MAGA at the Acropolis

On a visit to Athens, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio extolled ancient Greece as the foundation of Western civilization and drew inspiration for the US today as the leader of the West. Rubio’s speech at the Pnyx, a hill west of the Acropolis where democracy was first practiced, was a bold and eloquent attempt to trace MAGA’s ideological roots back to Athenian democracy, as well as to Christendom, important discoveries and imperial conquests. And it was about “us” and “them” — the West and the rest.

According to Rubio, the values that made the West great and dominant include “fierce individuality and relentless ambition,” “daring exploration and invention,” and an “insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates.”

Those are all well and good, but Rubio made no mention of cooperation, solidarity or the common good. Indeed, he and the entire MAGA movement seem to view human interaction as a constant fight in which the best (or the strongest) wins — and the rest are forgotten.

The same logic applies to global affairs. In Rubio’s own words, the US has chosen “the unapologetic pursuit of national power.” If the goal is to save Western civilization and maintain its dominance, international relations become a zero-sum game — except for the transatlantic alliance, which Rubio thinks must be bolstered.

Similarly, there should be no more ceding of sovereignty to “global bureaucracies” — presumably the UN, the EU and the International Criminal Court (ICC), which have all said or done something that angered US President Donald Trump, although Rubio chose not to name them. To match deeds with words, Rubio announced sweeping new sanctions against the ICC only a few days after leaving Athens and following the news that a former ICC judge had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unsurprisingly, Rubio’s speech made no mention of international law.

Although Rubio’s speech was delivered thousands of miles from the US, it was largely addressed to an American audience — a society deeply divided and hugely unequal. The Acropolis offered a dramatic backdrop for a political leader trying to bolster not only MAGA’s standing, but also his own. However, unlike other Trump administration officials, who have subjected Europeans to insults and threats, Rubio has taken a different tack, emphasizing the shared civilizational inheritance.

In his speech, Rubio encouraged the US and its European allies to embrace thumos, which he translated as “the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride” and, in his telling, the driving force behind the success of ancient Athens.

However, had he read the ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, he might have come across another Greek word: hubris, a source of the internal political decay and imperial overreach that brought down ancient Athens and its democracy.

Instead of looking inward, Rubio and the rest of the Trump administration have focused on Europe. In their view, the continent is in decline and facing the stark prospect of “civilizational erasure,” as described in the National Security Strategy released by the White House last year.

The list of supposed sins is long: Europe has been free-riding on the US for defense (which, alas, is true) and is unable to stand its ground against the big powers, including the US. Europeans are too apologetic about their colonial past and talk too much about minority rights, welfare policies, digital regulation and climate change. They have been “invaded” by immigrants and influenced by “woke” culture. And, most importantly, Europeans have ceded too much of their sovereignty to the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. In short, they represent everything that MAGA holds in contempt.

However, Europe has learned some lessons from the carnage of two world wars about the unrestrained projection of national power. There are few missionaries left on the continent. And European governments have come to understand that there is strength in unity when confronting an increasingly anarchic and highly asymmetric world.

What does Rubio propose instead to Europeans? To simply relegate responsibility to the leader of the West and become obedient followers? And where would that leave non-Western countries? What conclusions are they meant to draw?

The world is not returning to a bipolar order like that during the Cold War. The signs of multipolarity are everywhere. Rubio’s ideologically loaded speech, delivered in a setting evoking the origin of the “West,” would not change that.

Loukas Tsoukalis is president of ELIAMEP, a Greek foreign-policy think tank, and an affiliate professor at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po.