Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a prospective 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said Thursday that recent events have shown that President Barack Obama’s reliance on his personality to shape foreign policy has failed.
Speaking at CPAC, Rubio said that the rise of totalitarian governments from Latin America to Asia to the Middle East is threatening the stability of the world.
“We have a president who believes that by the sheer force of his personality he could be able to shape global events,” Rubio said. “We have a president that believed that by going around the world and giving key speeches in key places, he could shape the behavior of other nations.”
He said America does not “have the luxury of seeing the world the way we hope it would be. We have to see the world the way it is.”
Rubio said that threats from Iran to Venezuela to North Korea have to be addressed before “before they grow unmanageable and threaten” America’s freedom and economy. He said that there is only one nation on earth capable of rallying free people to stand up to these regimes.
“The United Nations can’t do this,” he said. “In fact, they cannot do anything.”
Rubio asked those in the audience to imagine a world where China controls the South China Sea, North Korea could hit California with nukes, and Iran can threaten to wipe Israel off the face of the planet and threaten the east coast with nuclear weapons.
“Without American engagement, the world that I just painted to you is not just a possibility, it is a real probability,” Rubio said. “And I don’t like to make these issues of national security partisan, because it’s important that our country be united in moments like this, but we cannot ignore that the flawed foreign policy of the last few years has brought us to this stage.”