“When I have a problem, I call up Marco. He gets it solved,” Donald Trump boasts about his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. This week, Marco Rubio is putting that reputation to the test. He is the key man on the two major international fronts the United States is currently engaged in, and with two very different roles: in the negotiations over the war in Ukraine, he took the reins to balance out what was initially a clearly pro-Russian proposal and try to push through a peace plan acceptable to Kyiv; in the standoff with Venezuela, he is one of the driving forces behind the maximum-pressure policy against Nicolás Maduro.

It’s a situation with clear rewards. If he succeeds on both fronts, the chameleon-like head of U.S. diplomacy, who has skillfully channeled and adapted to his boss’ positions—even when they contradict the ideas he embraced during his time in the Senate—would polish his credentials with the president, a great admirer of decisive individuals. Trump has already mentioned his name, along with that of Vice President J.D. Vance, as possible successors starting in 2028. Avoiding a Russian-dictated peace plan for Ukraine would also earn him the gratitude of European partners.

But at the same time, the Cuban-American politician faces the risk of a confrontation with the MAGA movement, which opposes foreign intervention. Its members would be furious at the prospect of a prolonged war in Eastern Europe. And they fear the conflict in Venezuela could become one of the “endless conflicts” that Trump promised to avoid during his campaign.

The differing positions aren’t limited to the grassroots level. They also extend to the Republican Party and the National Security team itself at the White House. Vance—with whom Rubio maintains an excellent personal relationship—has been a strong advocate for the pro-Russian peace proposal for Ukraine. One of the Vice President’s closest allies, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll—who last week in Kyiv tried to force President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s acquiescence to the 28-point plan—was negotiating this Tuesday in Abu Dhabi with Russian and Ukrainian representatives, and will soon meet again with the Ukrainians. This Monday, Vance lashed out on social media at the Republican lawmakers who criticized that proposal, which initially envisioned Ukraine ceding territories under its control to Russia and drastically reducing its military force.

For now, Rubio has scored a victory thanks to the meeting in Geneva between a delegation he led and a Ukrainian mission backed by the Europeans. “Over the past week, the United States has made tremendous progress toward a peace agreement by bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table. There are still some delicate, but not impossible, details to work out that will require further talks between Ukraine and Russia,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on Tuesday. Trump, in turn, added during the annual turkey pardoning ceremony before Thanksgiving on Thursday: “We are very close to a deal.” The president announced that his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin.

US President Donald Trump during the turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House on the eve of Thanksgiving DayJonathan Ernst (REUTERS)

This was a very different stance from the beginning of last weekend, when the president warned that Zelenskiy would have to accept the peace plan apparently conceived after a meeting in Miami between White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Kirill Dmitriev, a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now, the proposal has been reduced to 19 points; territorial concessions have been eliminated, and the language barring Kyiv from joining NATO has been modified. The thorniest points, as Leavitt pointed out, are left for later negotiations. And the Thanksgiving ultimatum for accepting has disappeared.

Flexibility in talks

The person responsible for this shift was Rubio. The U.S. Secretary of State traveled to Geneva to lead Sunday’s talks with the Ukrainians and their European allies. His involvement introduced a new flexibility to the negotiations. The proposal on the table, as he himself described it, is “a living, breathing document” and, therefore, subject to change.

“Rubio simply understands better than many others in the current administration — none of whom are Ukraine experts and very few know anything beyond the myths about Russia — that even in the difficult situation that Ukraine is in, there is simply no way the Ukrainian government can sign the capitulation,” a senior European official told the online newspaper Politico.

Rubio, a hawk on Moscow during his time as a senator, had already intervened on other occasions to correct the pro-Russian positions of Trump and his advisors. It was after his conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the U.S. president announced the cancellation of his planned summit with Putin in Budapest. In August, he warned that the prospects for peace were “still very distant” after the August meeting in Alaska between Trump and Putin.

Tension in Venezuela

Back in Washington, and with one eye on the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, Rubio will focus this week on the other major issue in U.S. foreign policy: the situation in Venezuela, where on Monday the designation of the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign terrorist organization took effect. This designation refers to a group of high-ranking officials with ties to drug trafficking in the South American country. Washington accuses Maduro of leading this group.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine arrives in Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday for an official visit as tensions rise between Washington and CaracasKarla Ramoo (EFE)

The Secretary of State, who has always been a proponent of forcing the fall of Chavismo, has been one of the key architects of the aggressive U.S. strategy, which maintains a massive deployment of military power in international waters of the Caribbean under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking. Rubio already pressured Trump during his first term to force a regime change in favor of opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Rubio advocated for regime change in the early months of the Trump administration, initially citing the human rights situation and election fraud. Initially, this met with little success. However, after assuming leadership of the National Security Council, he presented a new argument: that Maduro is a narco-terrorist leader, indicted by the Justice Department for alleged cocaine trafficking in 2020, during the Republican’s first term.

The former Florida senator, with his hardline stance against Maduro, ousted the special envoy for Venezuela, Richard Grenell, who favored negotiations with Caracas that would open the door to Venezuelan oil for U.S. corporations. Grenell was in touch with the Chavista regime during the first months of Trump’s presidency and even traveled there as part of negotiations that resulted in the release of American prisoners and Caracas’s agreement to receive Venezuelan nationals deported from the U.S.

In recent days, while Washington maintains its standoff with Maduro and continues its military preparations, Trump has flirted with the diplomatic route as a solution. The online news outlet Axios—the same one that leaked the initial plan for Ukraine—asserts that the Republican intends to have direct talks with the Venezuelan president.

Rubio has a lot riding on what happens, whether Trump ultimately opts for some kind of military action or for dialogue. If Maduro remains in power, the Venezuelan leader could boast of having defeated the Republican administration twice, after the fiasco of the first term. And the support the former senator receives among Latin American exiles, especially in Florida, could suffer a severe blow. But if the Chavista leader falls, the South American country could find itself in an even more dangerous situation of instability.

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