Rubio’s Acropolis speech pitches Trumpism as a return to Western roots

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a speech Wednesday at the Acropolis in Athens cast the Trump administration and its broader movement as a conscious revival of the foundational principles of Western Civilization and urged Europe to follow its lead.

His remarks came as part of a relatively short diplomatic tour that also included stops in Iceland and Portugal. Rubio’s decision to deliver the speech against the backdrop of the Acropolis was deliberate. The ancient site is perhaps the most widely known monument associated with classical Greece, which scholars have traditionally viewed as the progenitor of what is now called "the West."

"For thousands of years, the civilizations that built what stands behind me have captivated the imagination of the Western world," Rubio opened. "The things we owe to this place as Americans – and as Westerners – are actually far, far deeper. What blossomed here in this place was the Western desire to uncover all that ignorance, darkness, and distance had kept hidden from the mind of man.”

But Rubio went beyond romantic invocations of the ancient past and insisted that the modern Trump administration was working to advance a classically-influenced theory of politics. He further spelled out a tangible theory of statecraft on the world stage and encouraged European nations to adopt it themselves.

“For all their lofty ideals, the ancient Greeks were not naive," Rubio argued. "They understood that nations have interests. They understood that statecraft requires prudence and diplomacy. But they also understood that it requires the ability to wield force with prudence when diplomacy fails.”

“They understood that power requires not only having the means to defend yourself, it requires the credibility that you are willing to use it. This is the classical understanding of politics and of statecraft that the Trump administration hopes to reclaim, reclaim not just for our country, but for the whole of our civilization. We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.”

Rubio then went further to explain how to weave those ideas into the political landscape of a modern, increasingly international world, saying “[n]ational interests did not vanish in the face of international institutions” and that nations still faced threats that required them to respond. 

He stated that the path forward was to rebuild international institutions while “understanding that the purpose of these things is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that constitute them, but is to defend them, and that nations need not abandon their distinct identities in order to recognize their common interests.”

That position seems to come as a rebuke of globalism, cultural uniformity, and mass immigration on a large scale as many Western nations shift toward the political right in response to the influx of non-Western immigrants.

Ancient Greek works, including plays and epics, remain staples of education in Western countries, with the works of Homer and Sophocles among the most widely read in schools. Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, are also broadly regarded to have laid the foundation for modern political thought.

While classical works were generally present in intellectual circles through much of the Middle Ages, they enjoyed a resurgence in the 14th Century Roman (Byzantine) Empire in what is called the "Palaeologan Renaissance." That movement served as a precursor to the wider Renaissance, which accelerated as Greek texts and scholars fled to Italy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Those classical writings later influenced the Enlightenment and were crucial in shaping the American Revolution.

Rubio specifically invoked the influence of the ancient Greeks on the Founding Fathers and the country, saying that “Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government” and noted that Philadelphia, Pa., bore a Greek name. The original Philadelphia is in western Turkey.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.