President Obama’s foreign policy failures are standing in the way of “a new American century,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday.
“The primary cause of [our economic challenges] is a president who is done in three years. Our other challenges are a little more difficult. And that involves the world around us,” he said.
Rubio warned about a world in which “the Chinese get to decide who gets to ship products in the South China Sea and all the countries in that region are tributaries to them . . .where North Korea can blow up California or the west coast of the United States with a nuclear weapon… where Iran can reach the east coast of the United States and wipe Israel off the face of the earth with a nuclear attack . . . [and] where Russia continues to hold its neighbors hostage.”
“All the problems of the world,” Rubio said, “are being created by totalitarian regimes.”
“There is only one nation on earth capable of rallying the free people on earth to stand up to totalitarianism. The United Nations cannot do this. In fact they cannot do anything. . . Without American engagement the world I just described to you is not just a possibility, it is a real probablity,” Rubio said.
Rubio called for a vigorous American foreign policy, one that stands in marked contrast to those of the Obama administration. “We have a president who believes by sheer force of his personality he can control [world] events,” he said.
Such a weak approach will not work, because it is based on neither principle nor strength. “American foreign policy is deeply rooted in our values and principles … All human beings have rights given by our creator,” Rubio said.
“There is nothing moral or acceptable about a government that slaughters people in the streets… jails its political opponents… sponsors terrorism as a tool of statecraft. . . denies religious liberty,” Rubio said, singling out the totalitarian regimes in Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea.
American global leadership is good for world stability and American economic growth, Rubio argued. “America must be involved in leading the world, not dictating to it. . .If you think high taxes and [excessive] regulation are bad for the economy, so is global instability and totalitarianism.”
A change in the White House is necessary to re-establish that global leadership, Rubio stated, noting that “we have everything we need to succeed economically except leadership in the White House.”
Rubio closed by reminding his audience not to “take for granted what we have in this country. . . What we have in America is the exception, not the rule, in human history.”
“Here, truly anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything. . . That’s something worth fighting for,” Rubio concluded.
Watch Senator Rubio’s full speech: