As America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio could be handling foreign policy challenges across the globe. But as the Iran war drags on, the Israel-Hamas conflict hits a sizable snag and the Ukraine-Russia war rages, he appears to have ceded his role — and responsibility — in the most pressing crises vexing the United States.

Instead, Rubio has exerted his influence in the Western Hemisphere, leading diplomacy on Venezuela and Cuba, the latter of which is deeply personal to him as the son of Cuban immigrants. 

Over the past year, Rubio has waged a maximum pressure campaign on the communist island, crippling its economy with sanctions and publishing a 100-page department report outlining espionage and influence efforts that threaten U.S. national security.

Unlike with statements on Iran sanctions and actions, most of which are attributed to the State Department’s spokesperson, Rubio has attached his own name to nearly every Cuba-related department action during his tenure. And while Rubio proudly stood at the press conference podium alongside President Donald Trump after the successful military operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, he was not seen in major public appearances immediately after the joint U.S.-Israel attack on Iran. 

On most days, according to his public schedule, Rubio — who also serves as national security adviser — attends meetings and briefings at the White House, where he has Trump’s ear. But he’s not always deployed to conduct diplomacy in person on behalf of the U.S. in its most critical quagmires.  

Instead, Trump often turns to others for that. 

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner traveled to Egypt and Israel this week, meeting with Hamas and Israeli leaders in an attempt to salvage his Board of Peace’s disarmament and reconstruction plan for Gaza. Kushner, who is a private citizen and not a U.S. government employee, and special envoy Steve Witkoff have been leading the Gaza portfolio, as well as the Iran peace talks — including brokering the 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran in June that has since fallen apart.

In response to questions about Rubio’s absence on these key fronts, the State Department pointed to several other areas of Rubio’s success.

“Under Secretary Rubio, the State Department has achieved historic results, including revoking 175,000 visas, responding to national disasters at unprecedented speed, bringing a massive global coalition together to combat transnational terrorism, improving security cooperation in our hemisphere, and the Secretary’s travel[ed] around the world, including recently to the Gulf and the Philippines, to deliver results for the American people,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.

The White House noted two incidents in which Trump referenced Rubio as a key player “involved” in Iran talks, though there’s no public record of him traveling for any of the in-person negotiations on Iran.

Former State Department officials said the U.S. would be in a better position if the secretary of state — using the expertise of career State Department diplomats and regional bureaus — were tasked with leading all of America’s foreign policy challenges, rather than apparently pursuing only the ones he is personally or politically interested in. 

“I worked for half a dozen secretaries of state,” said former State Department negotiator Aaron David Miller. “None of them would ever have agreed, in the face of the gravest and greatest crisis of the Trump administration’s foreign policy presidency, to basically be sitting this one out or perceived to be M.I.A.”

Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has supported and worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations, called it “extraordinary” for special envoys tasked with such major conflicts to report to the president rather than be managed by the secretary of state. 

But while the Iran, Gaza and Ukraine-Russia conflicts would be “a very tough lift” for even the best negotiators, the problem goes beyond Rubio, who Miller said is “cherry-picking the issues that he wants to be involved in.” 

“The problem cuts to the core of the dysfunctional national security decision-making structure that this administration has created,” Miller said, also noting the episodic deployment of Vice President JD Vance on Iran. “I think it’s a testament to how dysfunctional this is that the president saw fit to deploy his best friend and his son-in-law to navigate and negotiate three of the most difficult conflicts in the international system, and the results I think are pretty predictable.”

But the State Department defended the president’s foreign policy approach — and his administration’s implementation of it.

“The incredible working and personal relationships between the members of the team is a testament to the President’s ability to manage and lead,” Pigott said in a statement, adding that “the historic results are undeniable” despite the deteriorating situations in the Middle East and Ukraine. 

Over the long term, Trump’s reliance on his handpicked emissaries instead of American diplomats will weaken the U.S. relationship with many countries, said David Schenker, former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in Trump’s first term.

“The foreign governments don’t rely on their channels with the State Department because the State Department’s out of the loop,” Schenker said. “I think it weakens, overall, the bilateral relationship. It’s less deep, so it’s at very high levels for one administration, but institutionally diminished.”

Toward the end of Trump’s first term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched every important foreign policy issue, Schenker said. 

“There was no passing of the buck — I don’t recall any issue that was outside his purview,” Schenker said.

Vedant Patel, former State Department deputy spokesperson under the Biden administration, echoed that a special envoy is not a replacement for a secretary of state having direct relationships. 

“When you’re secretary of state, everything in the foreign policy space falls on your doorstep, whether it is a pleasant thing or not,” he said. “The whole world is your responsibility.” 

The State Department rejected claims that key decisions were being made without meaningful input from experienced professionals. “Career and political officials across the Department, along with our embassies and interagency partners, are working side by side,” Pigott told MS NOW in a statement.

The lack of clarity as to just who is America’s top diplomat has international implications.

“I think when you have the public perception of the U.S. Secretary of State, essentially our foreign minister, ceding important swaths of the diplomatic agenda and important swaths of foreign policy, certainly, I’m sure that is puzzling to counterparts,” Patel said.

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