drug cartels and other malign actors.
So, “gunboat diplomacy” redux, eh? Sounds like fun! After all, when the U.S. intervened in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Libya, that went well, didn’t it? Why not have some fun closer to home?
Dan blogged about his piece for the Times at his own substack blog, “Drezner’s World”, letting us in on a few secrets—telling us, among other things, “Also, for those who care, the Times approached me about writing this and not vice versa.” I guess they knew their man! But I suggest that, if you really want to “understand” Marco, you’d be better off reading Daniel Larison (the “good Dan”), over at his estimable blog “Eunomia”, particularly his recent post Rubio Is Bad News for the U.S. and Latin America.
Afterwords
I confess that I was not altogether taken with either Dr. Drezner’s piece for the Times or his own blog post, replying testily to the latter as follows:
Gee, Professor Drezner, I never figured you for as a devotee of the Jeff Bezos/Thumper the Rabbit school of opinion writing—viz., “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” And you’re not even writing for the Washington Post!
I’m sorry, but reading your take on Sen. Rubio is the intellectual equivalent of drinking a glass of room-temperature buttermilk that’s been standing outside the refrigerator for a couple of hours, though I guess without all the calories. In the old days when you wrote a column, well, sometimes you’d hit the nail on the head, sometimes you’d miss it with a loud thump, but here you just gave it a teeney-tiny tap!
According to you, “Mr. Rubio’s own hawkishness will mesh well with the MAGA view on Latin America; expect to see lots of American force used in that region to combat drug cartels and other malign actors.” Hey, deploying American combat troops in Mexico and all points south! That sounds like a lot of fun! Or doesn’t it? Do you have an opinion here, Dr. Drezner?
Also “humorous” that you can write an entire column about foreign affairs without mentioning Israel, much less Gaza. I’ll go way out on a limb and say that Rubio is, like Joe Biden, an aggressive supporter of that international war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to the pressure from AIPAC and other blindly pro-Israel organizations. Marco is also, I would say, a willing captive of the Cuba Lobby, a political gang that presses the U.S. government to subject leftist regimes in Latin America to endless harassment, not to change those regimes for the better but simply to maintain itself as a “playa” in U.S. politics. Is it a good idea for American foreign policy to be driven by the interests of domestic pressure groups rather than the interests of the American people?
Now, you may agree with these characterizations, or you may disagree. But it would be nice to know which, instead of suffering through the scholarly pablum that you supplied.
The good professor responded to this rant as follows: “So you're saying you didn't like it....” Quite the cutup, that Doctor D!
Afterwords II: Looks like neocons gonna be smiling for a while
I can’t deny it. The collapse of long-time Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad makes the United States and Israel look like big winners in the Middle East, with Iran and Russia not so much. There are all kinds of ways that this can go sideways, but unless and until it does, the hard-nosed dudes have got their swagger back.
