Over the weekend, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) penned an op-ed for Nikkei Asia, where he claimed that “ideology must not get in the way of coalition building.” Sen. Rubio argues that the United States needs to make changes to address Beijing concerns.
Rubio is both the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. As such, the Florida lawmaker has written about the United States’ relationship with China, emphasizing political concerns in Beijing and Taiwan.
Regarding the tension between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, Rubio says that we need to draw inspiration from the past while not allowing ourselves to think we’re in the same position.
“America needs to rebuild the toolkit that allowed the U.S. to win the Cold War. But we also need to resist the temptation to draw too many parallels with the past, because today’s America is very different from the America that defeated the Soviet Union,” Rubio warned. Largely, Rubio claims, America is in a much weaker position now because of Democrats.
“America is no longer the world’s factory. It ceded that title when the administration of President Bill Clinton granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations status to China in 2000 and naively agreed to allow the communist nation to join the World Trade Organization.”
While he notes that “the U.S. is still the global epicenter of education and innovation,” Rubio sounds the alarm, signifying that “Chinese theft and imitation have significantly eroded much of America’s technological and military advantage.”
To ensure Beijing does not turn overturn “an international system that benefits America and our friends,” Rubio posts that “the U.S. must strengthen existing international relationships and cultivate new ones, rather than assuming other countries will follow its lead by default.”
